In the two weeks following Robert Scoble's official announcement that he was to be joining Rackspace, Inc. and embarking on a new project called Building 43, the company's stock has jumped by more than 30 percent, rising at a pace three times that of the NASDAQ, as the broader market tries to recover from a horrific year. And while yes, the argument should be made the two are not connected, the rise in the company's stock has added approximately $300 million to Rackspace's market cap. If Robert were responsible for even 1% of the jump, he would already have delivered $3 million of net value to the company.
Rackspace's 2-week Rise Has Been Impressive
While Scoble hasn't been blogging as much as he used to, in his most-impactful years, simply getting linked to would deliver what smaller bloggers called "The Scoble Effect", as new visitors to the site could dramatically outnumber their regulars. And it's fun to think just maybe he can do the same for the Web hosting firm.
At the close of trading on Friday, March 13th, the last day before Scoble's news was unveiled, Rackspace stock closed at $5.98 a share. At the end of trading today, the shares closed at $7.81 apiece, a move up of 30.6% in two weeks. In fact, according to Google Finance, Rackspace stock has been up on 8 of the 10 trading days following his announcement.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Has Been Slowly Sinking
In contrast, Microsoft, the last public company where Scoble worked, having left their offices in June of 2006, has seen their stock decline more than 15 percent since he left. Of course, so has just about everyone else...