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OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

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Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#21

Post by brico »

schoudha wrote: post #5

Wow, great call by YC and patience by the founders.

Yes, but this one was pure luck.

They didn't plan on building games for android and iOS. I remember them for being a 100% flash-site that offered a mediocre tetris-clone until they were sued by the tetris-copyright-holders.

"Draw Something" was an extremely fortunate product: a) they finally had a hugely popular game which took everyone by surprise and b) they made so much money that Zynga decided to just buy them instead of spending weeks/months on copying them and losing money every day they didn't have an alternative to "Draw Something"

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#22

Post by brico »

philwelch wrote: post #20
jacoblyles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit was one of the most undervalued sales of all time.

Was it? They're not exactly rolling in profits seven years after launch.

because they are very concerned about annoying/destroying the community.

in the hands of a purely profit-oriented company they would make enormous amounts of money and milk the site until its demise a couple of years in

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#23

Post by inovica »

brico wrote: post #21
schoudha wrote: post #5

Wow, great call by YC and patience by the founders.

Yes, but this one was pure luck. They didn't plan on building games for android and iOS. I remember them for being a 100% flash-site that offered a mediocre tetris-clone until they were sued by the tetris-copyright-holders. "Draw Something" was an extremely fortunate product: a) they finally had a hugely popular game which took everyone by surprise and b) they made so much money that Zynga decided to just buy them in…

Many successes are based around 'luck' - or more accurately capitalising on it when it comes your way. I know my business has continuously evolved over the years and people have often used the term 'lucky' for me. I find it irritating when people say that someones success is purely down to luck - I'm sure that there were a lot of decisions that were made that contributed to their success here, as that's what it is

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#24

Post by swombat »

brico wrote: post #22
philwelch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it? They're not exactly rolling in profits seven years after launch.

because they are very concerned about annoying/destroying the community. in the hands of a purely profit-oriented company they would make enormous amounts of money and milk the site until its demise a couple of years in

Dubious. Reddit's users are viciously anti-commercial. I doubt you could make that much money from traditional advertising there...

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#25

Post by jacoblyles »

philwelch wrote: post #20
jacoblyles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit was one of the most undervalued sales of all time.

Was it? They're not exactly rolling in profits seven years after launch.

It has billions of pageviews per month. I think that makes you more than $10 million.

It's a top 50 website. With the right management (which it doesn't have), it could be THE community site on the web.

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#26

Post by brico »

inovica wrote: post #23
brico wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this one was pure luck. They didn't plan on building games for android and iOS. I remember them for being a 100% flash-site that offered a mediocre tetris-clone until they were sued by the tetris-copyright-holders. "Draw Something" was an extremely fortunate product: a) they finally had a hugely popular game which took everyone by surprise and b) they made so much money that Zynga decided to just buy them in…

Many successes are based around 'luck' - or more accurately capitalising on it when it comes your way. I know my business has continuously evolved over the years and people have often used the term 'lucky' for me. I find it irritating when people say that someones success is purely down to luck - I'm sure that there were a lot of decisions that were made that contributed to their success here, as that's what it is

sorry for not being clear: not the people running OMGPOP were lucky, the investors were, they just couldn't have known how things turned out to be. When they invested in the initial round my guess is that the idea behind the startup and the business ideas were completely different from what the company represents now

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#27

Post by philwelch »

jacoblyles wrote: post #25
philwelch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it? They're not exactly rolling in profits seven years after launch.

It has billions of pageviews per month. I think that makes you more than $10 million. It's a top 50 website. With the right management (which it doesn't have), it could be THE community site on the web.

What's the pageview to dollar exchange rate again? That's bubble talk, honestly.

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#28

Post by brico »

swombat wrote: post #24
brico wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they are very concerned about annoying/destroying the community. in the hands of a purely profit-oriented company they would make enormous amounts of money and milk the site until its demise a couple of years in

Dubious. Reddit's users are viciously anti-commercial. I doubt you could make that much money from traditional advertising there...

the core surely is anti-commercial but the main subreddits like r/funny or r/pics and the like are so huge that the majority consists of "normal" internet-consumers that visit other sites as well and are used to commercials, the reddit-frontpage is mainstream, it's no longer an obscure site that some nerds know about

and in addition they could have very targeted advertising for the highly specialised subreddits.

but aggressive money-making surely would destroy the community and turn the site into a superficial link-collection with comments in the style of youtube but you could milk it for a couple of years and earn a lot

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#29

Post by mdonahoe »

brico wrote: post #26
inovica wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many successes are based around 'luck' - or more accurately capitalising on it when it comes your way. I know my business has continuously evolved over the years and people have often used the term 'lucky' for me. I find it irritating when people say that someones success is purely down to luck - I'm sure that there were a lot of decisions that were made that contributed to their success here, as that's what it is

sorry for not being clear: not the people running OMGPOP were lucky, the investors were, they just couldn't have known how things turned out to be. When they invested in the initial round my guess is that the idea behind the startup and the business ideas were completely different from what the company represents now

Yc invests in people.

Re: OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date

#30

Post by mdonahoe »

brico wrote: post #21
schoudha wrote: post #5

Wow, great call by YC and patience by the founders.

Yes, but this one was pure luck. They didn't plan on building games for android and iOS. I remember them for being a 100% flash-site that offered a mediocre tetris-clone until they were sued by the tetris-copyright-holders. "Draw Something" was an extremely fortunate product: a) they finally had a hugely popular game which took everyone by surprise and b) they made so much money that Zynga decided to just buy them in…

They iterated this drawing game several times in different formats and platforms. I would say it was more than blind luck. They had faith in their product and kept tuning an tweaking it.
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