Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#111

Post by jarek » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 1:14 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #108

underwater wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sam and Chris are both brilliant guys and great BRANDS [...] Guys like this attract A-players and attract PR. What about the minor things like, you know, making money? They took 17 million in funding and failed. But that's OK because they're buddies with the VC's and can try, try again.

I know you meant this to be a nasty remark, but do you realize you're actually saying something very nice about VCs? You're saying that they're driven by loyalty to their friends rather than by profit. That isn't really true. The main reason most VCs are friends with people is because they think they can make money out of them in the future. But it shows how far into falsehood you've leaned in your attempt to be nast…

I'm not seeing where GP indicates they don't realize that VCs' loyalty to their buddies can easily bring them in profit in the long term.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#112

Post by codinghorror » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 1:18 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #14

sama wrote: post #13

Happy to answer any questions I'm able to. Looking forward to the great stuff we're going to do at Green Dot!

1 - Would you say you guys were too early to market? 2 - Was your monthly active user base above 2M? 3 - What contributed to Loopt loosing its appeal over the past 12/18 months?

Per http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/09/loopt-dau/ daily active users were below 500 prior to the sale.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#113

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 1:37 AM UTC

blasterford wrote: post #86

webwright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should consider your tone here. It's unwarranted. You literally know nothing about what went on here, know nothing about the value that they're are getting (patents? team?). Is it okay/smart for Facebook to buy/hire a team of 4 engineers for $8M or is that because they are buddies with VCs? I assume Loopt had an engineering team of 20+. Is it that out of bounds to think that that (plus patents and perhaps some te…

If the team were worth that much, then they would have made Loopt astoundingly profitable in the last 7 years, and we'd all be using it. Judge people on their success/failure. Not on what other people think of them. Loopt was a flawed, quickly obsoleted idea. That was pretty obvious from the outset.

Note to blasterford: it looks like your subsequent comments after this one are [dead], possibly due to repeated flagging.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#114

Post by pg » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:53 AM UTC

jarek wrote: post #111

pg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you meant this to be a nasty remark, but do you realize you're actually saying something very nice about VCs? You're saying that they're driven by loyalty to their friends rather than by profit. That isn't really true. The main reason most VCs are friends with people is because they think they can make money out of them in the future. But it shows how far into falsehood you've leaned in your attempt to be nast…

I'm not seeing where GP indicates they don't realize that VCs' loyalty to their buddies can easily bring them in profit in the long term.

Loyalty to their buddies only brings the VCs profit in the long term if their buddies are good, which is exactly the point of webwright's that underwater is trying to contradict.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#115

Post by freshhawk » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #108

underwater wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sam and Chris are both brilliant guys and great BRANDS [...] Guys like this attract A-players and attract PR. What about the minor things like, you know, making money? They took 17 million in funding and failed. But that's OK because they're buddies with the VC's and can try, try again.

I know you meant this to be a nasty remark, but do you realize you're actually saying something very nice about VCs? You're saying that they're driven by loyalty to their friends rather than by profit. That isn't really true. The main reason most VCs are friends with people is because they think they can make money out of them in the future. But it shows how far into falsehood you've leaned in your attempt to be nast…

I think you're missing his point here.

That VC money is investor money. These aren't angels being nice with their own money, these are VC's playing fast and loose with their investors money and it's not ethical behaviour.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#116

Post by freshhawk » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 3:01 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #75

randome3889 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don't understand VC or Private Equity very well. 15 mil is chump change for Sequoia. Sure they would rather not lose it but 43 million is not a "huge amount of cash" in the VC world. They probably just got back a 1x or 2x return and that is about it.

Which is why buddy exits are such a problem: there's so much money in the greater pool that they can hand out life-changing cash on a whim to people who might not deserve it as much as others. Sure, life isn't fair, but I'd rather people didn't pretend otherwise.

Fairness is less of a problem than VC's treating their investor money as a slush fund to dole out to their friends.

Doesn't everyone know that it's "more about who you know that what you do"? Even on HN most people don't pretend otherwise unless it's the all too prevalent press releases and astroturfing posts/comments.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#117

Post by underwater » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 3:41 AM UTC

webwright wrote: post #85

underwater wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sam and Chris are both brilliant guys and great BRANDS [...] Guys like this attract A-players and attract PR. What about the minor things like, you know, making money? They took 17 million in funding and failed. But that's OK because they're buddies with the VC's and can try, try again.

You should consider your tone here. It's unwarranted. You literally know nothing about what went on here, know nothing about the value that they're are getting (patents? team?). Is it okay/smart for Facebook to buy/hire a team of 4 engineers for $8M or is that because they are buddies with VCs? I assume Loopt had an engineering team of 20+. Is it that out of bounds to think that that (plus patents and perhaps some te…

I question your original assertion that these two guys deserve success because they are great brands and can attract PR.

Their job was to grow Loopt and make money. They failed to do that. So either they're not as brilliant as you say or that stuff isn't as important as you make it out to be. Result matter. Whether you're a great brand shouldn't.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#118

Post by ahoyhere » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 4:15 AM UTC

wilschroter wrote: post #37

I get so annoyed when I see people pick apart an acquisition. I saw this same behavior for Gowalla, and then Mint before it. "They didn't make any money. They sold too early." They remind me of people that would be sitting at the finish line of a marathon telling the last people to cross "Boy, your time really sucked." If you are one of the few entrepreneurs that has come far along enough to get to a sale - for any a…

The people "hating" (I haven't seen anyone hate, merely question) are frustrated because everybody around them tells them it's not luck, it's awesome, and that if you build a great product, get popular, etc., your day will come. That it's a meritocracy, as one commenter put it.

But it's not.

This sale demonstrates that.

It's a good time to adjust expectations and decide what, exactly, it is in your best interest to believe in.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#119

Post by temphn » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:07 AM UTC

majani wrote: post #45

alapshah wrote: post #9

In case anyone is missing what has happened here, this is why people hate on private equity/VC. As far as I can tell, Loopt wasn't doing very well. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... They had an attempt to revive the company to compete with Groupon last year that many here thought was stupid and died an early death ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2696412 ) Michael Moritz (Sequoia partne…

Buddy exits like this one and the Hunch exit are very demoralising. They make startups look like some sort of game. As you indicated, Loopt was clearly dying ( http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... ) and yet people still got rich off of it. Product + Hype -> Big Exit is starting to seem like a perfectly legitimate business plan nowadays.

Sales is part of doing a startup. Selling the company is the biggest sale. You have to give them props for finding the people willing to buy.

Additionally, Loopt (being founded in 2005) did a ton of work that was obsolesced by the iPhone and ubiquitous GPS. Their timing was off, but you really can't fault them for giving it the college try. At a minimum GreenDot's internal engineering capacity has been massively upgraded.

Re: Loopt acquired by payment card provider for $43.3m in cash

#120

Post by temphn » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:13 AM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #118

wilschroter wrote: post #37

I get so annoyed when I see people pick apart an acquisition. I saw this same behavior for Gowalla, and then Mint before it. "They didn't make any money. They sold too early." They remind me of people that would be sitting at the finish line of a marathon telling the last people to cross "Boy, your time really sucked." If you are one of the few entrepreneurs that has come far along enough to get to a sale - for any a…

The people "hating" (I haven't seen anyone hate, merely question) are frustrated because everybody around them tells them it's not luck, it's awesome, and that if you build a great product, get popular, etc., your day will come. That it's a meritocracy, as one commenter put it. But it's not. This sale demonstrates that. It's a good time to adjust expectations and decide what, exactly, it is in your best interest to b…

But wait a second, weren't you stating a few days ago that lifestyle companies make people more rich than moonshots:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3647026

Please note: I say this as someone who has great respect for the look, feel, and polish of Freckle and your other work. My disagreement in that thread was purely about the empirical question of whether lifestyle business are better than moonshots in terms of the "get rich some day" probability.

Have you changed your mind or am I reading incorrectly?