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Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

techcrunch.com

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Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#181

Post by Swannie »

Lewisham wrote: post #143
jedc wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, based on the spreadsheet I keep: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF90b1l...

The funny (as in strange, not haha) thing is when I read that 200ish number, the first thing that popped into my head was "that seems cheap." I've either been completely miscalibrated by the supposed GroupOn valuation, or I really liked Heroku. Probably both.

I thought "wow, 200M!!". That's a huge value per customer! (Considering how small most of them are).

And yes, the GroupOn valuation is bubble.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#182

Post by dschobel »

tzury wrote: post #49
cuchoperl wrote: post #19

heroku 94% pg 6% (early 2008) --- $3M Series A (mid 2008) Assuming a $2M pre-money: heroku 37.6% pg 2.4% series A 60% --- $10M Series B (2010) Assuming a $5M pre-money: heroku 12.5% pg 0.8% series A 20% series B 66.6% --- $212M Exit: heroku $26.5M pg $1.7M series A $42.4 series B $141.3 --- result: series A $3M -> $42.4M // 14X in 2.5 years series B $10M -> $141M // 14X in 1 year pg $17K -> $1.7M // 100X in 3 years A…

s/pg/yc/g

Thanks for the clarification. I was wondering whether PG invests outside of YC if he likes a team more than his cofounders do.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#183

Post by jedc »

jedc wrote: post #147
maxer wrote: post #5

pg hit the home run on this one

My back of the envelope calculation over all YC acquisitions so far has them at ~$12million returned. (Over half of that is from Heroku.) That could arguably be anywhere from $5-$20million based on your dilution assumptions, though. And direct investment costs for 208 startups is Then you start thinking about the other startups yet to exit (ie, Loopt, Dropbox) and you see the YC team is truly kicking ass.

Damn, I'm an idiot. Make that direct investment costs of 208 startups is Still, YC has still returned (and potentially as much as quadrupled) direct costs already, without a number of companies still to exit.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#184

Post by erikpukinskis »

smoody wrote: post #58
hristov wrote: post #29

It comes out to about $2000 per ap hosted on Heroku. Pretty good considering most of those aps are probably free. Of course they are hoping for growth, and Heroku has been adding almost a hundred apps per day.

If my "app" on Heroku is counted in that hosted app number, then people must assign a lot of value to a one page web app that simply states "welcomes to rails." I suspect there are other apps on the service that compete direectly with mine.

Your app probably isn't running, so it's not included in their 106,000 number. They spin down apps every 24 hours, and only start them up when they get a hit.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#185

Post by jdavid »

jacoblyles wrote: post #169

Man, the death of the IPO market and the increasing oligopoly in the tech marketplace is so depressing .

The scary thing is that oracle, ms, apple, ibm, or google could still by a compelling level of salesforce shares on yearly revenue alone.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#187

Post by bigiain »

Nrsolis wrote: post #52

I interviewed with Salesforce and I have to tell you that I found their culture a bit ....weird. It's something I couldn't put my finger on but I just had the feeling that they were all in some sort of cult or something. I didn't get the job. Probably a good thing.

It is a bit , umm, different - I always describe my Salesforce Sales Engineer friend as "having drunk the Salesforce kool-aid". To me it seems like he's bought into "the company vision" in much the same way I see in many Apple employees (and customers).

He's a smart guy though, and he's been there a while now, and he's still fully convinced they're "going to change the world".

Maybe they will - I can think of _worse_ companies "winning"...

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#188

Post by patio11 »

Jgrubb wrote: post #73
rmc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google App Engine is similar, but not identical to normal Django.

They give you free-ness up to a rather large number of pageviews/users/whatever, right? Could the process be smoothed to make the workflow as smooth as Heroku makes it, or do the differences in Google's infrastructure make that too much of a pain to automate?

Pretend Heroku let you use any Rails app with a simple "git push origin master", as long as your app didn't use ActiveRecord. That proviso breaks every Rails book and tutorial, most gems/plugins, and many developers. (Heroku does have a bit of a learning curve: I had to hack the internals of four gems to get a client project working right. Still, easier than mixing AR.)
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