I say good for them for taking it. How many of us on here would be very happy if someone offered us right now $20 million. I know I would. Sometimes its worth taking what you can and moving on with your life - these guys will never have to worry about money again if they are careful with their money and on the basis that they are now free they can involve themselves in other ventures. Well done to them
Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#124x valuation or do i remember less from accounting than i thought? Their annual revenue is estimated to be around $5 million, with $2 million in profit. Doesn't make sense to me.
3x revenue is pretty standard for businesses that aren't really growing anymore. Seems like a pretty solid deal to me.
Businesses that aren't growing anymore usually get valued based on earnings. The P/E of the S&P 500 is about 20 (perhaps a little less after the recent market turbulence), which means that HotOrNot's price would be about half the average publicly-traded corporation, including all the old-line manufacturing businesses and companies in decline.
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#134x valuation or do i remember less from accounting than i thought? Their annual revenue is estimated to be around $5 million, with $2 million in profit. Doesn't make sense to me.
That's a completely normal offer in the world of regular business, in fact, it's pretty good considering some of the particulars.
When non-outlandish deals and realistic valuations stop making sense to you, it's a clear sign that it's time to explore life outside the valley a bit!
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#144x valuation or do i remember less from accounting than i thought? Their annual revenue is estimated to be around $5 million, with $2 million in profit. Doesn't make sense to me.
4x valuation would be small, i.e. not expecting too much growth.
It's not small, it's realistic.
All the other valuations are retarded, that's all.
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
3x revenue is pretty standard for businesses that aren't really growing anymore. Seems like a pretty solid deal to me.
Businesses that aren't growing anymore usually get valued based on earnings. The P/E of the S&P 500 is about 20 (perhaps a little less after the recent market turbulence), which means that HotOrNot's price would be about half the average publicly-traded corporation, including all the old-line manufacturing businesses and companies in decline.
P/E ignores a lot of things, too. Old-line manufacturing businesses usually have a ton of assets (machinery, land, etc) that boost their valuations.
I doubt HotOrNot has much more than the brand name and domain, as far as assets are concerned.
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea i don't see the point of selling for 20 mill when you are generating that much revenue. It shouldn't take that much of their time to run that thing, I would just let it ride.
I don't see hot or not still pulling in 5M anually four years from now. Hot or Not seems like it's probably going to have a shelf life. While I think you do have an argument, taking the money is probably the best option.
It's been going for over seven years so far, without much in the way of marketing. I don't see why it couldn't last four more years with a little more attention.
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#1720 million is no joke - for a startup that has already paid them very very well for a long time and put them in the web limelight for many years - its a great deal.
I was a bit shocked by the price - when startups are getting all these crazy valuations and acquisitions it seems crazy that such a successful, profitable, and valuable company only got 4x. Sometime valley logic is ass backwards - but its all good - these guys built a kick ass business and made out with loads of cash - well done all around.
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#18Congratulations to these pre-Web 2.0 Web 2.0 founders...
Hot or Not is a superb example of being in the right place at the right time with the right idea and the right skills and a bit of luck
"It all started the evening of October 3, 2000, when I was sitting in my living room sharing a few beers with my roommate, Jim Young, and my brother, Tony. Jim had just mentioned that he thought a girl we had met at a party was a perfect "10," when the idea suddenly came to me: "Wouldn't it be funny to have a Web site where you could rate random pictures of people from 1 to 10?"
...I got about 15 hours of sleep over AmIHotorNot.com's first eight days—the time during which we addressed most of our scalability issues. Eight days after launching, we broke the one million page view barrier, reaching more than 1.8 million page views that day. By the end of November, we made NetNielsen's list of the top 25 advertising domains.
The site now runs smoothly, and has handled as many as 14.8 million page views in a single day without even yawning. Looking back, I think that week of scaling easily wins distinction as the most stressful, most exhausting, most rewarding week I've ever had in my life. In this trial by fire, we certainly learned an incredible amount about building and scaling a Web application."
From the story of amihotornot.com's first week of life (and near death by HTTP requests)
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#19yawn
Re: Hot or Not acquired for 20 million
#20Congratulations to these pre-Web 2.0 Web 2.0 founders... Hot or Not is a superb example of being in the right place at the right time with the right idea and the right skills and a bit of luck "It all started the evening of October 3, 2000, when I was sitting in my living room sharing a few beers with my roommate, Jim Young, and my brother, Tony. Jim had just mentioned that he thought a girl we had met at a party was…
I'm just curious, but what makes them "Web 2.0 founders"?