by 1995, delphi had lost many of its subscribers, and bruns left delphi. in 1996, newscorp decided to exit the online business, was laying off almost half of delphi's employees and wanted to sell or close delphi. dan bruns and some of delphi's original investors bought delphi from newscorp for an undisclosed amount. with only 50,000 paying subscribers left, delphi was back to its pre-newscorp size. "we were on the same growth slope, but this time we were going down instead of up," he says. "it felt a little poetic."