Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months • Hacker News Board

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#81

Post by danieltillett » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #73

jamisteven wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt this will be happening to the likes of Uber or AirBNB anytime soon, for one Travis Kalanik is one of the brightest guys on the planet and relentless in his efforts, much like Jobs in his prime. AirBNB will face more challenges but the amount of monetary funds it collects in transactions and fee's it is collecting will keep it at the top for a long long time. Anytime a company puts money back into the h…

AirBNB (and Uber) don't own or control any of the property that they are collecting transactions and fees on. They rely on extraction of value from independent contractors; if a viable alternative exists, those contractors can dump them in seconds (or however long it takes to download the alternative app/website).

Yes the disruptors are at risk of being disrupted.

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#82

Post by PopsiclePete » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #63

smegel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo: from $11 in 2011 to $50 in 2014 to $30 in 2016 I am actually surprised Yahoo is worth three times as much today as it was in 2011.

I realized that I'm not sure what Yahoo actually does these days. So I looked at their website, and...I still have no idea. Their homepage is set up like a sketchy news aggregator. Wikipedia says they do a list of things (mail, video sharing, online mapping...) that Google and others obviously completely dominate. As a side effect, I'm recalling the days when Yahoo was a directory of websites, and getting nostalgic f…

I still have an email account with them that I setup a long time ago. Use it to sign for various one-offs.

It's amazing how bad their email has become. Constant timeouts. Have to switch the "basic" mode to actually get email to load sometimes. The mobile version is barely alpha quality - the drafts workflow is horrible, it sometimes sends the same email multiple times. Issues with refresh. Shows stale emails. "Your login session has expired, you must log back in" errors even though a refresh makes it go away...

I mean it's bad. Really bad. Embarrassingly so. Like "how has someone not lost their job over this" bad. Or maybe they all did and now there's no-one left...

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#83

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

kasey_junk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'm kind of picking on you here, but people always say this about things they think are bad. But there are pretty big structural differences between going short and going long. In particular, you need to know much more precisely when the bad things are going to happen. Sometime do a short (and if you already have, great, you know what I'm talking about). Its not nearly the "haha how stupid are they", people think…

It's okay to pick on me, I wrote the comment without putting a lot of context in it. I usually stick to trading commodities, not equities. My comment really was saying, "I believe that tech startups have significant headwinds, poor underlying fundamentals, and would like a simple way to capture the profits from trades made around those assumptions."

Unfortunately, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#84

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:13 PM UTC

blobbers wrote: post #18

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was only an ETF for shorting the startup tech sector...

You don't need an ETF to short the startup tech sector.

No but it would help when you can't get anyone to sell you puts :-)

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#85

Post by replicatorblog » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:13 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #3

Angie's List: from $28 in Jul 2013 to $9[0] Box: from $24 in Jan 2015 to $10[1] GoPro: from $87 in Oct 2014 to $11[2] Groupon: from $26 in Nov 2011 to $2.60[3] GrubHub: from $46 in Apr 2015 to $21[4] Twitter: from $70 in Jan 2014 to $18[5] Yelp: from $97 in Mar 2014 to $21[6] Zillow: from $121 in Feb 2015 to $22[7] Zynga: from $15 in Mar 2012 to $2[8] 0: http://www.google.com/finance?q=ANGI 1: http://www.google.com/f…

Facebook: $38.23 to $94.97 (May '12 - present) [0]

Wayfair: $32.18 to $37.81 (Oct '14 - present)[1]

TripAdvisor: $27.91 to $70.63 (Dec '11 - Present)[2]

Hubspot: $29.05 to $50.04 (Oct '14 - Present) [3]

Tesla: $10.40 to $204.99 (Jul '10 - Present ) [4]

ZenDesk: $15.25 to $23.10 (May '14 - Present) [5]

LinkedIn: $90.09 to $196.10 (May '11 - Present) [6]

0: https://www.google.com/finance?q=facebook&ei=OGyZVsiyEYqNmAG...

1: https://www.google.com/finance?q=wayfair&ei=k22ZVqnFKoShmAHG...

2: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATRIP&ei=DG2ZVpGGGI...

3: https://www.google.com/finance?q=hubspot&ei=2m2ZVvmlEImamAHg...

4: https://www.google.com/finance?q=tesla&ei=Am6ZVuHRBNGzmAH9n7...

5: https://www.google.com/finance?q=zendesk&ei=UnGZVtK-Go21mAGr...

6: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ALNKD&ei=ZXGZVqCWA4qH...

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#86

Post by mquander » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

interesting_att wrote: post #65

VeilEm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What point are you making? Perhaps it isn't too hard to look at examples of tech companies that have done well since IPO. This is quintessential cherry picking. The market in general has been downward recently but Atlassian and Godaddy are holding their own for example: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:TEAM https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:GDDY

The stocks you mentioned barely get any buzz in tech media (TechCrunch) or HN. The stocks that OP mentioned get a significant number of mentions here. A number of unicorns are dying, experiencing significant criticism (Theranos), doing not-so-well (Square, Zenefits), or exiting negative returns for investors (Gilt Groupe) The point is the companies that seem to be getting the most hype (young, 'disruptive' companies)…

Why would anyone even expect the set of companies that are most fun to write about to be the same as the set of the companies that are most successful? I kind of figure they would just have a representative amount of success.

I don't know why TechCrunch is indicted because it writes catchy profiles about cool-sounding companies instead of digging into the economic fundamentals. That's just two different things you can write about. AFAIK (not very far) it never pretended to be doing the other one.

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#87

Post by jonknee » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

thecolorblue wrote: post #11

Quinner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this have anything to do with it's status as a B-corp, rather than other market pressures on Etsy specifically, including Amazon's efforts in the space?

Etsy is a test, in some ways, to see if the b corp model can fit in a large, publicly traded company. The hope was that the b corp model would break out of its niche, and be applicable more globally.

Etsy's problem is not that it is a B Corp, it's that it loses money and has slowing growth (which means it will likely lose a lot more money!). If they had great numbers it could be run as a sketchy holding company in the Cayman islands and still attract investors.

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#88

Post by sauere » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #49

pyrrhotech wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon we will see uber, airbnb and dropbox added to this list. The problem is the new VC-funded startup model is a sham to rip off the public. Basically build a bunch of hype around fad-based, unprofitable companies with unsustainable business models and capture massive valuation of ~50x sales before going IPO and then insiders dump all the overvalued shares on the naive dumb money and only stick around long enough to…

I don't think Uber and Airbnb are particularly comparable to these companies. Uber and Airbnb have very clear business models.

And Box? They had a simple, clear defined business model.

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#89

Post by vishalzone2002 » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #3

Angie's List: from $28 in Jul 2013 to $9[0] Box: from $24 in Jan 2015 to $10[1] GoPro: from $87 in Oct 2014 to $11[2] Groupon: from $26 in Nov 2011 to $2.60[3] GrubHub: from $46 in Apr 2015 to $21[4] Twitter: from $70 in Jan 2014 to $18[5] Yelp: from $97 in Mar 2014 to $21[6] Zillow: from $121 in Feb 2015 to $22[7] Zynga: from $15 in Mar 2012 to $2[8] 0: http://www.google.com/finance?q=ANGI 1: http://www.google.com/f…

Grubhub(Seamless): from $40 Apr 2014 to $21

Re: Etsy stock has lost 76% of its value in 9 months

#90

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #56

tyre wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market cap is just value of a single share * number of shares outstanding. Do you have a better way of valuing a publicly-traded company? When you say "its actual value is probably unchanged", what value are you talking about? If you think there is a disconnect between share price and value (however you're measuring that), then it is an excellent opportunity to arbitrage an inefficient market.

The way I read his comment was a difference between perceived value and actual value. Market share is equivalent to perceived value, not actual value. So the comment was remarking that the drop in share price could be the result of inflated expectations becoming more realistic rather than a loss of actual value of the company. The biggest difference between perceived and actual value that I'm aware of is the tulip ma…

The biggest difference between perceived and actual value that I'm aware of is the tulip mania that early 1600s. In hindsight, it's pretty obvious that flowers didn't become less valuable in the short time period between the height and the collapse. Any utility or purpose they had, other than resale, was retained in its entirety.

This wouldn't apply to Bitcoin. Any utility or purpose in a bitcoin is entirely in terms of its perceived value.