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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#261

Post by macando »

Macha wrote: post #223
macando wrote: post #92

Since switching almost completely to JavaScript, Node.js and React I noticed that my time spent on Stack Overflow dropped significantly. I found my answers in API docs and GitHub issues most of the time. I never created an account. Once I had listed most recent Redux and React questions, had an answer to one that was pretty tricky within one minute since posting and while I was typing out the answer in my editor some…

Github issues have also replaced most of my stack overflow usage. Part of it is that I'm now more experienced, so most of my questions are about edge cases or potential bugs and not "How do I call system()?". But it also feels like stackoverflow took off because it was lower friction than mailing lists and experts exchange, but has been overshadowed as projects migrated to github and most developers already having a…

> (a) having stuff in google results from other sites

Yeah. Programmers now give really nice answers to basic questions about the up and coming tech on their personal/company blogs.

Also, SO benefited from having a decent code formatting in a time where code blocks looked horrible pretty much everywhere else. They lost that edge.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#262

Post by [deleted] »

sangnoir wrote: post #143
numair wrote: post #28

This is absolutely phenomenal. Naspers/Prosus are some of the savviest and most forward-thinking players in tech investment — would you have been smart enough to give Tencent all that money, way back when? And remember, they were a bunch of nobodies based out of South Africa when that happened. This is much more interesting than a monopolist like Microsoft buying SO, and I’d be keen to see what the growth strategy is…

> And remember, they were a bunch of nobodies based out of South Africa when that happened. Hard disagree - they weren't nobodies, Naspers was already a media juggernaut by 2001 (print and TV). Naspers was founded in 1915 (as De Nasionale Pers Beperkt - National Press) to promote Afrikaner Nationalism in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war. One of Naspers founders was also the founding president of the National Party…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#263

Post by sokoloff »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #146
meh99 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had access to their business network, data analysis, and knew in the end it wasn’t my money, society will just bail us out, sure why not make that choice? You’re making it sound like they had real skin in the game. If it fails they walk away with enough to retire on anyway. Let’s not make celebrities of the biggest grifters out there, emotionally coloring them in as possessed of magical insights. They’re people…

It's crazy the kind of hero worship towards anyone who makes a ton of money. When you account for all the smart people hustling trying to make their startup work, you realize it boils down to luck. Which, of course, is not a great comfort to most people since we all want to believe we can achieve anything if we only work hard enough.

I think of hard work as being more of a necessary but not sufficient condition for most of these outcomes, so to some extent: "The harder I work, the luckier I get..."

You can't control your luck, but you can control how hard you work. Some will read that sentence and conclude that working hard is a fool's errand. Others will read it and conclude the opposite. Neither is entirely wrong.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#264

Post by prepend »

bidirectional wrote: post #175
croes wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that old scammer trick? Pick 512 wealthy people, pick a stock, write half of the the people the stock will rise, the other half the stock will fall. Wait for the real development, dump the addresses of the losers, pick a new stock and start again. Write one half stock will rise, other half, stock will fall. Repeat until only one address is left. Now give him the opportunity of an large investment. You have s…

And how does this apply to modern investment funds who have to regularly provide client reports and make disclosures?

One big early hit can keep paying off. And some funds have long lock-ins.

In this case, they sold part of their tencent to buy this. Selling a little bit each year of a superstar early investment shows good earnings each year.

I don’t know this fund at all, so they could be awesome for all I know. But saying “they are super smart for buying tencent” is not useful without lots of other info.

Usually people who say that without extra evidence or mentioning survivor bias aren’t properly aware of what’s what.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#265

Post by saalweachter »

dystroy wrote: post #111
munk-a wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising what sorts of things people will buy for prestige - that might be worth a good deal of money for resale when you're looking to retire.

I doubt it. I'm in the top 0.07% with 300k+. Even such an account is worth nothing. Almost never did a recruiter pay attention to this. My low-rate GitHub account has a much bigger impact.

Do you feel like a digital sharecropper[0] now that the company has sold, or are you happy what you got out of contributing?

[0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-a-digital-sharecropper...

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#266

Post by jodrellblank »

robjan wrote: post #103
thepete2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly have bought a lot of very useful "user-generated data", would be a shame if they restricted access to it now or in the future.

The user generated content is under a fairly liberal license so if they restricted access someone could just create a mirror.

Not that they give a shit, they retroactively relicensed all submitted content and all previous data dumps, without rights to do that, and all they suffered was downvotes on their announcement.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#267

Post by foobarbazetc »

herodoturtle wrote: post #246
sangnoir wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And remember, they were a bunch of nobodies based out of South Africa when that happened. Hard disagree - they weren't nobodies, Naspers was already a media juggernaut by 2001 (print and TV). Naspers was founded in 1915 (as De Nasionale Pers Beperkt - National Press) to promote Afrikaner Nationalism in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war. One of Naspers founders was also the founding president of the National Party…

Ja true, but don't we Saffers all wish we bought more Naspers on the JSE before their gamble on Tencent.

A bit ironic that the “nationalists” made their money from a Chinese company though…

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#268

Post by phillipcarter »

eric_b wrote: post #165
jsterSC wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The honeyed words of social justice are more important than great, well executed products, apparently. I like how all the other comments are pointing out that the forces behind an acquisition are never good for 'focused products' and then there's this comment that shows us the truth, it's those damn kids and their social justice that ruins the products.

Well, since you're being deliberately obtuse - I'll expound. My point is that these companies are moving focus away from the products that got them to where they are, to a set of vague handwavy concepts that are completely unquantifiable. And, in my experience anyways, this usually comes at a cost to the existing products.

Corporate branding efforts to be more "woke" are cheap. It doesn't cost Raytheon much to paint their logo as a rainbow and do an "employee story" about how they have also have LGBTQ employees (building missiles). But don't get under the impression that Raytheon still isn't focused on building missiles. It's just an easy corporate branding win for most of them, so they just do it.

I don't think social justice messages on a website or social media are necessarily a sign of losing focus. It's just some branding stuff. If the company is "losing focus" is likely due to many more factors.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#269

Post by lordnacho »

benschulz wrote: post #47
dested wrote: post #11

I always thought Microsoft would be a natural buyer given the tech stack and Microsoft's support for developers. Unrelated story, I have a day one Stack Overflow account. I don't remember how I found it but I'm sure it was posted on digg or slashdot or something at the time. I had a lot of posts in the first few years about some generally broad concepts, and completely inactive since. In spite of this, I am in the to…

> In spite of this, I am in the top 7% of accounts on the site, which is a nice reminder on the power of compound interest! I'm also in the top 7%. That's down from 12% or so from five years ago. However, I haven't gained many points during the same interval. That leads me to believe it's not about compound interest but new users joining.

Same here, also 7%. But I benefited from a recalc of the question vs answer points. You might have as well?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#270

Post by prepend »

bidirectional wrote: post #171
ttul wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly it’s random chance. The reality of investing is that it’s mostly down to chance. Take an equally skilled set of investors and give them the same market access and some will do exceptionally well.

This does not stand up to scrutiny at all, for any kind of investing. There have not been so many VC/hedge/PE funds in history that the top ones would arise through chance.

How many vc/hedge/pe funds were there? How many funds around today were here 20 years ago.

Failures don’t typically advertise and it’s quite likely there ARE/WERE thousands or millions of small firms managing a few million each.

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