DigitalOcean acquires Paperspace (YC W15) for $111M in cash

Post by jerrygenser » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 9:30 PM UTC

brigadier132 wrote: post #48

czechdeveloper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$35M being meh is peak HN here. Me not being from US, getting $100k was golden cufs that took many years to break even when I did not enjoy my work.

$35 million is how much they raised. If they were purchased for $111 million that means that after the investors are paid off their principal there is $76 million left. There are 70 employees, the original investors probably made some profit on their initial investment, so split that remaining $76 million among everyone and none of the employees left super rich from this deal except maybe the founders.

Post by smallerfish » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

brigadier132 wrote: post #48

czechdeveloper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$35M being meh is peak HN here. Me not being from US, getting $100k was golden cufs that took many years to break even when I did not enjoy my work.

$35 million is how much they raised. If they were purchased for $111 million that means that after the investors are paid off their principal there is $76 million left. There are 70 employees, the original investors probably made some profit on their initial investment, so split that remaining $76 million among everyone and none of the employees left super rich from this deal except maybe the founders.

Post by sh34r » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 12:37 AM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #74

re-thc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The I pretend I know what I'm doing strategy. Most acquisitions fail. It's a difficult path unless it fits a very specific need. Yet a common management / product strategy is to buy random companies as though they are ingredients of a dish and think it'll just work. Digital Ocean to me has lost their core focus and appeal. They aren't upgrading their hardware, software and other crucial pieces of their infrastructure…

> Yet a common management / product strategy is to buy random companies as though they are ingredients of a dish and think it'll just work. Acquisitions are an easy way to juice top line growth. Acquisitions also offer ample opportunity to put lipstick on your finances. After all, any acquisition has many one-time costs and you can use this to juice your margins. You also forecast substantial cost savings by eliminat…

Post by Reubend » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 2:19 AM UTC

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #15

Paperspace gives free access to Graphcore IPU nodes (with 4 IPUs each), which is pretty neat. Theoretically that is way more throughput than a Colab T4 instance. ... But in practice, I tore my hair out trying to port an actual Stable Diffusion web UI, until I hit a wall. I needed to upgrade the "Poplar SDK" or something beyond the ancient Python 3.8 version to get things working, but the download was behind some kind…

Post by AYBABTME » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 4:45 AM UTC

sh34r wrote: post #85

gizmo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet a common management / product strategy is to buy random companies as though they are ingredients of a dish and think it'll just work. Acquisitions are an easy way to juice top line growth. Acquisitions also offer ample opportunity to put lipstick on your finances. After all, any acquisition has many one-time costs and you can use this to juice your margins. You also forecast substantial cost savings by eliminat…

By the time the music stops, they’ll have grown too big to fail, and it’ll also likely be a sector-wide downturn, so they’ll just get another bailout from Uncle Sam. Moral hazard is endemic in Sillycon Valley.