I think the domain name argument is bunk. The domain market isn't 'hot' again by any means. In fact it hasn't recovered from peaking in 2007-2008.
41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
131–140 of 269 posts
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#132So flickr goes mobile, gets funding, is sold for some billions, then a decade later it is dumped for a handful of millions?
The lesson here is not to blame the idea guys, they will profit from it dearly. Or blame the initial and subsequent investors all the way up to the (ponzi) pyramid, they will profit too. Or even blame the guy who signed the deal when bigCorp bought them, he got his cut under the table too.
Blame the poor souls who own shares of bigCorp for not enforcing accountability in their C*Os spending money left and right chasing the next bubble.
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#133From Colo[u]r.com:
"Think fast!
Find someone. Take pictures together. Party. Play date. Lunch?
Simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album. There's no attaching, uploading, or friending to do.
Share together in a new, moving social network. Just look around."
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#134I guess it is a matter of terminology but I have to disagree on this one.
A bubble is all-pervasive and extreme. It represents a systematic investment mania where everything becomes surreal. People sell vast tracts of land for a prized tulip. Junk companies with nothing to offer but a vague concept about revolutionizing how this or that will be done owing to some new phenomenon such as the internet make serial stock offerings to the public and get hundreds of millions for a modest percent of their unproven company. Lenders pile on with countless real estate loans to unqualified borrowers secure in the belief that what are really worthless loans will make them huge profits because they can be packaged and disposed of through artificial securitized instruments and because housing prices will continue rise broadly for endless periods. All this begins to occur in endless and ever-expanding streams until, in the end, large numbers of people are sucked into the vortex.
In such cases, broad markets affecting an entire society are sent into a frenzy by which average people start both to get rich quick and to want to get rich quick. Large numbers of people leap in, therefore, in the hope of making fast money and abandon their common sense in the process. And when things go bust, this has a major systemic effect on the broader economy. A stock market that had reached stratospheric heights loses 70% of its value. A real estate market that had become so pricey as to make housing unaffordable for average buyers plummets to the depths, taking down people's savings en masse.
The current phenomenon represented by high valuations in parts of the startup world is more transient and limited. It has not affected the broader society at all, only an insular investment community. If it fell apart today in toto, it would leave a trail of victims within the VC and angel communities but would be felt scarcely at all in the broader economy, or at least would likely have no systemic impact.
Viewed from the standpoint of the broader society, I think what we are looking at here is a speculative frenzy affecting a comparatively narrow asset class. The prices of some startups have increased considerably. The prices of companies generally in the business world remain moderate, if not depressed. Is it a pricing frenzy within a particular segment of an asset class? Probably. Is it a bubble? No. Or at least not by historic definitions.
Again, I wouldn't disagree with a single specific point made in this piece, and the author as usual makes some astute observations. I would disagree about the terminology, though, and would say that we should reserve use of the term "bubble" for the sorts of massively dislocating events that it historically has come to represent.
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's really unfair. Whilst I agree there's a disconnect, I wouldn't say it's specific to HN, but rather to the entire industry. The reason why you see those Ask HN posts is because people are looking around and realizing that those types of services have been getting tons of funding and attention. There's a disconnect, but it's in the social web world, not just HN. And I would say HNers are trying to capitalize on…
I disagree. I think the reason you see those kind of posts is that those kind of applications are low-hanging fruit. The development of Yet Another File-Sharing App or Social Media Service can be accomplished by anyone with a "Learn Rails In 21 Days" book and a credit card. Companies that are also getting tons of funding right now are biotechnology and solar energy startups, but I have never seen anything along the l…
More to the point, people lack any domain experience.
Don't get me wrong: it's cool to be an awesome hacker... but if you don't know about anything outside of hacking.. chances are some neck-beard somewhere has already solved all of the problems of which you are aware.
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#136I don't know about the rest of the world, but we sure are in a bubble here at Hacker News. There seems to be a real disconnect between what people want to build/invest in and what people in the real world actually need and want to pay for. Just as sample of what I've witnessed in the past few years: Ask HN: How do you like my file sharing app? Ask HN: How do you like my social app for niche ? Ask HN: How do you like…
B2C (and tools for programmers) is overrepresented amongst hackers because it is easier to gain domain knowledge in these territories especially for young hackers. I also think that B2B is still underrepresented, and I am more interested in that. But we should also note that solving Customer n's problem is very different than solving Customer M's problems at once where M is s big set of customers. The first is 'consu…
I also think that B2B is still underrepresented, and I am more interested in that.
It is, but there are a few of us around. I'm working on an enterprise software startup, focused on information retrieval and knowledge management. Pretty far removed from the typical HN "location aware, social photo-sharing with gamification" stuff, but I think it's actually more interesting. But that's just me...
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's exactly what I was thinking. I see this as being a very novel concept that if reaches a certain threshold of brand-awareness and good design could be a perfect acquisition target because merely replicating the feature-set would be like Google Video before Google acquired YouTube (it wouldn't be about the technical capability as much as the culture and community around the novel concept).
Perhaps we're seeing the start of something new.. B2C = Business to consumer B2B = Business to business B2A = Business to acquisition?
Building to flip is hardly a new trend.
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
True and false, assuming color has one tech cofounder. What they need at this point is an Android and IOS client that can take pictures and record the current position of the user then you need a backend system that can handle the massive concurrent upload of pictures and do concurrent geo-spacial lookups. This is by far the most difficult part but MongoDB has a filesystem component and there is a plugin for Nginx th…
but could you make Color.com in a weekend?
The android client capable of taking pictures and communicating with the service? Yes (minus the graphics, I draw like a retarded goat).
The service behind? No, but I highly doubt they have been spending only a weekend on it.
In two months? Properly, though it assumes that there is nothing more to it than has been described so far.
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#139I don't know about the rest of the world, but we sure are in a bubble here at Hacker News. There seems to be a real disconnect between what people want to build/invest in and what people in the real world actually need and want to pay for. Just as sample of what I've witnessed in the past few years: Ask HN: How do you like my file sharing app? Ask HN: How do you like my social app for niche ? Ask HN: How do you like…
B2C (and tools for programmers) is overrepresented amongst hackers because it is easier to gain domain knowledge in these territories especially for young hackers. I also think that B2B is still underrepresented, and I am more interested in that. But we should also note that solving Customer n's problem is very different than solving Customer M's problems at once where M is s big set of customers. The first is 'consu…
You know we're in a bubble when everybody thinks that everybody else is a hacker ;)
Re: 41,000,006 reasons why I think we're in a bubble
#140From Colo[u]r.com: "Think fast! Find someone. Take pictures together. Party. Play date. Lunch? Simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album. There's no attaching, uploading, or friending to do. Share together in a new, moving social network. Just look around."
I wonder if encouraging people to digitally record everyone around them will lead to legal troubles at some point? Back in the day when I shot film, I'd often get the subject to sign a model release. Society and technology have changed a lot, but if we're going to monetize something like Color, the people whose images appear may want some of that money.