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AngelList acquires Product Hunt

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Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#141

Post by pj_mukh »

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…

It's only in hindsight that 90's era Google is an "obvious win". It was "just another Search engine with a bunch of Stanford buddies for investors" in the 90's and probably would've been called so on HN.

Its seems to me that convincing a bunch of people to part with their money for your idea and then relentlessly trying to execute on it (as PH's founder seems to have done) is very meritorious.

Some investments are clearly made to friends, but you aren't convincing any investor to NOT invest in their friends who they think are great, personally. Now if only there was a process to democratise this discovery more....

P.S: I was referring to AngelList in the end there.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#142

Post by dang »

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.

> The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem

This is a classic perceptual bias. Everyone feels like HN is full of whatever they identify against, because those are the things we notice the most. Since you identify against "the valley ecosystem", HN seems full of uncritical adoration for it. It's a mirror of your own preferences.

There's also the enormous home-team advantage that anything "anti" has in the human brain, which gives rise to all the snark, cynicism, and rage-fests that take over online communities by default.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#143

Post by enahs-sf »

wwalser wrote: post #31
apadmarao wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why this is a reasonable ballpark price? The site is successful, and provides real value to the apps being hunted and the users that discover the apps - but the acquisition price is in acquihire territory.

The price is going to be some multiple on their revenue, I'd guess somewhere in the 4-6x range. $20MM is enough to get investors ($7MM invested) off your back and let the acquisition go forward and there is plenty of opportunity for back-end deals where key players have an earn out not represented by the acquisition price.

It's better to earn out than burn out.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#144

Post by colbyh »

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'm glad it gives you faith, because for me it does the opposite. It makes me long for the days where people in this community took an open mind and could entertain the idea that they might not know everything about everything.

I think there are some very smart comments here about the toxicity of internet communities over time that, unfortunately, seem to be evidenced in this exact conversation.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#148

Post by rokhayakebe »

jscheel wrote: post #3

This acquisition seems to make a lot of sense. Product Hunt is awesome, but it definitely doesn't feel like it's been able to monetize in any meaningful way. The question, of course, is how will Angellist get their $20 mil back?

I have no idea how stock-based acquisitions work, but I think you can do something like

We are worth 200M, you are worth 20M, we issue new stocks worth 20M, we buy you for those 20M, now we are worth 220M. It costs us legal fees.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#149

Post by mrtron »

colbyh wrote: post #144
L_Rahman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm glad it gives you faith, because for me it does the opposite. It makes me long for the days where people in this community took an open mind and could entertain the idea that they might not know everything about everything. I think there are some very smart comments here about the toxicity of internet communities over time that, unfortunately, seem to be evidenced in this exact conversation.

Having opposing viewpoints discuss topics gives me faith.
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