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EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

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Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#31

Post by smokinn »

hassy wrote: post #23
suking wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No freaking kidding - only thing I saw the founder do was interview people on TC. Never heard anyone mention hunch outside of those interviews. What is ebay thinking?

> What is ebay thinking? Impressive back-end tech (the recommendation engine) that can now process millions and millions of items on eBay to help increase sales (something like a quarter of Amazon's sales come from recommendations).

80 million dollars is a lot to pay for a recommendation engine.

Netflix had their own and paid a million dollars as prize payout for an absolutely state of the art system.

If it really was just a tech acquisition they massively overpaid.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#32

Post by smokinn »

charlemagne wrote: post #19
vaksel wrote: post #3

did anyone actually use Hunch seriously?

Taking this question further, what did Hunch help you do? I tried it early and passed, really interested to hear what it has done for others.

I tried it a couple of times too. First time I figured it was basically a slightly better stumbleupon. Next time I tried it was still the same thing and never went back.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#34

Post by movingahead »

jkaljundi wrote: post #28
Brajeshwar wrote: post #6

I never felt the need to use Hunch on its own. Now that it can be more of a tool to supplement other objectives, it sure might be the right tool after-all.

Hunch was always more of an API company than a destination site.

Can you name some companies which were using its API? Their developer site doesn't take any names.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#35

Post by hassy »

smokinn wrote: post #31
hassy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is ebay thinking? Impressive back-end tech (the recommendation engine) that can now process millions and millions of items on eBay to help increase sales (something like a quarter of Amazon's sales come from recommendations).

80 million dollars is a lot to pay for a recommendation engine. Netflix had their own and paid a million dollars as prize payout for an absolutely state of the art system. If it really was just a tech acquisition they massively overpaid.

Don't forget that Hunch's system is real-time (this is very hard), and is more than just scalable collaborative filtering for items of the same kind. They can ingest a Twitter or Facebook profile, infer your "taste profile", and start recommending things instantly; "things" meaning books, films, music, events, places etc etc.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#36

Post by achompas »

AznHisoka wrote: post #9

Wow, this is like a knight in a white horse for Hunch.. I seriously doubt they were making any profit... This sounds like a talent acquisition. I mean this is ridiculous... but it goes to show you.. you gotta show up for the game (the startup game, I mean) to win it... $80 m for a site that doesn't even get 1 million uniques (per Compete) a month is a STEAL. I mean.. seriously, everyone who has a CS background should…

This sounds like a talent acquisition.

I would agree, and it's a damn good talent acquisition. Hunch's team is made almost exclusively of engineers who (a) went to some of the best CS programs in the world (CMU, MIT, Stanford), and (b) really really really know their shit (just have a 5-minute convo with one of them).

Here in NY, Hunch had a reputation for opportunistic hiring. They had lots of funding and an incredible core team, so they'd only hire engineers that astounded them. That's a great way to set yourself up for a talent acquisition.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#37

Post by achompas »

arturadib wrote: post #17
AznHisoka wrote: post #9

Wow, this is like a knight in a white horse for Hunch.. I seriously doubt they were making any profit... This sounds like a talent acquisition. I mean this is ridiculous... but it goes to show you.. you gotta show up for the game (the startup game, I mean) to win it... $80 m for a site that doesn't even get 1 million uniques (per Compete) a month is a STEAL. I mean.. seriously, everyone who has a CS background should…

> everyone who has a CS background should just start something on the side if a deal like this is possible Chris Dixon is a veteran investor and entrepreneur, with enormous visibility in the tech world. Contacts with potential acquirers are a non-issue for him. A poor CS fellow could have created a version of Hunch that was 100x better and they still would have 1,000x less of an exit opportunity as compared to any st…

Agreed, this is completely absurd. Say what you will about Chris Dixon (zomg he doesn't code, wtf!!!!!111), but the engineering team at Hunch is second-to-none.

Grandparent makes it sound like Dixon pulled this off in his spare time. He assembled a team of A-level engineers, then secured millions in funding so they could develop an awesome recommendation engine with almost no clear revenue stream. I challenge anyone to find a CS grad who can match that in his or her spare time.

EDIT: restructured on second read.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#38

Post by blankenship »

kmfrk wrote: post #21
hassy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am somewhat disappointed since Chris Dixon has said Hunch would be in it for the long-term. (I've followed Hunch since it's early days* and always wanted to see it go big.) $80m is a nice pay-out though, the systems they've built have the potential to bring an immense amount of value to eBay's offerings, and a lot of that money will trickle down to other startups via angel investments. * http://hassy.posterous.com/…

Hunch is not for sale. The founders have already sold companies before and have no desire to sell Hunch. We want to build it into a large company. hunch responded one year ago http://www.formspring.me/hunch/q/1392572735

I'm suspicious when any startup makes this claim, not because I don't think they legitimately mean it (at the time), but because it rarely ends up being the case as markets, situations, products and lives change.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#39

Post by achompas »

suking wrote: post #20
vaksel wrote: post #3

did anyone actually use Hunch seriously?

No freaking kidding - only thing I saw the founder do was interview people on TC. Never heard anyone mention hunch outside of those interviews. What is ebay thinking?

Apple bought the tech behind Siri for $200m in 2010.

MS bought Powerset (and their NLP-type search engine) for $100m in 2008. They also bought Farecast (travel pricing forecasting) for $75-115m in 2008.

Hunch for $80m is a steal, as far as talent acquisitions go.

EDIT: I'm not sure if they were product or talent acquisitions, but does it really matter? All companies listed above obtained state-of-the-art algorithms and the teams that developed them.

Re: EBay acquires Hunch for $80m

#40

Post by suking »

hassy wrote: post #35
smokinn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80 million dollars is a lot to pay for a recommendation engine. Netflix had their own and paid a million dollars as prize payout for an absolutely state of the art system. If it really was just a tech acquisition they massively overpaid.

Don't forget that Hunch's system is real-time (this is very hard), and is more than just scalable collaborative filtering for items of the same kind. They can ingest a Twitter or Facebook profile, infer your "taste profile", and start recommending things instantly; "things" meaning books, films, music, events, places etc etc.

I don't believe real time is very hard. Something that ebay can' already do. And if they can't already do it, how will hunch come in and solve it. It would probably require major changes to db's etc if that is why ebay can't already do it.
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