IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe • Hacker News Board

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#201

Post by brentm » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 1:34 AM UTC

nugget wrote: post #24

ploggingdev wrote: post #15

First of all, congrats to csallen, I have been following your journey from the day you launched on HN and it was fascinating to follow along. If you haven't read his month in review posts, highly recommended. I hope it's not taboo to speculate on the acquisition price, so here's my take : * extrapolating a $5k/month revenue to a year = $60k/year * acquisition price is roughly 2-4x yearly revenue so $120k to $240k * P…

Your numbers are low. They didn't buy a suburban lawn care business. I'd ballpark >$1m up front and >$250k annual comp with upside going forward, in some mix of cash and stock. Great move by Stripe. Congrats to Courtland for the exit and what seems like a win-win for both parties.

No way. A blog like IH is an internet business but it's still a small business and much closer to the suburban lawn car business you mention than something like Stripe. There is no big scale for something like IH in the future without it being reinvented. It would not command a multiple of 15x+. Stripe would need to justify the purchase price to their board. If you were running a company bringing in $72k a year and it was a total schlep dealing with the day to day and then also selling ads being able to sell to a great company for 1-4x + a good salary for you + 1 is an awesome outcome.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#202

Post by brentm » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 1:47 AM UTC

vit05 wrote: post #117

ploggingdev wrote: post #15

First of all, congrats to csallen, I have been following your journey from the day you launched on HN and it was fascinating to follow along. If you haven't read his month in review posts, highly recommended. I hope it's not taboo to speculate on the acquisition price, so here's my take : * extrapolating a $5k/month revenue to a year = $60k/year * acquisition price is roughly 2-4x yearly revenue so $120k to $240k * P…

When the PH was aquired for 20 million, I thought about how much a smaller company like IH would cost. And how much would it benefit from belonging to a company that have already found their cash cow. There is not a perfect formula to make money on news and interviews, or you place ads everyerve or charge people direct. With Stripe taking care of most costs, IH can focus on what it really does best, produce content.

I don't think you can use PH to compare to any other deal, that was monkey business. No way in any world a message board that couldn't get beyond a niche audience, that (I think most would agree) was past it's prime, and had no obvious path to revenue is/was worth $20M+. It was only able to get that because of the people that had invested. The right people can make anything happen, it was not an ordinary deal under ordinary circumstances.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#203

Post by wheelerwj » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 1:57 AM UTC

pryelluw wrote: post #141

wheelerwj wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disappointing message that growth hacking works. 1) its not disappointing that growth hacking works. Growth hacking is supposed to work. Growth hacking is just marketing 2.0. 2) it is disappointing that spam tactics get rewarded. But that has nothing to do with Stripe... mostly. I also think IndieHackers is lite on legitimate content, but its a great content marketing play by Stripe. Anything to suggest otherwise i…

Would you define legitimate content? Super interested.

non-sensationalized, technical accurate accounts of entrepreneurship. not, "it was built it in 3 months." while conveniently leaving off that it was springboarded from a previous veture that took 3 years to develop a base for.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#204

Post by shmolyneaux » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 2:25 AM UTC

throw2bit wrote: post #182

posguy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Stripe only gets so much say over chargebacks with their platform provider and the cardholder's bank, the only platform that I've seen chargebacks successfully fought & won on is Tsys, its always a loser on First Data. That being said, $15 is a low chargeback fee (damn close to cost the issuing bank & platform charge), generally you'll see a $25 to $30 chargeback fee with a $20 to $75 retrieval fee.

how does paypal handle these ? When there is a dispute, I refund the amount and thats it. Paypal bears the chargeback and Stripe passes it to the merchants ?

Software Engineering Daily had an episode[0] on fraud detection at stripe using machine learning. If you're interested it provides quite a bit of background information.

[0]: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/03/17/stripe-machi...

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#205

Post by throw_this_away » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

throwaway88743 wrote: post #104

throw_this_away wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation on HN is very strict. If Indie Hackers were 'gaming' the system, they'd be banned. That hasn't happened. The posts consistently end up on the front page because people like the site...

> Moderation on HN is very strict. If Indie Hackers were 'gaming' the system, they'd be banned. If the voting data were available, one of us could prove the other wrong. As they are not, it is my opinion vs yours.

It's HN's opinion vs yours.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#206

Post by markdown » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #132

throwaway88775 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We try hard not to do that. But it's tricky because many YC alumni do interesting work and/or are valued HN contributors and we certainly don't want to penalize them either. This sounds like an admission of guilt to me.

goodbye.

Wondered why this got downvoted, then noticed that the throwaway I was replying to edited his comment. The original comment was basically "I'm done with HN! Goodbye!"

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#207

Post by nickstinemates » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 2:50 AM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #193

econner wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do those factors prevent you from sharing? Transparency is difficult, but isn't that the whole point of Indie Hackers?

The logical assumption would be that they gave IH a very sweet deal, much sweeter than they'd generally offer an acquisition target with similar financials. So if they release the details, future acquisition targets will expect similarly sweet deals, which Stripe has no interest in seeing.

Or made OP feel that way...

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#208

Post by wingerlang » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 4:03 AM UTC

itwy wrote: post #189

Isn't it ironic the details of the acquisition isn't being transparently shared? From Indie Hackers site: "Anyone with a business or side project that's generating at least $300/mo in revenue. There's no upper limit. Of course, you have to be willing to share your revenue — the point of this site is transparency!" Source: https://www.indiehackers.com/submit I think we have the "right" to know what the transaction ent…

The selling price seems very different from 'revenue per month' though.

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#209

Post by kirso » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 4:17 AM UTC

And yet here is what is wrong with the tech world, people start speculating on acquisition price and how much other people made even though news are about an awesome product and community joining another awesome product to make even more amazing stuff.

Btw. the best growth hacking is building an amazing product which sells itself. Click-bait articles, well ok you need some eyeballs but interviewes always reflected my expectations unlike BuzzFeed stuff.

Big congrats!

Re: IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

#210

Post by sumedh » Wed, Apr 12, 2017, 4:18 AM UTC

vit05 wrote: post #117

ploggingdev wrote: post #15

First of all, congrats to csallen, I have been following your journey from the day you launched on HN and it was fascinating to follow along. If you haven't read his month in review posts, highly recommended. I hope it's not taboo to speculate on the acquisition price, so here's my take : * extrapolating a $5k/month revenue to a year = $60k/year * acquisition price is roughly 2-4x yearly revenue so $120k to $240k * P…

When the PH was aquired for 20 million, I thought about how much a smaller company like IH would cost. And how much would it benefit from belonging to a company that have already found their cash cow. There is not a perfect formula to make money on news and interviews, or you place ads everyerve or charge people direct. With Stripe taking care of most costs, IH can focus on what it really does best, produce content.

What is PH?