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AngelList acquires Product Hunt

656 points by gjenkin 10y ago

nathancahill 10y ago
Congrats Ryan!
jscheel 10y ago
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?
- traviswingo 10y ago
  Do we know the acquisition price?
  - ricardonunez 10y ago
    "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-hunt-acquisition http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-h...
    - apadmarao 10y ago
      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.
      - AznHisoka 10y ago
        I thought $20 million was way too high.
      - wwalser 10y ago
        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.
        AznHisoka 10y ago
        How do they make revenue currently? I don't see any ads, and I don't even see anywhere I can promote my product for a fee. I'll go out on a limb and suggest it's 40-60X revenue, and even that may be too low (anyone from ProductHunt reading, please correct me, but I doubt it).
        wwalser 10y ago
        You could be correct but I'd assume they are making reasonable money on referral programs and direct sales. I know for a fact that direct sales are a thing (or were at one point)[0]. Basically the "get it" button becomes a checkout for for some products instead of a link to the site. Taking advantage of referral programs also seems like an obvious thing that they _should_ be using. Especially for companies which want a product hunted and already have a referral program in place. 0. https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/product-hunt-is-ready-to-rake-in-revenue-by-selling-goods-directly-on-the-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/product-hunt-is-ready-to-r...
        exogeny 10y ago
        It's absurd that you think PH was doing anywhere close to that revenue. The sale price to me is baffling, even if it was stock. You're not buying revenue, you're not buying valuable technology IP, and you're sure as hell not buying a world-class team that innovated and built some rocketship product. So how do you explain it? Maybe the fact that it was bought by one of their investors is a start..
        wwalser 10y ago
        Is it crazy to think that a website with 2.8MM uniques/month could make could make $280,000/month? I honestly don't know the numbers for a media companies, referral programs or direct resellers. There's also some obvious alignment between the two companies so maybe it was a much larger multiple than I would have expected. The team absolutely managed to build a product that has captured the attention (in many cases daily attention) of the type of people that AngelList wants.
      - Mahn 10y ago
        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.
      - Naritai 10y ago
        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.
      - k-mcgrady 10y ago
        >> "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.
      - oliv__ 10y ago
        So much for a16z "genius" investors...
    - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
      Interesting because according to crunchbase their $6M round with a16z was at a $22M Val. With a follow on debt financing, that indicates to me that they might have taken a down acquisition. Of course that was 2+ years ago. So if it was a 20M acquisition that means that the last two years of growth [2] wasn't good enough. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity [2] https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=product%20hunt https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=product%20hunt
      - skinnymuch 10y ago
        I guess because there wasn't too much growth for two years now? More or less stable after the main explosion of growth in early 2014. Interesting to see the trend chart. At least PH kept their numbers over the past two years.
  - dwightgunning 10y ago
    They'd raised ~$7.5M over three rounds according to crunchbase[1]. 1: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- chang2301 10y ago
  AL users might have a more meaningful way in the future to invest in hot PH products.
- greenspot 10y ago
  > Product Hunt is awesome 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?
- rokhayakebe 10y ago
  I have no idea how stock-based acquisitions work, but I think you can do something like We are worth 200M, you are worth 20M, we issue new stocks worth 20M, we buy you for those 20M, now we are worth 220M. It costs us legal fees.
- oelmekki 10y ago
  Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense from a revenue point of view, for AngelList. Their product allows for investors and startups to meet. But where do those startups come from? What is the reception for their product? Are early users excited about it? Integrating PH to AL could give strong signal to investors, which is especially a big win for investors from syndicates, who may not be as active in their research than bigger investors. Signal processing from PH launches can be automated and give intel to AL investors. PH can be here basically to feed startups for AL users to invest in. I think an other great addition here would be Betalist. Startups on PH are probably already past seed funding, Betalist would allow AngelList to have a good stream of seeding stage startups, which would allow AL to become a startup pipeline.
  - seoseokho 10y ago
    I think Betalist will be next as well. But I'd think AL/PH would try their own BetaList like section.
minimaxir 10y ago
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 https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission (https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often people upvote just because of the submitter; the followers system promotes this) A year ago, I wrote a rant asking about this, among other claims that that Product Hunt is elitist (https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-that-product-hunt-is-intentionally-ignoring-b579fba14048 https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-... ) To my knowledge, there were no significant improvements in response since then in PH rules. I bring this up now because the AngelList vertical integration now makes perfect sense: since AL is now promoting investment syndicates, there is now even more benefit from investor collusion and lack of disclosure!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- visakanv 10y ago
  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 who'd be happy to have somebody with that skillset. In the long run, of course, you can't get people to use a product they aren't interested in using. So hopefully there's some eventual 'fairness'. The delightful irony: the things that drive people away from some product or community are typically the very features that were introduced (or showed up) to extract value from them. See: https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths
  - intro-b 10y ago
buf 10y ago
This is pretty exciting. Both parties are pretty awesome folk. Not too bad of an exit for an 'experiment.'
rjain15 10y ago
Why AngelList? Not sure if this is right alignment It doesn't make sense at all. I use Product Hunt to find what is new and awesome product coming up?
- basch 10y ago
  I use AngelList for the same purpose. https://angel.co/markets https://angel.co/markets https://angel.co/fashion https://angel.co/fashion https://angel.co/fintech-2 https://angel.co/fintech-2 https://angel.co/construction https://angel.co/construction
huac 10y ago
“On the plus side we’ll no longer be homeless and we’l [sic] be able to focus on building what we’re building.” Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when SF tech workers, in this case a CEO of an acquired startup, talk about homelessness in this way? Trivializing a very real problem to nothing more than a 'headache' or 'distraction' from the greater goal of, I guess, funding more startups?
- csallen 10y ago
  No, because I believe the use of analogy and hyperbole are obvious enough that one would have to intentionally misinterpret this statement as trivializing homelessness in order to take offense.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  He is talking about how his company literally didn't have an office and the tone wasn't derogatory in any way so it doesn't bother me.
- visakanv 10y ago
  > Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when SF tech workers, in this case a CEO of an acquired startup, talk about homelessness in this way? I recognize it as a tone-deaf thing to say, probably from someone who's never actually experienced real homelessness. But I also recognize that there's no malice in the statement. Language isn't a universal thing, and different words mean different things to different people. I wouldn't pick a fight over it. People unintentionally trivialize others all the time without meaning to; I'm sure I've done it myself in the past week. The challenge (I think) is to be sensitive to it but also to not be too self-righteous about it.
- strong_code 10y ago
  I live in the same building as Ryan, and while I do not know his personal financial situation, I know that he isn't scraping the bottom of the barrel in regards to apartment rents. The average rent of a unit in my building is ~$2500.
- orky56 10y ago
  It just contributes to the disconnect PH & SV have to the bigger issues at their doorstep.
cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. But I also realize this was because they raised tons of money and was under heavy pressure to get traction at any cost. So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of artificially trying to grow
- visakanv 10y ago
  > As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. This is the inevitable fate of all communities. I've seen it happen so many times and I've seen so many discussions about it over and over again that I've begun to consolidate my thoughts and relevant links about it on this URL: http://visakanv.com/blog/communities http://visakanv.com/blog/communities > So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of artificially trying to grow I hope so too, but realistically I don't think any community that gets diluted can get un-diluted. Reddit, Quora, HN, whatever the place – one you drive away the quality, it seldom comes back. PH will just have a new set of pressures on them now. I wish them the best, just as I wish any community founder / maintainer the best, because a high-quality community is one of the most precious things on this Earth. Alas... it never lasts.
  - devinhelton 10y ago
    > This is the inevitable fate of all communities. I've seen it happen so many times and I've seen so many discussions about it over and over again that I've begun to consolidate my thoughts and relevant links about it on this URL: http://visakanv.com/blog/communities http://visakanv.com/blog/communities And there just went an hour of my time :-) Good collection of posts.
  - transposed 10y ago
    Interesting reads, thanks for sharing. I wonder if mimicking any of the time tested, real life, community building techniques would work. Like if you examined religion or the university structure maybe there would be more things you could replicate online. Reddit already has subs where you need to upload pictures of your diploma.
svskeptic 10y ago
'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!
- dang 10y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432 and marked it off-topic.
  - j4pe 10y ago
    I'm not happy with your detaching this comment. Thanks for noting that you did it, and why, but other inflammatory comments in this thread have been tempered by well-reasoned child responses. That's reasonable dialogue. Detaching an on-topic comment for taking the wrong tone doesn't feel like fair discussion.
    - dang 10y ago
      "Tone" is a word people use to trivialize what they're referring to, which means you're assuming your conclusion. This is a matter not of tone but of content, and the toxic effects of such content. If only we could rely on well-reasoned user responses to neutralize those effects. But internet forums don't work that way, nor large groups of humans in general. For HN to have civil, substantive discussion, moderation is sadly necessary. Detaching comments, with an explanation of why, has proven to be one of the best moderation techniques we've tried. The sort of rant we're talking about isn't primarily about the topic at hand—it's primarily about state-changing the conversation to something agitated and ragey. Because that counteracts the purpose of this site, such posts forfeit their right to an ordinary position on the page. Those who want to read such comments still can, but you literally have to go lower to do so. That seems fitting to me, and a reasonable balance of concerns.
kevando 10y ago
It looks like Product Hunt raised about $8 million. Can someone explain how this type of acquisition pays out?
- justinzollars 10y ago
  not too well.
- birken 10y ago
  Unless AngelList is teeming in cash, which they probably aren't, the deal is likely either all stock or mostly stock. So imagine AngelList internally values themselves at $500M (a number I just made up), to get to the 20M figure they would be offering ~4% of their stock in exchange for PH. Most likely common stock. Adjust that figure up or down depending on what you think AL thinks they are worth.
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    Likely they pay out enough in cash to make the VCs whole. So assuming 1x participating preferred and 30% of the company owned by VCs, that's $8M + 0.3 * 12M ~= $12M cash returned to VCs, and then the remaining $8M is in Angellist stock distributed to the founders and employees. Assuming 20% employee ownership, it'd be just under $2M to employees collectively and $6+M to Ryan (I think he's a solo founder, right?). If I assume an internal Angellist valuation of $200M (also made up, but you're more generous than I am), PH employees collectively get 1% of AngelList stock, and Ryan gets 3%. Also seems to fit everyone's incentives nicely. a16z & seed investors get their money back, so they at least don't have to take a loss. Ryan Hoover gets F-U money, assuming AngelList doesn't tank. Employees get enough for the down payment on a house, also assuming AngelList doesn't tank before they can liquidate. AngelList acquires a pre-made team with a proven track record for not much more equity than they would spend on the open market. Pretty typical SV acquihire.
    - birken 10y ago
      Where is AngelList getting this 12M? According to Crunchbase they've raised 24M total. Also why the heck would the board approve spending such a massive chunk of cash on an acquisition which seems rather speculative (IE it isn't an obvious merger like GrubHub-Seamless or DraftKings-FanDuel)? Additionally, why would the VCs prefer cash to shares in AngelList? VCs are in the business of putting money into rising companies, I'd assume they'd much rather have shares in AL than having to return a pittance of cash to their LPs. I'd also make a large wager that none of the founders of PH have "FU" money as a result of this deal. AL putting their scarce cash into the pockets of founders is a very very stupid way for them to invest their money. You'd much rather structure the deal to give the founders AL stock so they have an incentive to work hard for you instead of just waiting out the deal and pocketing your cash. Remember that AL has all the leverage here, they can structure the deal however they want.
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
Cocaine. you're all idiots.
pdeuchler 10y ago
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 meeting), seemingly funnels most of that money into things that simply make promoting other startups more effective, but don't create value or revenue, and then gets bought by another startup who shares multiple investors for (supposedly) something around their ridiculous valuation. I guess it's probably not outright fraud, but somehow we ended up in a scenario where we have investors shelling out (in some cases paying themselves!!) a (rumored) total of ~28 million dollars for a community website with no real revenue, no actual product, not even any technology that they could theoretically pivot on... it's just a glorified phpBB theme with a relatively small community of fans who just happen to all be in on the take as well. And I'm sure all investors involved get to mark it as a "win" on the books and pad their stats. Next time Silicon Valley tries to portray itself as a meritocracy I guess we can just point to this...
- L_Rahman 10y ago
  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.
  - sgrove 10y ago
    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 that's just with 20 seconds of thought put into it. I'm sure there are many other angles as well.
    - 10y ago
taytus 10y ago
So PH was acquired for half the price of Pebble? This doesn't make any sense... Wow...
rkho 10y ago
Echoing another sentiment in this thread. I was a huge fan of PH during launch and desperately wanted a way into the community to share and discuss things. Then I ended up building a React Native app that pulled their API, which was featured and gave me access. I had so much fun doing that and thought it was great that I was accepted into the community due to building something. I can't stress enough how selective I was with the invites I received. I still have one, since I never found the right person to share it with. Unfortunately, it looks like it doesn't matter. In the past few months, I've noticed a steady decline in the quality of discussion. Lots of comments based on misguided interpretations that could have been avoided if the commenter had bothered to click on the product's link and thoroughly read the landing page. There's way too much noise and it's a shame.
debt 10y ago
good for producthunt. it's cool to see something like that get acquired for anything. it's just a lil aggregator. i hear the system is totally gamed though.
stonesvsglass 10y ago
svskeptic 1 hour ago [-] '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 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.
- gkoberger 10y ago
  This comment saddens me. Ryan may be "in the circle" now, but it's not like he had a rich VC uncle. It's not nepotism; he had no connections when he started out. Product Hunt didn't succeed because he's "in the circle", he's "in the circle" because Product Hunt succeeded. Ryan is one of the nicest, most genuine person I've met, and he worked hard to get where he is. He built a great team and a product that people love. My company is where it is in large part to PH, and I'm thankful they exist. (More: https://medium.com/@rrhoover/from-rejection-to-product-hunt-2127f5973679 https://medium.com/@rrhoover/from-rejection-to-product-hunt-...)
  - exogeny 10y ago
    His personal characteristics are irrelevant to the economics; he raised money from A-list VCs and failed to do anything notable with it, resulting in a bailout from one of his existing investors and a marginally better employment situation for his staff. Nice guy? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids. You lose that excuse when you raise a Series A.
2drew3 10y ago
that haterade tho http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com
- sehr 10y ago
  Affecting that type of dialect when "drew" is in your username isn't really a good look.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  That is higher than I expected considering I only publish new content every few weeks on average.
- austinhutch 10y ago
  His personal website isn't a business looking for an exit... weird comment
  - minimaxir 10y ago
    But if any investors are interested, send me an email. :p
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't stoop to personal attacks. It breaks the rules and discredits your argument. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082125 and marked it off-topic.
exogeny 10y ago
Why are we applauding Ryan again? This is a saving face bailout from one of their own investors and a particularly embarrassing one at that given his statements of "I wouldn't consider anything under $100mm" and the pedigree of his investors. They raised a shit ton of money and built nothing. No real technology, no significant additions to their platform, no development of community. And now the result is an all-stock acquihire from AL, which will amount of a purchase of their users and a one year rental of the same engineers and team that failed to build anything worthwhile. Raising money at a $22m val from A16Z and selling for less than that - all stock no less - is a failure, and we need to stop lauding it as if it's somehow notable or impressive to take money and waste it.
- brentm 10y ago
  I think that's being a little harsh. If you started something and A16Z offered you 7M you'd probably take it on the spot regardless of what it was you built. I'm sure when Ryan launched this thing he never thought it would be more than fun. It ended up spiraling into something much more than that. He was offered an investment from a grade A firm who was willing to let him to try and figure it out so he took it like any of us would have. Good for them, let them have their moment.
  - exogeny 10y ago
    While I agree that I would also take the money, I disagree with the implicit argument that raising money in and of itself is a milestone with applauding. I also disagree that I'd end up taking that much - hindsight of course being 20/20 - since it obviously proved to be a difficult hurdle for them. A large fundraise that doesn't have a very specific purpose or product milestone attached to it is a time bomb, and in many cases (Secret, YikYak, etc.) a bear hug that they can't possibly escape. If you want to make the argument that Ryan didn't necessarily know how much runway he needed to build the vision he had, fine, but again, I don't think that excuses him from the consequences of that decision.
Jasber 10y ago
Don't understand the negativity. What Ryan and Product Hunt did was incredible. So many people wanted to create an alternative to Hacker News and Reddit for product people. Everyone else failed but they figured it out. That's awesome. Product Hunt personally helped me in my goal of becoming a independent app maker by showcasing my app https://www.producthunt.com/posts/focus https://www.producthunt.com/posts/focus. As of tomorrow I'm full-time indie (YES!) and I proudly display my Product Hunt badge on my app's page https://heyfocus.com/ https://heyfocus.com/. I didn't have any connections there—I just made a product people liked. And AngelList seems like a great fit. It looks like they're building a crowd-funding platform, and Product Hunt as a marketing/discovery engine makes perfect sense. In that context, Product Hunt is worth a bit of money. This seems like a great outcome. Congrats!
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Everyone else failed but they figured it out. That's awesome. Did they? Maybe I don't understand how to use it but after I registered I couldn't comment on _anything_ at all. It seemed I was locked out of anything mildly interesting until I am invited? I guess Product Hunt just isn't for me but I couldn't figure out how to do anything on that site.
- untog 10y ago
  I don't mean to sound mean spirited, but I know I am about to. Your post is an example of what frustrates me about Product Hunt (and, at times, HN) - people crowbaring in a reference to their startup/project/idea and throwing in a few links in a very transparent bid to get referral traffic from a popular message board service. On Product Hunt in particular it starts to sound like an echo chamber of people shouting startup names at each other. Worse, it seems like the Product Hunt is the goal rather than the tool - much like TechCrunch back in the day, everyone's success metric is attention from peers rather than customers.
  - Jasber 10y ago
    Yea, I agree excessive self-promotion can be bad for a platform. In this case I included a link because I think it strengthens the argument. Product Hunt was built to help people like me—and it did. Here's the proof! And I think my post confirms what you're saying—I was able to use Product Hunt as a tool to help reach my goal. I know this isn't always the case, which is why I wanted to give my experience.
rokhayakebe 10y ago
People keep saying directories don't work anymore, yet we are now seeing one directory buying another directory. Make your own directory and grow it.
olalonde 10y ago
> He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused. Anyone cares to explain that one?
- was_boring 10y ago
  I assume you're asking for an explanation of what "summers" or "summering" means. The basics of it are those with wealth can afford to spend weeks/months away from the place they call "home". They can also afford to drop their work commitments, or otherwise force those around them to conform to their wishes. With that in mind, wealthy people from New York are known to "summer" in the Hamptons. Well off retirees will also migrate from Florida to New York / Maine depending on the season, which is akin to "summering". I'm not from the west coast so I'm not sure where people from the bay area go to "summer" -- I would assume Napa Valley. By asking someone where they "summer" you are asking about their socioeconomic status.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    Never really been a thing around here from my experience, and I grew up in Alamo, surrounded by the type of people who would happily flaunt a summer home. Second properties are usually in Tahoe or southern California somewhere, maybe Hawaii. I know a few people who have done the whole Napa thing and started their own labels of varying quality, but that's less common.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Summering/Wintering is more of an East Coast thing where there is crappy weather during those seasons. Northern California has never had to have that tradition for itself, where people are more likely to have a "cabin," or vacation house.
      - rfrank 10y ago
        Yeah, the whole thing seem to be about going somewhere that has weather your home doesn't have. In norcal that means snow.
nichochar 10y ago
Lol ok, yes you seem to love marketing, you would like it.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't take personal swipes at people in comments here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451 and marked it off-topic.
josh_carterPDX 10y ago
This makes perfect sense. Now Angelist will have a perfectly curated list of upcoming startups and resources. Hopefully Angelist doesn't do too much to change the current site.
koliber 10y ago
Is the combined platform going to be called AngelHunt or Product List? :) One has a decidedly more edgy sound, while the other could not be more bland and boring.
PaulHoule 10y ago
It reminds me of the time when Sun Microsystems bought StorageTek.
DonHopkins 10y ago
The impression I got from AngelList was that the lights were on, but nobody's home. Every time I tried to use their web site, I would encounter a comedy of errors, and trying to work around each problem would reveal yet another. I wrote several detailed bug reports to their support email address, and nobody ever bothered to reply, let alone fix the bugs. Do they even have any full time web developers working there any more? If they do, they must be asleep at the wheel. All I ever got from the experience was a bunch of parasitic spam email. Not one person who ever contacted me through AngelList had anything to offer that they weren't trying to shill by spamming every other random AngelList user. When AngelList had their email privacy scandal [1], other people also complained that their support was non-existent [2]. So I described my earlier bad experience and lack of support from AngelList on that HN thread [3] [4], and although dave@angel.co responded to a few other messages and solicited people contact him with further questions and concerns, he has never replied to any of my messages [5]. Dave's lack of interest in replying to both the detailed bug report emails I sent to his support address and also the messages I posted to HN, not to mention the facts of AngelList's privacy violation email scandal itself, just reinforces my impression that the lights are on, but nobody's home. My point still stands: Old unmaintained web sites running on auto-pilot that collect sensitive private information from their users (and automatically forge first-person email pretending to be from their users in order to virally promote themselves) are a dangerous security threat, which should be shut down for the safety of the internet. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326011 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504
- falloutx 10y ago
  > Automatically forge first-person email pretending to be from their users in order to virally promote themselves. This is my biggest problem with AngelList, along with their crappy hackathons. I open my mail and they mailed me to connect to some candidates and also cced them. Then you have to reply to them when they ask stupid questions. And it randomly chooses which companies to pick. And most of the time they connect only the new users to employers just to get more and more users on their websites.
nikolay 10y ago
Finally some light at the end of the tunnel as Product Hunt badly needs to optimize their front-end - it's the slowest popular site today!
- intenscia 10y ago
  I've found this too. Big fan of the site, daily visitor and congrats to the team but it is unbearable to browse on my iPad.
funkyy 10y ago
For me, personally Product Hunt was cool until they changed their design and created many categories. It was same as with Steam Greenlight - when it allowed only best games to pass, it was cool. Now due to some changes and adjustments - not so much. From one of my sites to visit daily they dropped to a group of sites I visit once every 2-3 weeks. The decisions made few months ago were terrible. Take a product that works, adjust it to widen the public but make the experience more shallow - typical for so many startups lately. Chase for the money and trying to rush things and bump metrics is terrible lately in startups/products I liked.

656 points by gjenkin 10y ago

Congrats Ryan!

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?

traviswingo 10y ago
Do we know the acquisition price?
- ricardonunez 10y ago
  "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-hunt-acquisition http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-h...
  - apadmarao 10y ago
    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.
    - AznHisoka 10y ago
      I thought $20 million was way too high.
    - wwalser 10y ago
      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.
      - AznHisoka 10y ago
        How do they make revenue currently? I don't see any ads, and I don't even see anywhere I can promote my product for a fee. I'll go out on a limb and suggest it's 40-60X revenue, and even that may be too low (anyone from ProductHunt reading, please correct me, but I doubt it).
        wwalser 10y ago
        You could be correct but I'd assume they are making reasonable money on referral programs and direct sales. I know for a fact that direct sales are a thing (or were at one point)[0]. Basically the "get it" button becomes a checkout for for some products instead of a link to the site. Taking advantage of referral programs also seems like an obvious thing that they _should_ be using. Especially for companies which want a product hunted and already have a referral program in place. 0. https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/product-hunt-is-ready-to-rake-in-revenue-by-selling-goods-directly-on-the-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/product-hunt-is-ready-to-r...
      - exogeny 10y ago
        It's absurd that you think PH was doing anywhere close to that revenue. The sale price to me is baffling, even if it was stock. You're not buying revenue, you're not buying valuable technology IP, and you're sure as hell not buying a world-class team that innovated and built some rocketship product. So how do you explain it? Maybe the fact that it was bought by one of their investors is a start..
        wwalser 10y ago
        Is it crazy to think that a website with 2.8MM uniques/month could make could make $280,000/month? I honestly don't know the numbers for a media companies, referral programs or direct resellers. There's also some obvious alignment between the two companies so maybe it was a much larger multiple than I would have expected. The team absolutely managed to build a product that has captured the attention (in many cases daily attention) of the type of people that AngelList wants.
    - Mahn 10y ago
      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.
    - Naritai 10y ago
      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.
    - k-mcgrady 10y ago
      >> "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.
    - oliv__ 10y ago
      So much for a16z "genius" investors...
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Interesting because according to crunchbase their $6M round with a16z was at a $22M Val. With a follow on debt financing, that indicates to me that they might have taken a down acquisition. Of course that was 2+ years ago. So if it was a 20M acquisition that means that the last two years of growth [2] wasn't good enough. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity [2] https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=product%20hunt https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=product%20hunt
    - skinnymuch 10y ago
      I guess because there wasn't too much growth for two years now? More or less stable after the main explosion of growth in early 2014. Interesting to see the trend chart. At least PH kept their numbers over the past two years.
- dwightgunning 10y ago
  They'd raised ~$7.5M over three rounds according to crunchbase[1]. 1: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
chang2301 10y ago
AL users might have a more meaningful way in the future to invest in hot PH products.
greenspot 10y ago
> Product Hunt is awesome 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?
rokhayakebe 10y ago
I have no idea how stock-based acquisitions work, but I think you can do something like We are worth 200M, you are worth 20M, we issue new stocks worth 20M, we buy you for those 20M, now we are worth 220M. It costs us legal fees.
oelmekki 10y ago
Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense from a revenue point of view, for AngelList. Their product allows for investors and startups to meet. But where do those startups come from? What is the reception for their product? Are early users excited about it? Integrating PH to AL could give strong signal to investors, which is especially a big win for investors from syndicates, who may not be as active in their research than bigger investors. Signal processing from PH launches can be automated and give intel to AL investors. PH can be here basically to feed startups for AL users to invest in. I think an other great addition here would be Betalist. Startups on PH are probably already past seed funding, Betalist would allow AngelList to have a good stream of seeding stage startups, which would allow AL to become a startup pipeline.
- seoseokho 10y ago
  I think Betalist will be next as well. But I'd think AL/PH would try their own BetaList like section.

minimaxir 10y ago

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 https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission (https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456 ) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated with a submitted startup (and often people upvote just because of the submitter; the followers system promotes this) A year ago, I wrote a rant asking about this, among other claims that that Product Hunt is elitist (https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-that-product-hunt-is-intentionally-ignoring-b579fba14048 https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-... ) To my knowledge, there were no significant improvements in response since then in PH rules. I bring this up now because the AngelList vertical integration now makes perfect sense: since AL is now promoting investment syndicates, there is now even more benefit from investor collusion and lack of disclosure!

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
visakanv 10y ago
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 who'd be happy to have somebody with that skillset. In the long run, of course, you can't get people to use a product they aren't interested in using. So hopefully there's some eventual 'fairness'. The delightful irony: the things that drive people away from some product or community are typically the very features that were introduced (or showed up) to extract value from them. See: https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths
- intro-b 10y ago

buf 10y ago

This is pretty exciting. Both parties are pretty awesome folk. Not too bad of an exit for an 'experiment.'

rjain15 10y ago

Why AngelList? Not sure if this is right alignment It doesn't make sense at all. I use Product Hunt to find what is new and awesome product coming up?

basch 10y ago
I use AngelList for the same purpose. https://angel.co/markets https://angel.co/markets https://angel.co/fashion https://angel.co/fashion https://angel.co/fintech-2 https://angel.co/fintech-2 https://angel.co/construction https://angel.co/construction

huac 10y ago

“On the plus side we’ll no longer be homeless and we’l [sic] be able to focus on building what we’re building.” Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when SF tech workers, in this case a CEO of an acquired startup, talk about homelessness in this way? Trivializing a very real problem to nothing more than a 'headache' or 'distraction' from the greater goal of, I guess, funding more startups?

csallen 10y ago
No, because I believe the use of analogy and hyperbole are obvious enough that one would have to intentionally misinterpret this statement as trivializing homelessness in order to take offense.
tdb7893 10y ago
He is talking about how his company literally didn't have an office and the tone wasn't derogatory in any way so it doesn't bother me.
visakanv 10y ago
> Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when SF tech workers, in this case a CEO of an acquired startup, talk about homelessness in this way? I recognize it as a tone-deaf thing to say, probably from someone who's never actually experienced real homelessness. But I also recognize that there's no malice in the statement. Language isn't a universal thing, and different words mean different things to different people. I wouldn't pick a fight over it. People unintentionally trivialize others all the time without meaning to; I'm sure I've done it myself in the past week. The challenge (I think) is to be sensitive to it but also to not be too self-righteous about it.
strong_code 10y ago
I live in the same building as Ryan, and while I do not know his personal financial situation, I know that he isn't scraping the bottom of the barrel in regards to apartment rents. The average rent of a unit in my building is ~$2500.
orky56 10y ago
It just contributes to the disconnect PH & SV have to the bigger issues at their doorstep.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago

As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. But I also realize this was because they raised tons of money and was under heavy pressure to get traction at any cost. So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of artificially trying to grow

visakanv 10y ago
> As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than people who actually make things. This is the inevitable fate of all communities. I've seen it happen so many times and I've seen so many discussions about it over and over again that I've begun to consolidate my thoughts and relevant links about it on this URL: http://visakanv.com/blog/communities http://visakanv.com/blog/communities > So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on the startup community instead of artificially trying to grow I hope so too, but realistically I don't think any community that gets diluted can get un-diluted. Reddit, Quora, HN, whatever the place – one you drive away the quality, it seldom comes back. PH will just have a new set of pressures on them now. I wish them the best, just as I wish any community founder / maintainer the best, because a high-quality community is one of the most precious things on this Earth. Alas... it never lasts.
- devinhelton 10y ago
  > This is the inevitable fate of all communities. I've seen it happen so many times and I've seen so many discussions about it over and over again that I've begun to consolidate my thoughts and relevant links about it on this URL: http://visakanv.com/blog/communities http://visakanv.com/blog/communities And there just went an hour of my time :-) Good collection of posts.
- transposed 10y ago
  Interesting reads, thanks for sharing. I wonder if mimicking any of the time tested, real life, community building techniques would work. Like if you examined religion or the university structure maybe there would be more things you could replicate online. Reddit already has subs where you need to upload pictures of your diploma.

svskeptic 10y ago

'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!

dang 10y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432 and marked it off-topic.
- j4pe 10y ago
  I'm not happy with your detaching this comment. Thanks for noting that you did it, and why, but other inflammatory comments in this thread have been tempered by well-reasoned child responses. That's reasonable dialogue. Detaching an on-topic comment for taking the wrong tone doesn't feel like fair discussion.
  - dang 10y ago
    "Tone" is a word people use to trivialize what they're referring to, which means you're assuming your conclusion. This is a matter not of tone but of content, and the toxic effects of such content. If only we could rely on well-reasoned user responses to neutralize those effects. But internet forums don't work that way, nor large groups of humans in general. For HN to have civil, substantive discussion, moderation is sadly necessary. Detaching comments, with an explanation of why, has proven to be one of the best moderation techniques we've tried. The sort of rant we're talking about isn't primarily about the topic at hand—it's primarily about state-changing the conversation to something agitated and ragey. Because that counteracts the purpose of this site, such posts forfeit their right to an ordinary position on the page. Those who want to read such comments still can, but you literally have to go lower to do so. That seems fitting to me, and a reasonable balance of concerns.

kevando 10y ago

It looks like Product Hunt raised about $8 million. Can someone explain how this type of acquisition pays out?

justinzollars 10y ago
not too well.
birken 10y ago
Unless AngelList is teeming in cash, which they probably aren't, the deal is likely either all stock or mostly stock. So imagine AngelList internally values themselves at $500M (a number I just made up), to get to the 20M figure they would be offering ~4% of their stock in exchange for PH. Most likely common stock. Adjust that figure up or down depending on what you think AL thinks they are worth.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Likely they pay out enough in cash to make the VCs whole. So assuming 1x participating preferred and 30% of the company owned by VCs, that's $8M + 0.3 * 12M ~= $12M cash returned to VCs, and then the remaining $8M is in Angellist stock distributed to the founders and employees. Assuming 20% employee ownership, it'd be just under $2M to employees collectively and $6+M to Ryan (I think he's a solo founder, right?). If I assume an internal Angellist valuation of $200M (also made up, but you're more generous than I am), PH employees collectively get 1% of AngelList stock, and Ryan gets 3%. Also seems to fit everyone's incentives nicely. a16z & seed investors get their money back, so they at least don't have to take a loss. Ryan Hoover gets F-U money, assuming AngelList doesn't tank. Employees get enough for the down payment on a house, also assuming AngelList doesn't tank before they can liquidate. AngelList acquires a pre-made team with a proven track record for not much more equity than they would spend on the open market. Pretty typical SV acquihire.
  - birken 10y ago
    Where is AngelList getting this 12M? According to Crunchbase they've raised 24M total. Also why the heck would the board approve spending such a massive chunk of cash on an acquisition which seems rather speculative (IE it isn't an obvious merger like GrubHub-Seamless or DraftKings-FanDuel)? Additionally, why would the VCs prefer cash to shares in AngelList? VCs are in the business of putting money into rising companies, I'd assume they'd much rather have shares in AL than having to return a pittance of cash to their LPs. I'd also make a large wager that none of the founders of PH have "FU" money as a result of this deal. AL putting their scarce cash into the pockets of founders is a very very stupid way for them to invest their money. You'd much rather structure the deal to give the founders AL stock so they have an incentive to work hard for you instead of just waiting out the deal and pocketing your cash. Remember that AL has all the leverage here, they can structure the deal however they want.

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

Cocaine. you're all idiots.

pdeuchler 10y ago

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 meeting), seemingly funnels most of that money into things that simply make promoting other startups more effective, but don't create value or revenue, and then gets bought by another startup who shares multiple investors for (supposedly) something around their ridiculous valuation. I guess it's probably not outright fraud, but somehow we ended up in a scenario where we have investors shelling out (in some cases paying themselves!!) a (rumored) total of ~28 million dollars for a community website with no real revenue, no actual product, not even any technology that they could theoretically pivot on... it's just a glorified phpBB theme with a relatively small community of fans who just happen to all be in on the take as well. And I'm sure all investors involved get to mark it as a "win" on the books and pad their stats. Next time Silicon Valley tries to portray itself as a meritocracy I guess we can just point to this...

L_Rahman 10y ago
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.
- sgrove 10y ago
  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 that's just with 20 seconds of thought put into it. I'm sure there are many other angles as well.
  - 10y ago

taytus 10y ago

So PH was acquired for half the price of Pebble? This doesn't make any sense... Wow...

rkho 10y ago

Echoing another sentiment in this thread. I was a huge fan of PH during launch and desperately wanted a way into the community to share and discuss things. Then I ended up building a React Native app that pulled their API, which was featured and gave me access. I had so much fun doing that and thought it was great that I was accepted into the community due to building something. I can't stress enough how selective I was with the invites I received. I still have one, since I never found the right person to share it with. Unfortunately, it looks like it doesn't matter. In the past few months, I've noticed a steady decline in the quality of discussion. Lots of comments based on misguided interpretations that could have been avoided if the commenter had bothered to click on the product's link and thoroughly read the landing page. There's way too much noise and it's a shame.

debt 10y ago

good for producthunt. it's cool to see something like that get acquired for anything. it's just a lil aggregator. i hear the system is totally gamed though.

stonesvsglass 10y ago

svskeptic 1 hour ago [-] '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 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.

gkoberger 10y ago
This comment saddens me. Ryan may be "in the circle" now, but it's not like he had a rich VC uncle. It's not nepotism; he had no connections when he started out. Product Hunt didn't succeed because he's "in the circle", he's "in the circle" because Product Hunt succeeded. Ryan is one of the nicest, most genuine person I've met, and he worked hard to get where he is. He built a great team and a product that people love. My company is where it is in large part to PH, and I'm thankful they exist. (More: https://medium.com/@rrhoover/from-rejection-to-product-hunt-2127f5973679 https://medium.com/@rrhoover/from-rejection-to-product-hunt-...)
- exogeny 10y ago
  His personal characteristics are irrelevant to the economics; he raised money from A-list VCs and failed to do anything notable with it, resulting in a bailout from one of his existing investors and a marginally better employment situation for his staff. Nice guy? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids. You lose that excuse when you raise a Series A.

2drew3 10y ago

that haterade tho http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com

sehr 10y ago
Affecting that type of dialect when "drew" is in your username isn't really a good look.
minimaxir 10y ago
That is higher than I expected considering I only publish new content every few weeks on average.
austinhutch 10y ago
His personal website isn't a business looking for an exit... weird comment
- minimaxir 10y ago
  But if any investors are interested, send me an email. :p
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dang 10y ago
Please don't stoop to personal attacks. It breaks the rules and discredits your argument. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082125 and marked it off-topic.

exogeny 10y ago

Why are we applauding Ryan again? This is a saving face bailout from one of their own investors and a particularly embarrassing one at that given his statements of "I wouldn't consider anything under $100mm" and the pedigree of his investors. They raised a shit ton of money and built nothing. No real technology, no significant additions to their platform, no development of community. And now the result is an all-stock acquihire from AL, which will amount of a purchase of their users and a one year rental of the same engineers and team that failed to build anything worthwhile. Raising money at a $22m val from A16Z and selling for less than that - all stock no less - is a failure, and we need to stop lauding it as if it's somehow notable or impressive to take money and waste it.

brentm 10y ago
I think that's being a little harsh. If you started something and A16Z offered you 7M you'd probably take it on the spot regardless of what it was you built. I'm sure when Ryan launched this thing he never thought it would be more than fun. It ended up spiraling into something much more than that. He was offered an investment from a grade A firm who was willing to let him to try and figure it out so he took it like any of us would have. Good for them, let them have their moment.
- exogeny 10y ago
  While I agree that I would also take the money, I disagree with the implicit argument that raising money in and of itself is a milestone with applauding. I also disagree that I'd end up taking that much - hindsight of course being 20/20 - since it obviously proved to be a difficult hurdle for them. A large fundraise that doesn't have a very specific purpose or product milestone attached to it is a time bomb, and in many cases (Secret, YikYak, etc.) a bear hug that they can't possibly escape. If you want to make the argument that Ryan didn't necessarily know how much runway he needed to build the vision he had, fine, but again, I don't think that excuses him from the consequences of that decision.

Jasber 10y ago

Don't understand the negativity. What Ryan and Product Hunt did was incredible. So many people wanted to create an alternative to Hacker News and Reddit for product people. Everyone else failed but they figured it out. That's awesome. Product Hunt personally helped me in my goal of becoming a independent app maker by showcasing my app https://www.producthunt.com/posts/focus https://www.producthunt.com/posts/focus. As of tomorrow I'm full-time indie (YES!) and I proudly display my Product Hunt badge on my app's page https://heyfocus.com/ https://heyfocus.com/. I didn't have any connections there—I just made a product people liked. And AngelList seems like a great fit. It looks like they're building a crowd-funding platform, and Product Hunt as a marketing/discovery engine makes perfect sense. In that context, Product Hunt is worth a bit of money. This seems like a great outcome. Congrats!

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Everyone else failed but they figured it out. That's awesome. Did they? Maybe I don't understand how to use it but after I registered I couldn't comment on _anything_ at all. It seemed I was locked out of anything mildly interesting until I am invited? I guess Product Hunt just isn't for me but I couldn't figure out how to do anything on that site.
untog 10y ago
I don't mean to sound mean spirited, but I know I am about to. Your post is an example of what frustrates me about Product Hunt (and, at times, HN) - people crowbaring in a reference to their startup/project/idea and throwing in a few links in a very transparent bid to get referral traffic from a popular message board service. On Product Hunt in particular it starts to sound like an echo chamber of people shouting startup names at each other. Worse, it seems like the Product Hunt is the goal rather than the tool - much like TechCrunch back in the day, everyone's success metric is attention from peers rather than customers.
- Jasber 10y ago
  Yea, I agree excessive self-promotion can be bad for a platform. In this case I included a link because I think it strengthens the argument. Product Hunt was built to help people like me—and it did. Here's the proof! And I think my post confirms what you're saying—I was able to use Product Hunt as a tool to help reach my goal. I know this isn't always the case, which is why I wanted to give my experience.

rokhayakebe 10y ago

People keep saying directories don't work anymore, yet we are now seeing one directory buying another directory. Make your own directory and grow it.

olalonde 10y ago

> He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused. Anyone cares to explain that one?

was_boring 10y ago
I assume you're asking for an explanation of what "summers" or "summering" means. The basics of it are those with wealth can afford to spend weeks/months away from the place they call "home". They can also afford to drop their work commitments, or otherwise force those around them to conform to their wishes. With that in mind, wealthy people from New York are known to "summer" in the Hamptons. Well off retirees will also migrate from Florida to New York / Maine depending on the season, which is akin to "summering". I'm not from the west coast so I'm not sure where people from the bay area go to "summer" -- I would assume Napa Valley. By asking someone where they "summer" you are asking about their socioeconomic status.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Never really been a thing around here from my experience, and I grew up in Alamo, surrounded by the type of people who would happily flaunt a summer home. Second properties are usually in Tahoe or southern California somewhere, maybe Hawaii. I know a few people who have done the whole Napa thing and started their own labels of varying quality, but that's less common.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Summering/Wintering is more of an East Coast thing where there is crappy weather during those seasons. Northern California has never had to have that tradition for itself, where people are more likely to have a "cabin," or vacation house.
    - rfrank 10y ago
      Yeah, the whole thing seem to be about going somewhere that has weather your home doesn't have. In norcal that means snow.

nichochar 10y ago

Lol ok, yes you seem to love marketing, you would like it.

dang 10y ago
Please don't take personal swipes at people in comments here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451 and marked it off-topic.

josh_carterPDX 10y ago

This makes perfect sense. Now Angelist will have a perfectly curated list of upcoming startups and resources. Hopefully Angelist doesn't do too much to change the current site.

koliber 10y ago

Is the combined platform going to be called AngelHunt or Product List? :) One has a decidedly more edgy sound, while the other could not be more bland and boring.

PaulHoule 10y ago

It reminds me of the time when Sun Microsystems bought StorageTek.

DonHopkins 10y ago

The impression I got from AngelList was that the lights were on, but nobody's home. Every time I tried to use their web site, I would encounter a comedy of errors, and trying to work around each problem would reveal yet another. I wrote several detailed bug reports to their support email address, and nobody ever bothered to reply, let alone fix the bugs. Do they even have any full time web developers working there any more? If they do, they must be asleep at the wheel. All I ever got from the experience was a bunch of parasitic spam email. Not one person who ever contacted me through AngelList had anything to offer that they weren't trying to shill by spamming every other random AngelList user. When AngelList had their email privacy scandal [1], other people also complained that their support was non-existent [2]. So I described my earlier bad experience and lack of support from AngelList on that HN thread [3] [4], and although dave@angel.co responded to a few other messages and solicited people contact him with further questions and concerns, he has never replied to any of my messages [5]. Dave's lack of interest in replying to both the detailed bug report emails I sent to his support address and also the messages I posted to HN, not to mention the facts of AngelList's privacy violation email scandal itself, just reinforces my impression that the lights are on, but nobody's home. My point still stands: Old unmaintained web sites running on auto-pilot that collect sensitive private information from their users (and automatically forge first-person email pretending to be from their users in order to virally promote themselves) are a dangerous security threat, which should be shut down for the safety of the internet. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326011 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504

falloutx 10y ago
> Automatically forge first-person email pretending to be from their users in order to virally promote themselves. This is my biggest problem with AngelList, along with their crappy hackathons. I open my mail and they mailed me to connect to some candidates and also cced them. Then you have to reply to them when they ask stupid questions. And it randomly chooses which companies to pick. And most of the time they connect only the new users to employers just to get more and more users on their websites.

nikolay 10y ago

Finally some light at the end of the tunnel as Product Hunt badly needs to optimize their front-end - it's the slowest popular site today!

intenscia 10y ago
I've found this too. Big fan of the site, daily visitor and congrats to the team but it is unbearable to browse on my iPad.

funkyy 10y ago

For me, personally Product Hunt was cool until they changed their design and created many categories. It was same as with Steam Greenlight - when it allowed only best games to pass, it was cool. Now due to some changes and adjustments - not so much. From one of my sites to visit daily they dropped to a group of sites I visit once every 2-3 weeks. The decisions made few months ago were terrible. Take a product that works, adjust it to widen the public but make the experience more shallow - typical for so many startups lately. Chase for the money and trying to rush things and bump metrics is terrible lately in startups/products I liked.