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Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

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Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#31

Post by adventured »

woah wrote: post #16

What are they going to do with the money? How good can they make their website?

Technology acquisitions can be very useful for a company like Pinterest, whether for talent or the tech. It's not difficult for a company to spend tens or hundreds of millions on acquisitions.

There are no doubt useful companies out there for Pinterest to buy, no different than there have been for Facebook, Twitter, Google, et al. over the years of their various stages of maturity.

At Pinterest's size, and given their long-term ambition to be a large, successful business... it's for all the non-obvious reasons you can't think of that a billion dollar cushion might be useful. Always raise money when you don't need it; raising it when you need it, is the worst time, you'll go begging on your knees or at a minimum will be in the weaker negotiating position.

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#32

Post by jsmthrowaway »

sharkweek wrote: post #11

You know when you hear about a lot of insane valuations and your jaw sort of drops in disbelief? I feel the opposite when I think about Pinterest. My immediate reaction here is "yeah, makes sense." I guess it must stem from my marketing agency days. I had SO MANY clients begging me to get them into Pinterest ads when they released. I also sit at home and see how much time my wife spends on the site and how dedicated…

No, it doesn't make sense. You've explained Pinterest as a marketing company that happens to have 70+ million willing participants. Now explain to me how in the context of the human race, being able to push a product to those 70+ million users is worth EDIT: about as much as SpaceX.

Just because it makes sense in the current model doesn't mean it makes sense.

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#33

Post by nl »

taylorbuley wrote: post #17
sharkweek wrote: post #11

You know when you hear about a lot of insane valuations and your jaw sort of drops in disbelief? I feel the opposite when I think about Pinterest. My immediate reaction here is "yeah, makes sense." I guess it must stem from my marketing agency days. I had SO MANY clients begging me to get them into Pinterest ads when they released. I also sit at home and see how much time my wife spends on the site and how dedicated…

The pre-business model unicorn thing still confuses me. The kicker in your comment -- scratching the surface of profitability -- is what I find interesting. What if they start digging to find there's no depth behind this surface? http://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-fo...

I'm not sure what your point is?

1) Youtube isn't profitable, but it's taking more and more "hours watched" out of the TV market. Google can keep it running at break even for as long as they want, and then adjust the ad prices up very, very slightly and start making profit based on the huge audience.

2) Video watching (usually) has very little commercial intent, especially in terms of some kind of "commercial value per byte served" measure. This compares very badly to Pinterest, where a very significant amount of usage has almost direct purchase intent.

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#34

Post by hnnewguy »

sharkweek wrote: post #11

You know when you hear about a lot of insane valuations and your jaw sort of drops in disbelief? I feel the opposite when I think about Pinterest. My immediate reaction here is "yeah, makes sense." I guess it must stem from my marketing agency days. I had SO MANY clients begging me to get them into Pinterest ads when they released. I also sit at home and see how much time my wife spends on the site and how dedicated…

>"Seems like a no-brainer that this one is going to end up crossing the IPO finish line at some point"

On what planet is an IPO the finish line?

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#35

Post by codeshaman »

Good. In the age when the planet is faced with overpopulation, climate change, pollution and a myriad of other issues, including the shadow of ww3, the investors bet on a photo-sharing startup.

Down-voters rejoice, but I couldn't care less about pinterest and what it offers. Maybe I'm getting old or maybe being a parent gives me a different perspective, but 11B for nicely arranged list of photos is idiotic.

I'm sure it makes a lot of business sense to the investors, which is the really sad part of it all.

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#36

Post by johnpowell »

dntrkv wrote: post #23
Fizzadar wrote: post #6

Does anyone else think 11B is insane? Higher valued than Dropbox and Airbnb? They must have pitched hell of a monetisation plan.

I think Pinterest is way more valuable than Dropbox. They have a great product, very large dedicated user base, and a very clear path to monetization.

Isn't Pinterest more like del.icio.us in the sense that if something better comes along they are screwed? I understand that Facebook is hard to replace because you need to get everyone to migrate. Does that apply to Pinterest?

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#37

Post by stevesearer »

patmcc wrote: post #27

For anyone who thinks this is high: when my wife (and lots of other women in her social group) is in the market for clothes, or wedding ideas, or baby/nursery ideas, she goes to Pinterest first. That is huge potential for monetization from advertising and affiliate sales. Pinterest is where shopping starts for tons of young women (primarily) with money.

I think of Pinterest as a visually inspiring search engine. A large portion of people there just use it to browse around, but many people are going there as you mention with goal of finding something to buy. Monetizing that intent is basically the same concept as Adwords, just in a visual medium.

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#39

Post by aetherson »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #32
sharkweek wrote: post #11

You know when you hear about a lot of insane valuations and your jaw sort of drops in disbelief? I feel the opposite when I think about Pinterest. My immediate reaction here is "yeah, makes sense." I guess it must stem from my marketing agency days. I had SO MANY clients begging me to get them into Pinterest ads when they released. I also sit at home and see how much time my wife spends on the site and how dedicated…

No, it doesn't make sense. You've explained Pinterest as a marketing company that happens to have 70+ million willing participants. Now explain to me how in the context of the human race, being able to push a product to those 70+ million users is worth EDIT: about as much as SpaceX. Just because it makes sense in the current model doesn't mean it makes sense.

You want him to explain the entire global economy in a comment thread? That seems a little unreasonable.

What's the actual substance of your complaint? Are you worried that Pinterest can buy Armenia? It can't. Are you just offended that two not-very-comparable numbers are X > Y instead of Y > X? That doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Are you complaining that Armenians are poor? That's perhaps a big deal, but we don't know how to make poor countries not poor.

Re: Pinterest Raises $367M at $11B valuation

#40

Post by jaronheard »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #32
sharkweek wrote: post #11

You know when you hear about a lot of insane valuations and your jaw sort of drops in disbelief? I feel the opposite when I think about Pinterest. My immediate reaction here is "yeah, makes sense." I guess it must stem from my marketing agency days. I had SO MANY clients begging me to get them into Pinterest ads when they released. I also sit at home and see how much time my wife spends on the site and how dedicated…

No, it doesn't make sense. You've explained Pinterest as a marketing company that happens to have 70+ million willing participants. Now explain to me how in the context of the human race, being able to push a product to those 70+ million users is worth EDIT: about as much as SpaceX. Just because it makes sense in the current model doesn't mean it makes sense.

Misleading comparison. Armenia's GDP is the estimated economic worth produced annually by Armenia. Pinterest's valuation relates to the economic value produced by Pinterest for all future years, not annually.
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