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AngelList acquires Product Hunt

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Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#131

Post by wh-uws »

pdeuchler wrote: post #64

This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…

As incredibly gifted, talented, intellectual, and intelligent as many of the fine people in the community are technically it boggles my mind how naive the average HNer seems to be about social intelligence.

This whole "meritocracy" thing is an incredibly effective marketing tool to get people from all over the world to move to an overpriced, dilapidating part of the world, with poop in the streets everywhere to sacrifice part of their lives to try to make something that matters.

If you fail at your own hopefully you impress some people who didn't enough you get to work with them.

If you don't you wash out.

The meritocracy its true but you have to either

1. have been born a mega genius

2. been raised in a wealthy well connected family

3. be a sociopath who manipulates everyone around you into doing your bidding

4. fake it til you make it and make the right friends along the way

5. Or struggle and toil until you figure out how to do one of the previous

This game is hard and lots of people don't win.

You can be jealous but don't say the system doesn't work when so many multi billion dollar companies have been created this way.

Survival of the fittest.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#132

Post by Kiro »

L_Rahman wrote: post #68
pdeuchler wrote: post #64

This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…

That this is the top comment on this post gives me a lot of faith in this community. The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem. I'm glad that some of us react differently.

I usually see nothing but negativity on here so I can't relate at all. The top comment was exactly what I expected when opening the thread.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#134

Post by dang »

stonesvsglass wrote: post #73

svskeptic 1 hour ago [-] 'Experiment' with no conceivable way of monetization gets 'investment' for some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons. Bros funding Bros, and then bro acquiring bro when the first-bro has blown through 7.1M. Its the Silicon Valley version of nepotism. Its all play money, but is only available if you are in the circle. Now that you have an exit to your name, next stop, VC partner. And then…

Please don't copy and paste comments that appear elsewhere in the thread (and especially not as an end-run around moderation, if that happens to be why you did it). We have nested threads here so people can reply to what they read directly.

The issue isn't brevity, but the toxicity that I described in my comment. I'm not sure I can describe it any better than that.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#135

Post by danenania »

taytus wrote: post #81
goeric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups are hard. I don't know Ryan personally, but he really started PH as barebones as possible and grew it to millions of uniques. Without being on the inside, you have no idea the pressure or stresses he was under. Why are people so critical when they see a startup exit for less than a billion dollars? I am sure it's a huge learning experience for him and I congratulate him and wish him the best.

I love entrepreneurs, I just love the people overcoming all the obstacles and following their dreams and passion and just hustling and hustling until they succeed. They are plenty of stories like this. PH was far from a meritocracy. It was basically a forum with SV insiders and people trying to "get in" in that ecosystem. But it was totally rigged, so that's the opposite of a tool who supposed to democratize access t…

I understand this criticism and would love to see a more accessible version of PH find success, but exposure is in its very essence extremely non-democratic. Very few have the time or desire to check out even a tiny fraction of the thousands of new products that are created every day. People rely on filters, and those filters are always going to require some sort of barrier to access that leaves out many, many more than it features.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#136

Post by dang »

exogeny wrote: post #109
gkoberger wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment saddens me. Ryan may be "in the circle" now, but it's not like he had a rich VC uncle. It's not nepotism; he had no connections when he started out. Product Hunt didn't succeed because he's "in the circle", he's "in the circle" because Product Hunt succeeded. Ryan is one of the nicest, most genuine person I've met, and he worked hard to get where he is. He built a great team and a product that people lov…

His personal characteristics are irrelevant to the economics; he raised money from A-list VCs and failed to do anything notable with it, resulting in a bailout from one of his existing investors and a marginally better employment situation for his staff. Nice guy? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids. You lose that excuse when you raise a Series A.

Personal characteristics may be irrelevant to the economics, but the comments you're responding to weren't about the economics.

Please don't get nasty, as in your last paragraph, when commenting here. It literally adds nothing except bile, and we need less of that.

Edit: your several comments in this thread smack of a vendetta. Schadenfreude is human, but I think it's fair to ask people not to go hog wild with it.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#137

Post by fudged71 »

ThomPete wrote: post #28
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #16

As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. But I also realize this was because they raised tons of money and was under heavy pressure to get traction at any cost. So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of arti…

What on earth would you need funding for when you do a site like Product Hunt? That makes no sense.

Because they had no significant revenue, didn't have anything personal to invest into it, and were in a community surrounded by investors. I agree, it doesn't make much sense.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#138

Post by rokhayakebe »

pdeuchler wrote: post #64

This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…

If PH delivered 100M clicks then clearly they have a business model.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#139

Post by birken »

pdeuchler wrote: post #113
birken wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) An investor isn't marking a 1x as a win. Locking up their LP's money for many years to return 1x isn't making anybody happy. 2) AngelList isn't giving PH investors/employees $28M cash, or $20M cash, or whatever the figure is reported as. They are very likely giving them mostly stock, stock in a private company with an unknown valuation. Probably only enough cash to cover the taxes (10-20%). The 20M figure is pulle…

1) Being pedantic real quick, it's a ~2x win. And yeah, it's not the 100x most VCs dream about, but it's still a heck of a lot better than an embarrassing 0x loss after your founder shouts his billion dollar aspirations from the rooftops. The important thing here isn't that VC's are making money, it's that they're using an elitist social circle to absolve losses. "Too connected to fail", if you will. 2) How does this…

Do you think the behavior of these companies could possibly be explained by doing what they think is in their own selfish best interest instead of somehow using "elitist social circles" to "absolve losses"? And who is absolving the losses anyways? Wouldn't some of the people in the "elitist social circles" be investors in AL but not PH and be upset that these "losses" were being inflicted upon them? Why wouldn't they use their elite social clout to stop it?

Anecdote time: I've personally seen a few startups that were failing attempt to sell themselves to the startup I was somewhat senior in. I interviewed and chatted with founders of the startups that were trying to get acquired. My meetings were not interfered with by the VCs or the angels or anybody else. They are far far too busy to care about every minute detail of what goes on at their portfolio companies. Had we ever gone through with one of the acquisitions (which we never did when I was there), my guess is the board would have tried very hard to convince us not to do it, as an acquisition has a much higher chance of going wrong than going well and can be a huge distraction.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#140

Post by rokhayakebe »

L_Rahman wrote: post #68
pdeuchler wrote: post #64

This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…

That this is the top comment on this post gives me a lot of faith in this community. The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem. I'm glad that some of us react differently.

A comment that is on top does not mean every one shares the sentiment. I usually upvote comments I strongly disagree with and add my own thoughts with the attempt to rectify the line of thinking. The idea is if something is "very" wrong then all the more reason to upvote and enlighten others.
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