Avis is paying a 49 percent premium on Zipcar's stock price, and of course, the company isn't only buying Zipcar's reputation. Avis said it expects $50 to $70 million in annual cost savings from the deal as it leverages its fleet across the two companies, and that access to Avis's vehicles will let Zipcar grow in new markets. (For a sense of scale, Zipcar says it owns more than 10,000 vehicles; Avis claims 10,000 rental locations.) Meanwhile, the rental car giant also expects to benefit from Zipcar's mobile technology.

Per Avis CEO Ronald L. Nelson:

We see car sharing as highly complementary to traditional car rental, with rapid growth potential and representing a scalable opportunity for us as a combined company. We expect to apply Avis Budget's experience and efficiencies of fleet management with Zipcar's proven, customer-friendly technology to accelerate the growth of the Zipcar brand and to provide more options for Zipsters in more places. We also expect to leverage Zipcar's technology to expand mobility solutions under the Avis and Budget brands.

That all sounds reasonable enough, and Avis isn't the first rental giant to make a play for car-sharing. Avis's larger rivals, Enterprise and Hertz, already operate car-share businesses, and Enterprise acquired Mint Cars On-Demand and PhillyCarShare last year.

Still, we can't help but worry. Please don't screw up Zipcar, Avis.

Who's Pinterested?

With Instagram snapped up, everyone’s looking to Pinterest. Who’s got the cash and looking to spend? Business Insider cornered Google VP of corporate development David Lawee, who handles their M&A. Their biggest problem, he says, is video discovery:

"If you look at what we're rooted in, it's kind of obvious what we're looking for....The most challenging problem we have right now is discovery of video, that's the most challenging problem on the web. Social is one enabler, tagging is one enabler."

Now, company does face a few other issues at the moment. There are the privacy concerns. Then there's the rise of walled gardens Google can’t trawl. There's even getting more traction on the aforementioned enabler, social.

But video is certainly an issue looming on the horizon, and Google isn't the only member of the old guard trying to get out in front of the problem. Nor does it sound like integrating Google+ into search results was enough to crack the discovery nut. Lawee admitted their current social layer helped but it's "not even 1 percent where it should be."

At any rate, Pinterest did recently add support for Vimeo pinning, and they already had YouTube functionality. So they’re certainly working on the video-discovery-via-social problem. And Google seems to have noticed, because Lawee called Pinterest “a phenomenon that’s extraordinary.”

Sounds like someone has lost some 20 percent time to pictures of cupcakes!

Everyone on the startup bus

So you're a young social sales analytics platform. You know cloud computing is a hot market, but it isn't easy to break out from the pack and get noticed.

When a rock star like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is in town, perhaps giving a talk at the Jacob Javits center tomorrow as part of the CloudForce expo, you've basically got one chance to make a big impression.

You could try slipping him your pitch deck in the elevator or maybe rapping your way to an M&A. But the smart money is to get him to come to you, and that means making a splash.

We found this amazing offer on Zaarly today:

$10 for "groupies" to join me at Cloudforce NYC on Wed

Help a new startup make an impact. Walk the show floor and wear a hoodie and enjoy the East's largest Cloud Expo! Keep hoodie and get $10 in cab fare. Meetup at 8am. Registration FREE.

We pinged the seller to ask for some details. "Sure. Social sales Analytics. Recently launched on appexchange and looking to make a splash at the event. Technique worked well for us at Dreamforce. Would like the help!"

There is nothing Betabeat loves more than the smell of a freshly printed startup hoodie, but sadly, duty calls at the old blogsphere. We'll update when possible with pics.

Mr. Bharara and Mr. Lore (right) via NJ.com

If you've seen the ads for Soap.com on the subway or noticed a growing number of deliveryman hauling boxes with the Soap.com's colorful logo into apartment buildings, that's Quidsi. It's the same Jersey City company behind the mega-successful delivery sites Diapers.com (for baby care), BeautyBar.com (cosmetics) and Wag.com (pet care). Soap.com sends you stuff you don't have time to pick up from the drug store.

It's e-commerce play in an app economy that may be more closely associated with the dotcom era, except, you know, with much better margins. Quidsi, launched by friends Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, is also known for its Zappos-rivaling customer service and rapid-fire delivery times, a particular obsession of Mr. Lore's. That might be why Amazon, which owns Zappos, purchased Quidsi for $545 million last November.

Quidsi is now a wholly-owned subsidiary, but operated independently from Jersey City. Betabeat talked to Mr. Lore about the right reasons to sell, what he misses (and doesn't miss) about startup life, his angel investing philosophy, and his latest vertical, YoYo.com for kids toys, which launches today.

A lot has changed since the last time we spoke!

The strategy of Quidsi remains the same. Basically it's all the disposables shipped to you—70 percent of the country overnight--and the rest in two days, so super fast ship times, great return policy 365 day no question asked, average speed of answer continues to come down on calling customer service. We believe we have the right model of getting all the benefits of a mass merchant by having a shared shopping cart and shared account and a shared shipment, but all the benefits of a specialist by having these different websites where we can really take advantage from a merchandising standpoint by tailoring the taxonomy to the specific vertical.

So you’re using the same shippers and warehouses for economies of scale?

Yeah exactly, we leverage all that on the back end. On the front end, we have these very specialized, personalized designed sites. For example on YoYo, we’ll have hand-picked and child-tested toys that we think are great by age, so if you’re looking for a quick gift, it will be easy to find the top toys in any price range or age group. We have a really interesting toy finder that really takes the user interface to a whole ‘nother level—the wish list functionality and stuff. Moms that are already shopping with us on a regular basis will now be able to add to their basket seamlessly--up to 20,000 toys.

How’s Soap doing right now? I’ve been seeing a lot more boxes delivered to condos in Brooklyn.

Soap’s doing great. It’s a little over a year old and it’s way ahead of where Diapers was and Wag is doing better than Soap did in its first two months. So each site seems to be doing better than the one before it.

Do you have any metrics you can share?

You know I love to share that stuff, but I can’t really, now that we’re part of Amazon, give you any financial details. Quidsi is the holding company that Amazon acquired and home to all the different brands. Along with the launch of YoYo today, we’re launching our corporate site, Quidsi,com,  which will give background into all the brands and culture of the company.

How does the arrangement with Amazon work?

We operate fairly independently here out of the East Coast. They’ve given us some leeway here to carry our vision as we laid it out. We’re pretty happy about the way things are going. You definitely have  oversight, but they’re given us a lot of rope to execute the vision that we’ve put forth.

I noticed you ventured into angel investing recently. Is that something you’re going to be doing more of?

Yeah, it’s definitely something I hope to be doing more of.

You and Vin invested together, right?

Yeah, Lot18, they’re a great company, I think they’re going to do really well.

What are the type of startups you’re looking to invest in?

I don’t think there’s any one thing we’re looking for expect for a small team with a big upside potential and a lot of momentum, but I think the team is the only constant that you’ll find across our investment.

Do you plan on staying with Quidsi longterm?

Yeah, we have no plans to leave. We’re still having fun, we want to see this vision all the way through. There are a lot more sites in the pipe that we want to see launched.

Why do you think Quidsi has fared well as an M&A deal for Amazon?

I think they probably bought us and we probably sold for all the right reasons. It’s a good marriage. A lot of times companies buy companies and don’t know why they buy them or they do, but they want them to change how they were operating, which always causes friction. That hasn’t been the case.

What were the right reasons to sell?

We saw an opportunity with Amazon to increase the probability of getting there and to increase the speed at which we could get there. It’s kind of hard to pass up the opportunity. I’d be lying if I said it was exactly the same. There are certainly things that you miss, but on the flip side, there are things that I don’t miss.

What don’t you miss?

I don’t miss having every year to go out and raise money and go out and sell the VC community and to deal with all the aspects of going through the process of raising money. I don’t miss that. I do miss the excitement and risk-taking element that comes with whether you’re going to make it or not or raise the money you need—the unknowns.