A web-based calendar startup called Kiko put all of its assets up on eBay a little over a week ago as its founder explained on his blog. As far as I know, this is the first time a technology company has essentially sold itself on eBay for a six-figure amount. Seems like a fitting way to exit for a totally web-based company. Putting Kiko on the auction block caused a lot of buzz: Techcrunch placed Kiko in the deadpool (they seem to have taken a page from Pud), GigaOM called the space “crowded” and our most recent podcast guest Jason Calacanis reminded us revenues (rev-a-whats?) still matters for a business.

One of the most interesting parts of this transaction is that eBay — along with all the publicity generated about the auction — essentially acted as the investment banker for this deal, not that any self-respecting i-banker would touch a deal this small with a 10 foot poll. According to eBay’s fee schedule, eBay netted a cool $3,891.86 on this deal. After larger percentage fee on the first $1,000, eBay charges 1.5% of the closing price. You can only get that kind of low rate with pro i-bankers at the $100 million mark according to past guest Fabrice Grinda‘s blog post. Can selling companies on eBay scale and create a more efficient market for startups, or is this a one off success caused by a high profile failure?

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There are not many entrepreneurs who have spent their entire 10-year careers starting new ventures in online media, but Jason Calacanis just can’t help himself. Jason rode the dot com wave in New York by starting Silicon Alley Reporter. His publishing company Rising Tide Media grew to $12 million in sales. Unfortunately Jason also rode that wave down after the bubble burst. He ended up selling his first business to Dow Jones for a lot less money than he could have gotten before the crash. Undeterred, Jason started Weblogs, Inc. to make money by selling ads in blogs they pay people to write. In only 18 months he grew the business to a point at which AOL (TWX) bought it for a reported $25 million. Now he’s re-launched Netscape as a news website where users vote for what’s important. Jason’s caused a lot of controversy by paying top users of competitive sites such as Digg (whose CEO Jay Adelson was on our last show) to switch to use his service. Hear what’s been driving Jason’s entrepreneurial career.

If there are three words an entrepreneur dreads hearing in the summer, perhaps it’s “after Labor Day”. People such as venture capitalists and customers who take things called vacations (what’s that?) often say this to entrepreneurs trying to schedule meetings. In the startup world, a few weeks is a long time. On the other hand, maybe this is a sort of forced semi-vacation for entrepreneurs.

While there’s no standard education to become an entrepreneur, almost every entrepreneur gets an early education in the lemonade business. The kids may be cute, but that doesn’t mean they’re not cut throat. In fact, Inc. Magazine just announced the Best Lemonade Stand in America Contest Winner.

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Digg, the news website that uses its own readers rather than editors to decide what stories are most important, has been growing with a fury. While founder Kevin Rose has gotten a lot of attention including a recent cover of BusinessWeek, CEO Jay Adelson has been guiding Digg toward business success. This isn’t Jay’s first time though the throes of entrepreneurship. He started Equinix, a company that now has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion. Despite its success, Jay didn’t make much money because he held his shares until after the dot com bust. In fact, he had just enough money to put his kids through college and live a more modest lifestyle himself. He was ready to go off and work at a coffee shop or become a teacher until Digg came along. Now he’s back in the game.