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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

wsj.com

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#451

Post by thefourthchime »

pan69 wrote: post #97
couchdb_ouchdb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me. Day 1. I'm user 25 on the site as I listened to the podcast about them making it. Just for answering a few questions early I'm in the top 0.76% overall. https://stackoverflow.com/users/25/codingwithoutcomments

I loved listening to the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff and Joel. It was kinda crazy that they were doing a podcast like that while they (Jeff mostly) were building it and coming up with the name, etc. Still have all the mp3's somewhere. Edit: I'm in the top 2%. Most of my rep. comes from interest earned on questions/answers I posted very early on.

Came here to share this! What a weird and innocent time that was.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#452

Post by swiley »

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…

>You must create a new Microsoft 365 hotlive account to reply to this message.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#453

Post by skipants »

mathgenius wrote: post #193
linsomniac wrote: post #147

I ended up losing access to my ancient account (it was using the OpenID providers that they don't even support anymore and the provider I used isn't around). I had gone fairly inactive, but recently wanted to contribute some content. This was on the DIY stackoverflow, there's a fairly common problem on my stove, but an easy, low/no cost fix, it's just very involved. The DIY SO had a good discussion of the problem. To…

Glad to hear I'm not the only one that lost their S.O. account because they decided to try the amazing sounding OpenID.

Didn't they have some way to transfer your account over from OpenID? Pretty sure I used it at the start as well, but now my account is a normal SO account.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#454

Post by MangoCoffee »

some negative comments here. i believe when Jeff introduced Stack Overflow is because ExpertSExchange suck. this seem to be a perfect opportunity for people to build a Stack Overflow replacement.

this 1.8B deal just validated the StackOverflow business is profitable and attractive.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#455

Post by travisjungroth »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #300
travisjungroth wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, GH lags SO considerably on the size of the knowledge base, but I don't think that's very important since, due to the rapid pace of tech, content rapidly loses value with age (consider all of the jquery or flash content, or content pertaining to old versions of libraries or frameworks). This is a weakness of SO and really the whole knowledge base business model (Q&A or not). You think you're building up this n…

I think it's perhaps a little clearer to frame it this way: SO has a network effect moat, not a corpus-size moat (I don't know that SO was ever thinking the size of its corpus would stave off competitors--they probably were correctly assuming that their user-base was their moat). The network-effect moat keeps the rate-of-change of the corpus higher than competitors, which is where the value is (not the size of the co…

We agree on the corpus-size not being a moat, and maybe SO does themselves.

More directly, I question StackOverflow's network effect. Compare it to Craigslist, IMO the best example of network effects ever. It is their sheer size that has entrenched them. They're also not vulnerable to groups moving to another platform (rise and fall of everything from AIM to Snapchat).

I don't actually search StackOverflow. I end up there through Google. If Google starts pointing me somewhere else, or the search previews start looking better for somewhere else, I'm going there. It's not like if I try to sell a single bag of concrete on anywhere but craigslist, which would end in failure.

I'm sure in the M&A docs there was some disclosure like "75% of our traffic comes through Google. If Google started directing people to other sites, that would have a material impact on our business."

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#456

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

teh_klev wrote: post #95
systemvoltage wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how giving money to Tencent has anything to do with the ability to steer SO. The best thing would have been the status quo. SO has been running on its feet for many years. This consolidation, while disputably better than Microsoft acquisition, is no worse than large companies buying out small ones usually guaranteing their demise. If anything else, Microsoft has left Github untouched so far. I am not conv…

> The best thing would have been the status quo. SO has been running on its feet for many years You forgot that there's a bunch of VC's who now want their investment back plus interest.

That's it, the VC money is strictly for a limited time - when the fund time ends, there must an "exit" - either IPO or sale.

(In case of success, of course; failures are just written off, the losses hopefully paid by the successful exits.)

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#457

Post by skinnymuch »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #429
jacobajit wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naspers' market cap is 98B, yet they own 31% of Tencent which is worth 775B - am I missing something? I'm aware of conglomerate discounts but I suspect there's something else going on here.

>In 2001, Naspers made an early, successful investment of US$32 million, in Tencent. As of 2018, Naspers had approximately a 31 percent stake in Tencent, becoming its largest shareholder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers its probably because of their early investment in Tencent.

The issue OP is bringing up is how their market cap is so small. 18% of $775B is more than $100B. It also means everything else they own is worth negative technically.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#458

Post by chadlavi »

ddingus wrote: post #318

While I'm happy for the people who made a lot of money in this transaction, I always read these announcements with a bit of angst. From a user point of view, I expect this to go like Reddit has, for example. Everyone building that value saw high use value, returns on their investment in the form of information they need, lean, easy to find, high signal to noise. Now there is a debt to be paid. The new owner needs to…

"You've read 3 of your 5 free answers this month"

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#459

Post by richardwhiuk »

passivate wrote: post #279
richardwhiuk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_Somebody_ wins it every week.

People lose money in lottery tickets, casinos, equity investments, etc all the time. If a VC is successful over a period of time with a history of investing in winners, then there is something more than simply randomness.

With enough VC firms, and enough small bets, that's not guaranteed to be true.
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