sharing pictures always works (imageshack,flicker,imgur,instagram,pinterest...)
Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
111–120 of 130 posts
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#1122005: Yahoo acquired Flickr for $35m, Delicious for $15-20m; 2012: Pinterest is now valued at $1500m, Instagram at $1000m. I'd rather have 75 del.icio.us's than 1 Pinterest but.. I readily admit I'm getting old ;-) So my question is, did the folks 7 years ago get a bad deal or are the valuations now over the top?
>> did the folks 7 years ago get a bad deal or are the valuations now over the top? More likely Option 3: Vastly more people are connected to the Internet, which now has far superior paths to monetization.
But the 2005 valuations should have accounted for the fact that by 2012 there would be far more internet usage, and priced it in accordingly. In fact, like many things, they could have over-estimated internet usage. I doubt they were saying in 2005, "well, this is all the people who will ever use the internet!"
Anyway, I think the OP here is spot on. It's not that these companies are crap or worthless. It's the size of these valuations. We throw around billions like it's nothing now, when less than 10 years ago it was rare to see valuations 1/10th of that. Name something else that had it's value grow so greatly over such a short period of time. Houses maybe?
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#113For everyone talking about a bubble, 1.5B might actually be low. If you agree that Facebook is worth about 100B, according to Alexa, Pinterest is about 1/20th of the size by uniques (by pageviews it's about 1/30th). 1/20th means that Pinterest should be valued at about 5B, not 1.5B. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pinterest.com
You have precisely identified the bubble, inadvertently:
Why are we determining what these companies are worth based on things like number of uniques and users, rather than the actual amount of revenue they bring in? Users, in-and-of themselves, are useless. Revenue is always and everywhere the end goal. Somehow we've begun to take at face value that more users=more money, and I don't think that's the case.
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#114Well I'm going to head off the predictable and boring "bubble" comments and say this: Pinterest has real value and a clear path to monetization through affiliate and/or advertising revenue. It's really a stupidly simple idea (essentially scrapbooking on the Web) executed incredibly well. Is it worth $1.5B? I don't know. I would say it's definitely worth more than Instagram for whatever that's worth (not a lot). I gue…
These "bubble" comments may become self-fulfilling. Even if there's no substance behind the claims, enough talk of a possible bubble can shift investor and consumer mentality and end up causing a bubble down the line.
How does that work? I would think that people yelling "Bubble!" about any investment would decrease investor demand in that area, other than a minority of people who are dumb enough to think they can time an exit pre-bubble-burst.
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#115Get the money now before it fizzles!
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
A counterpoint: Lately there's been a lot of discussion about some difficulties Facebook has had in the advertising sector. Jason Bigler of Google was snarking about this earlier today. [1] I realize this is largely because all the snarks come out of the woodwork before an IPO, but to a certain degree - they're right. Facebook just isn't a place that puts people into a "transactional mindset." People go to interact,…
But are people posting photos of the kinds of things that sell in large volumes and generate a lot of revenue? The attraction of a lot of these sites is that they initially feel like a cosy insider community but that feeling fades fast as they become mainstream. This is happening to FB already. Are people going to be posting and clicking on pictures of ketchup or cleaning products or life insurance policies?
Given the (sizeable) advertising contracts Pinterest has already landed, people are posting and clicking on pictures of awesome clothes they like and might want to own, and other luxury stuff like cooking utensils; movies and books also seem to be pretty popular, and I've seen a lot of character diagrams from TV shows and fantasy series.
Yeah, there are certainly random things like ketchup and cleaning products and life insurance policies that don't lend themselves well to selling via images on the internet. But that has nothing to do with Pinterest; and given some time, somebody will probably figure out the angles for life insurance and ketchup.
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#117If you want some justification, read this http://www.shopify.com/blog/6058268-how-pinterest-drives-eco... TL;DR - Pinterest drives as much ecommerce traffic as twitter with significantly more purchase intent
According to the blog post, consumers are 10% more likely to buy vs. Facebook - well, that's a decent lift stat but it does, as someone else mentioned, depend on the base. Then, later in the article we learn that in Sept 11 they had 75 total orders (across 26,000 shops) via pinterest, then 320 orders in April 2012. Yes, that's more or less 4x the Sept number and does indicate an upward trend - but that's still a very…
... That's just from Shopify stores though. Most things people buy (and Pin) aren't sold on Shopify stores. All that data is good for is showing that it's increasing rapidly.
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#118Normally I am not one to comment on fundraising, and I have stayed out of the whole "bubble" debate. But, honestly, this is really getting a little out of hand now. The whole funding situation is getting really frothy. $1.5b pretty much prices them out of any real acquisition now for the most part. So is Pinterest going to go IPO? Where do they go from here? That's the question of the day.
Get bought by Amazon or Google in my mind - they have stock to do it, and it would benefit either of them (although less for Google). I could see Amazon buying them as, essentially, infrastructure for driving ecommerce sales.
they just raised a round on 1.5B valuation. Just exactly how much money you think Amazon or Google would be willing to spend on this deal? I would assume that if they just raised that round, the would not talk about anything less than 10X.
I don't think neither Amazon nor Google would pay 15B for a company, regardless how much traffic they are getting. For that amount, and knowing Google, they would rather build their own product.
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#119So essentially, if you can create a community with enough followers, referrals and photos you can make a billion dollar company. They suggest Pinterest will use the money to expand internationally. What does this mean? Buy infrastructure internationally or just pursue overseas advertisers? If anyone is interested in building Hacker News with photos get in contact.
> If anyone is interested in building Hacker News with photos get in contact.
I think you are totally not getting whats the value in HN. Seriously, do you see at least one picture on this site, except their logo?
If anything, it would be interesting to see Pinterest for HN comments. So often I miss out reading amazing comment because I either skip it or did not come back to the board when it showed up. Perhaps an idea where hackers could "pin" awesome comments to their boards and then I could lookup hackers by their karma (or karma/their lifetime here to see high karma on average per post) and follow hackers that pin awesome comments (so I can read more amazing comments in less time, with a "comb"), perhaps that idea would fly.
But not photos for HN for cry out loud.
Re: Pinterest Raises $100 MM at $1.5Bn Valuation
#120Is it possible to short stock in a non public company?
Nope. It's not even possibly to buy any unless you're an accredited investor.