71–80 of 280 posts
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"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.
i hear the system is totally gamed though.
'Experiment' with no conceivable way of monetization gets 'investment' for some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons. Bros funding Bros, and then bro acquiring bro when the first-bro has blown through 7.1M. Its the Silicon Valley version of nepotism. Its all play money, but is only available if you are in the circle. Now that you have an exit to your name, next stop, VC partner. And then ask all the startups pitching, what's unique about you? Yo! reply
dang 40 minutes ago [-]
Much of this ("for some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons") you've simply made up for rhetorical reasons. But even if you were right on the facts, this kind of rant makes for a bad HN comment. A good HN comment is one that contributes to thoughtful, curious discussion. Stimulating rage among those who already agree with you is the opposite of that. Since such comments routinely get upvoted, they're a particularly bad risk to this site. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432 and marked it off-topic.
Dang, this is a post full of brevity - yes - nevertheless very right. He could have tried to paraphrase it - but this would make it even more exclusive to somebody never involved in the industry before.
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?
Please explain why.
I tried to use Product Hunt as a daily driver for product and startup discovery several times but I could never stick with it, found it quite boring. There is so much media out there telling me about new products or startups every day, for what do I need Product Hunt?
This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…
This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…
That this is the top comment on this post gives me a lot of faith in this community. The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem. I'm glad that some of us react differently.
Just off the top of my head, I ask myself how much revenue TechCrunch pulls in, and what it originally started as - and I can see a path for PH to become a 'real' (as in meaningful, sustainable revenue) company. Just because it isn't full of whizbang tech doesn't mean it can't make plenty of money and be valuable to other properties.
And that's just with 20 seconds of thought put into it. I'm sure there are many other angles as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That this is the top comment on this post gives me a lot of faith in this community. The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem. I'm glad that some of us react differently.
Rather than insight, the post you're replying to shows a lack of imagination. Just off the top of my head, I ask myself how much revenue TechCrunch pulls in, and what it originally started as - and I can see a path for PH to become a 'real' (as in meaningful, sustainable revenue) company. Just because it isn't full of whizbang tech doesn't mean it can't make plenty of money and be valuable to other properties. And th…
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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
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What on earth would you need funding for when you do a site like Product Hunt? That makes no sense.
> What on earth would you need funding for when you do a site like Product Hunt? Because even though there are 300,000 - 500,000 new consumer products launched in the U.S. each year, 99% are generic commodities like a new kind of 2% milk or whatever. The number of new products that are actually interesting is very small, which means that there is a very high cost of discovering and reaching out to enough of these pro…
and from your letter:
The typical budget of a new specialty food product is 30k - 100k per year total, and almost all of that is allocated for manufacturing/distribution/development/salaries, so the marketing budget at these companies is basically zero.
You've got some unstated/hidden assumptions that I am trying to illuminate.
Why do you believe the actually selling and distribution method of a new product doesn't fall into the list of "critical things founders need to know how to do to have a successful business" and instead can be outsourced?
You built a "selling" product for founders who don't know how "to sell" in the first place, I don't think there should be surprise that it failed. Just my .02
This smells fishy to me. ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess not illegal. I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meet…
That this is the top comment on this post gives me a lot of faith in this community. The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem. I'm glad that some of us react differently.
Really? Hacker News comments are uncritical adoration?
I'd weight the cynicism and perma-contrarianism a tad bit higher.
In fact, I believe the success of a startup is inversely proportional to the amount of hate it gets in HN comments.
Theranos excluded from the sample, of course.