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AngelList acquires Product Hunt

techcrunch.com

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Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#31

Post by wwalser »

apadmarao wrote: post #20
ricardonunez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The acquisition price was around $20 million, according to numerous sources familiar with the terms." http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-h...

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.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#32

Post by kaolti »

aartur wrote: post #17
minimaxir wrote: post #5

It's common knowledge that Product Hunt is rigged, and they will not heavily punish startups for soliciting upvotes (blatant example: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often…

I submitted my startup two days ago by myself, as someone who didn't have any PH "karma", but I somehow was granted permissions for submitting products (probably because I was subscribed to a newsletter for a long time). I asked by email if it's ok if I submit my startup by myself. I was told it's ok and wished good luck. On the launch day my site received literally five visits (in the first hours, probably a few mor…

Just to provide a counterpoint, I submitted a pretty simple Chrome extension 2 months ago and got 270 upvotes and around 2k visits to it's website. It ended up no. 6 for the day so almost made it in the daily newsletter. It was my first time submitting anything, was pretty much inactive before it and all the promotion I did at the time was tweeting to my 400 followers.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#33

Post by dwightgunning »

traviswingo wrote: post #4
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?

Do we know the acquisition price?

They'd raised ~$7.5M over three rounds according to crunchbase[1].

1: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#35

Post by Mahn »

apadmarao wrote: post #20
ricardonunez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The acquisition price was around $20 million, according to numerous sources familiar with the terms." http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-h...

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 site was successful, but it doesn't look like it had a whole lot of potential for growth; more likely than not it already peaked and was losing steam due to an ever decreasing quality in submissions.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#36

Post by intro-b »

visakanv wrote: post #13
minimaxir wrote: post #5

It's common knowledge that Product Hunt is rigged, and they will not heavily punish startups for soliciting upvotes (blatant example: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often…

I hate that I have a thought this cynical, but... I think almost all success invariably involves some amount of collusion and rigging and grey-area manipulation. It's all showbiz in the short-to-medium run. Most people don't care about the rigging as long as they're enjoying the show. Somewhere out there there's a 'growth hacker' who's proud of his Product Hunt rigging skillz, and surely there are countless employers…

don't preemptively judge your reasoning/analysis as cynical—it's a descriptor that's used to prematurely attack critique and commentary on feel good stories. if you don't buy into the narrative, you're being too cynical, doubtful, against the startup ethos. this kind of growth hacker, startup marketing clique, "hey look at my aspirational experiment journey" thrives off the lack of warranted criticism it receives

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#37

Post by Naritai »

apadmarao wrote: post #20
ricardonunez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The acquisition price was around $20 million, according to numerous sources familiar with the terms." http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-h...

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.

Exactly - the fact that the price is in acquihire territory is the real news. Playing it up as a 'success' is nothing more than marketing spin. The issue is, both AngelList and PH have a vested interest in letting people think that they made a great deal, so if sites like TC are going to talk it up as a 'genius move', they're certainly not going to say otherwise.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#38

Post by kaishiro »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #14
minimaxir wrote: post #5

It's common knowledge that Product Hunt is rigged, and they will not heavily punish startups for soliciting upvotes (blatant example: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission ( https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often…

Dude, it's good that you write these articles and I appreciate them. But for gods sake, let them have today. There are a lot of difficulties in running a community and I'm sure they considered different options but couldn't move forward because they were under too much pressure. They deserve congrats for today.

This is a bizarre sentiment (to me). Success should never act as some sort of temporary shield to criticism.

Re: AngelList acquires Product Hunt

#39

Post by k-mcgrady »

apadmarao wrote: post #20
ricardonunez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The acquisition price was around $20 million, according to numerous sources familiar with the terms." http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-h...

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 site is successful"

In what way? It has taken investment so it needs to eventually make money. How is going to monetise? Also, there is a limited audience for it so it's growth potential isn't great. Even as someone involved in tech and interested in startups I don't get much use out of it as most of the products aren't interesting or useful.

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