I wonder what Klout's "klout score" would be for themselves, if they examined their mentions on social media.
I haven't heard anything about this nonsense for months.
Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#12I don't get it. This is completely baffling to me that this is a company worth 9 figures.
And worth nine figures to another company which appears (from TFA) to be worth nine figures itself. The Valley is amazing sometimes.
1. Raise $100 million.
2. Hire 100's of talented engineers for above average salaries and perks.
2b. Make them do something that sounds challenging and hard to understand, but ultimately useless.
3. Sell to a greater fool as an acqui-hire for $150 million
4. Earn a few million in profit.
5. Repeat! (because you didnt get a 100X return, just a slim one)
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#13Who would buy a failing start up for $100m? I guess that's why I'm not an investor.
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#14Klout is a perfect example of great marketing trumping great product. Klout scores influencers, but in reality it's not that much superior to tools like Followerwonk, BuzzSumo, or Twtrland. But they came up with a score that ppl could digest, they had a memorable brand, and they created PR with the gamification of these social scores. I might be wrong, but the real value if any in Klout is that they have a bunch of d…
Klout was the first modern "love-to-hate" startup. It's the proto-RapGenius.
RapGenius is a bad example. Their product (crowdsourced lyric annotation) obsoleted other lyrics sites almost immediately. That they had to play the dirty SEO game is unfortunate, but not surprising, given that they were competing against a field of even dirtier sites.
Klout, on the other hand, offered little more than reputation snake oil, which is why few take them seriously and the investors are lucky to be leaving with the shirts on their back (which is what a low nine-figure sale means). Much like Quora, there was a focused bubble of intense love, with a very long tail of disdain outside. Except Quora has a purpose.
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
And worth nine figures to another company which appears (from TFA) to be worth nine figures itself. The Valley is amazing sometimes.
1. Raise $100 million. 2. Hire 100's of talented engineers for above average salaries and perks. 2b. Make them do something that sounds challenging and hard to understand, but ultimately useless. 3. Sell to a greater fool as an acqui-hire for $150 million 4. Earn a few million in profit. 5. Repeat! (because you didnt get a 100X return, just a slim one)
Perhaps the take-away lesson here is that the hiring process hurts a lot, and companies will pay millions of dollars to avoid it.
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#16I don't get it. This is completely baffling to me that this is a company worth 9 figures.
You can't assume an efficient or even real market. Valuations are designed to benefit certain people. There's virtually nobody that would benefit from marking down the valuation of a company, and there are motivations that would lead to acquiring at inflated prices. For one, if you're buying something for the prestige of owning it you don't want to prove it worthless.
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#17One thing worth noting, for those that are questioning the "sanity" of this or asking how Klout can be worth $100s of millions, etc:
"...a mix of cash and Lithium private stock..."
So take any publicized valuations with a very very large grain of salt. It's fuzzy at best to value a deal based on the stock of another company which itself has a valuation based on the fractional investment pricing of 3rd party VCs.
(Note: I don't have any skin in this game either way, so please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere!)
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#18I don't get it. This is completely baffling to me that this is a company worth 9 figures.
It's about generating noise rather than value...because humans.
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Raise $100 million. 2. Hire 100's of talented engineers for above average salaries and perks. 2b. Make them do something that sounds challenging and hard to understand, but ultimately useless. 3. Sell to a greater fool as an acqui-hire for $150 million 4. Earn a few million in profit. 5. Repeat! (because you didnt get a 100X return, just a slim one)
Perhaps the take-away lesson here is that the hiring process hurts a lot, and companies will pay millions of dollars to avoid it.
So, a startup that hires a bunch of developers to hack as a team on some open source project and fires quickly then flips the team to a bigger company[1] could work?!?
sadly, I thought of a domain name for this: teamchurn.com
1) obviously paying a chunk to the team
Re: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout
#20[deleted]