AngelList acquires Product Hunt(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
AngelList acquires Product Hunt
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/01/angelhunt/
279 comments
The tough thing about running a maker community is makers don't want to sit around all day to browse products and comment. But you know who does? Growth Hackers.
I say this coming from my own experience growing a community of hardware hackers who have even less of an inclination to chat since they aren't always in front of a computer.
I say this coming from my own experience growing a community of hardware hackers who have even less of an inclination to chat since they aren't always in front of a computer.
> Growth Hackers
Based on its usage in these last two comments, I think I must not understand what the phrase "Growth Hacker" means. I thought it was someone who was critically focused on increasing the numerator and decreasing the denominator in various SaaS KPIs. You don't seem to be using it that way. Is this a new job title in the Bay Area? Or, more generally: would you define this phrase for me?
Based on its usage in these last two comments, I think I must not understand what the phrase "Growth Hacker" means. I thought it was someone who was critically focused on increasing the numerator and decreasing the denominator in various SaaS KPIs. You don't seem to be using it that way. Is this a new job title in the Bay Area? Or, more generally: would you define this phrase for me?
I think they mean the people that are basically marketers/sales people who aren't creators and despite often thinking so aren't visionaries either. The type of person that "just needs someone to do that nerd shit" and they'll turn it into a huge success. Like the two guys that flew from London to show up Justin Kan's house uninvited.
Which isn't to say that can't be successful. With a piece of shit MVP coded by the winning bidder, some slick design, a good sales pitch and a ton of luck you might just get enough money to pay a real programmer enough to develop something that can actually get some serious investor cash which you can use to rewrite it yet again to get a real product that can scale.
Which isn't to say that can't be successful. With a piece of shit MVP coded by the winning bidder, some slick design, a good sales pitch and a ton of luck you might just get enough money to pay a real programmer enough to develop something that can actually get some serious investor cash which you can use to rewrite it yet again to get a real product that can scale.
I think I know the kind you are talking about. They show up on Quora wondering how they can get a co-founder to do all the tech work for 30% of the company -- IF they can find someone who won't balk at signing an NDA to get a glimpse at their super-duper amazing idea. Thanks!
I'm unfamiliar with the term "growth hacker". I get the impression that it means marketing and sales. What I've read so far seems to indicate that, us that an inaccurate impression?
You just hit on one of the fundamental reasons why all online communities tend towards toxicity – the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work.
These things then feed off of themselves – in a sociopolitical 'guardian' type community (/r/atheism, /r/childfree, etc etc) it ends up becoming highly caustic towards the outgroup with everyone competing for in-group status points, while in a 'trader' type community (/r/entrepreneur, /r/marketing), you end up getting flooded by shysters and self-promoters.
The moderates shake their heads and leave, and you're left with the inmates running the asylum.
These things then feed off of themselves – in a sociopolitical 'guardian' type community (/r/atheism, /r/childfree, etc etc) it ends up becoming highly caustic towards the outgroup with everyone competing for in-group status points, while in a 'trader' type community (/r/entrepreneur, /r/marketing), you end up getting flooded by shysters and self-promoters.
The moderates shake their heads and leave, and you're left with the inmates running the asylum.
This is more true of communities built around ideas rather than activities, and there are also moderating tactics you can use to avoid it. For example, online communities based around astronomy, or radio-controlled airplanes, or baking, or other hobbies remain relatively healthy even decades after their founding.
Also there are communities around conventionally caustic topics (eg. Lambda: The Ultimate for programming language design, Penny Arcade for games) that manage to survive for a decade+ with no loss of quality because of moderation policies. For example, L:tU has an "avoiding ungrounded discussion" policy - every thread must be centered around discussion of a published academic paper, which first of all keeps the focus on people who actually do work, and second of all discourages everyone without the background to read and understand academic papers.
Also there are communities around conventionally caustic topics (eg. Lambda: The Ultimate for programming language design, Penny Arcade for games) that manage to survive for a decade+ with no loss of quality because of moderation policies. For example, L:tU has an "avoiding ungrounded discussion" policy - every thread must be centered around discussion of a published academic paper, which first of all keeps the focus on people who actually do work, and second of all discourages everyone without the background to read and understand academic papers.
I don't understand how people constantly miss the most obvious solution to keeping a community grounded: charge an entry fee.
Could you point to some examples where this has worked? It seems that the entry fee would either 1. limit the community's growth severely (not necessarily a bad thing), or 2. filter out good candidates.
SomethingAwful's forums required a paid membership and have been around a long time. IMO one of the points of a paid model is keeping membership down to people who actually care enough to pay said membership.
Additionally, the implicit threat of having your paid membership revoked for bad behavior can provide a natural check.
Something Awful has used this to great effect to keep trolls in line. I wonder what % of their membership revenue comes from banned users purchasing new accounts.
Something Awful has used this to great effect to keep trolls in line. I wonder what % of their membership revenue comes from banned users purchasing new accounts.
I'd say most of it, at this point. As a long-time goon, getting banned and rereging the account is a way of patronage. No joke, it's very common behaviour there.
In addition to the examples posted, this model also worked well for MetaFilter. Some of the highest quality online discussions I've seen.
TED and ACM
https://www.ted.com/ http://www.acm.org/
https://www.ted.com/ http://www.acm.org/
ACM is a professional association, and I wouldn't consider TED a community.
Neither of these is anything close to a subreddit or forum which is the "community" to which the thread is generally referring.
Neither of these is anything close to a subreddit or forum which is the "community" to which the thread is generally referring.
I would think that LWN is a good example.
What are examples where this has worked? MetaFilter is one, but very small.
That doesn't work at all. Just look at sponsored posts on pretty much any publication/blog/forum. Every single one is paid and they race for the lowest tolerated behavior.
[deleted]
Good moderation works well IMHO.
This is what has killed Twitter. Both social justice Twitter and right-wing Twitter revolve around competing for status-points, and backslapping (the latest trend is linking to other people's egotistical tweetstorms along with a comment like 'This' or 'Thread'.
Very little challenge of ideas takes place - either from within communities or from outside. The whole thing has become a Wittgensteinian language game where people compete to praise or denounce the latest political trend in the most caustic or verbose way. It's tiresome and offputting to people unwilling to subjugate their entire online persona to their identity.
Very little challenge of ideas takes place - either from within communities or from outside. The whole thing has become a Wittgensteinian language game where people compete to praise or denounce the latest political trend in the most caustic or verbose way. It's tiresome and offputting to people unwilling to subjugate their entire online persona to their identity.
I think you have outlined the basic issue with human social interactions of any size greater than 3 people.
> the people who have the most time and energy to invest in discussions (which eventually snowball into flame wars) are the people who aren't actually doing the actual work.
Pretty sure we've reached peak-discussion. Future online communities will be based primarily on activity.
Pretty sure we've reached peak-discussion. Future online communities will be based primarily on activity.
Github managed to escape that dynamic up until the last couple of years.
Interesting analysis, seems to explain my personal observations.
Only wrinkle I'd propose: The "moderates", or any of the characters you define, aren't fixed, and personal circumstance often colors which role one plays at any given time.
Only wrinkle I'd propose: The "moderates", or any of the characters you define, aren't fixed, and personal circumstance often colors which role one plays at any given time.
A very interesting point of view, what do you think can be done to counter this outcome.
What if you made community contribution a limited resource?
Continuing the reddit example. You could limit contribution by three routes:
1) Limiting the number of posts. For example, 3 posts per week, max.
2) Limiting the visibility of posts. The more you post, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = 1 / (posts this week)
3) Limiting the visibility of posts based on post quality. The more you post in a week and the lower your per-post average karma, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = (per-post average karma) / (posts this week)
Just a thought.
Continuing the reddit example. You could limit contribution by three routes:
1) Limiting the number of posts. For example, 3 posts per week, max.
2) Limiting the visibility of posts. The more you post, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = 1 / (posts this week)
3) Limiting the visibility of posts based on post quality. The more you post in a week and the lower your per-post average karma, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = (per-post average karma) / (posts this week)
Just a thought.
3) Limiting the visibility of posts based on post quality. The more you post in a week and the lower your per-post average karma, the less an upvote counts. Effective Upvote Value = (per-post average karma) / (posts this week)
You probably weren't around for it, but HN experimented with something like this where each commenter's running average point tally for the last X posts or Y time was visible on their profile and indirectly visible on each of their comments. Their name (comment?) would appear in a different (darker?) shade the higher their running average.
I personally liked it, but it was rolled back after a couple of months. I think people became afraid to make replies that wouldn't accumulate up votes, and I know I wouldn't reply to threads if someone commented a day later because "it wasn't worth it."
You probably weren't around for it, but HN experimented with something like this where each commenter's running average point tally for the last X posts or Y time was visible on their profile and indirectly visible on each of their comments. Their name (comment?) would appear in a different (darker?) shade the higher their running average.
I personally liked it, but it was rolled back after a couple of months. I think people became afraid to make replies that wouldn't accumulate up votes, and I know I wouldn't reply to threads if someone commented a day later because "it wasn't worth it."
HN has "you're posting too fast!" per-user rate limiting.
I agree-
I stopped going back after I realized it was a homogeneous group (read: white dudes connected to VCs) patting each other on the back for releasing half-baked MVPs. I was really turned-off by that.
That said, I think it's slowly changing for the better (rigging allegations aside) since I last took a look a year or so ago. I received a small amount of traction after submitting a stupid iMessage sticker pack I built. I was still pretty salty when I submitted it, but was curious to see if the exclusivity had loosened up a little bit. It had!
As someone who occasionally builds silly apps it's cool to share them with a community of makers, but I don't think PH fits the bill anymore. Maybe the acquisition will allow them to re-focus?
I stopped going back after I realized it was a homogeneous group (read: white dudes connected to VCs) patting each other on the back for releasing half-baked MVPs. I was really turned-off by that.
That said, I think it's slowly changing for the better (rigging allegations aside) since I last took a look a year or so ago. I received a small amount of traction after submitting a stupid iMessage sticker pack I built. I was still pretty salty when I submitted it, but was curious to see if the exclusivity had loosened up a little bit. It had!
As someone who occasionally builds silly apps it's cool to share them with a community of makers, but I don't think PH fits the bill anymore. Maybe the acquisition will allow them to re-focus?
I think there's a much more accurate metaphor about what they're doing to each other than "patting each other on the back". [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMeqEDEfniA
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMeqEDEfniA
>white dudes connected to VCs
Stop being racist. What does being white have to do with any of it?
Stop being racist. What does being white have to do with any of it?
I don't think every statement that mentions 'white' or 'black' should be considered racist.
I totally agree with you, but in birracerveza's dead comment he strongly disagrees without offering any explanation: "He is explaining the reason that he stopped going, and bringing race into the mix. That is racism."
No, that is not racism, but "many people" think that way because they have been wrongly taught to believe that any mention of race is racism, which is incorrect.
And birracerveza is one of those "many people" who really need to educate themselves by reading up on the topic of racism, starting with "Mentioning Race Doesn't Make You a Racist [1]", and continuing on to wikipedia [2] to learn what racism really is.
Hint: Ask yourself if Cbeck527 systematically oppressed anyone by "stopping going" or "bringing race into the mix"?
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201001/mention...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
No, that is not racism, but "many people" think that way because they have been wrongly taught to believe that any mention of race is racism, which is incorrect.
And birracerveza is one of those "many people" who really need to educate themselves by reading up on the topic of racism, starting with "Mentioning Race Doesn't Make You a Racist [1]", and continuing on to wikipedia [2] to learn what racism really is.
Hint: Ask yourself if Cbeck527 systematically oppressed anyone by "stopping going" or "bringing race into the mix"?
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201001/mention...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
"white dudes connected to VCs"
It's not about race. It's about class. The "connected" part is what matters, not the "white dude" part.
Your average 99%er white dude does not get funded in Silicon Valley. He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused.
What matters in Silicon Valley is being wealthy and having attended the right school. Being connected matters more than anything.
The only thing that makes it somewhat meritocratic is that real success is undeniable and even unconnected people can find ways to succeed without help.
It's not about race. It's about class. The "connected" part is what matters, not the "white dude" part.
Your average 99%er white dude does not get funded in Silicon Valley. He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused.
What matters in Silicon Valley is being wealthy and having attended the right school. Being connected matters more than anything.
The only thing that makes it somewhat meritocratic is that real success is undeniable and even unconnected people can find ways to succeed without help.
I see your point, but don't necessarily agree 100%.
Regardless, I was calling it as I saw it at the time. Checking out the comment section of a few posts on PH's front page today, it looks like my evaluation still stands. Though my classification may be hyper-specific, my main point is it's a microcosm (stereotype?) of the echo chamber.
Regardless, I was calling it as I saw it at the time. Checking out the comment section of a few posts on PH's front page today, it looks like my evaluation still stands. Though my classification may be hyper-specific, my main point is it's a microcosm (stereotype?) of the echo chamber.
Maybe race and gender play a small part but I agree that it has a lot more to do with class and connections.
I don't know what it takes to get into the Silicon Valley upper class, but hard, quality work isn't it.
My best guess is that you have to be great at kissing ass. SV hates jerks, but loves hypocrites.
It's not about what you are, it's about how you come across (in a very primitive, superficial way).
I don't know what it takes to get into the Silicon Valley upper class, but hard, quality work isn't it.
My best guess is that you have to be great at kissing ass. SV hates jerks, but loves hypocrites.
It's not about what you are, it's about how you come across (in a very primitive, superficial way).
I don't know why many people operate under the delusion that the value of their work is the same as how valuable you are perceived. Not to say that there's no correlation, but it's just part of the equation.
People pay a premium for doing business with other people that they like. It's perfectly logical - we all want our daily interactions to be pleasant ones, and would much rather work with people we like than people we find distasteful.
It's completely counter-productive to frame this as everyone else just being superficial ass-kissing hypocrites.
People pay a premium for doing business with other people that they like. It's perfectly logical - we all want our daily interactions to be pleasant ones, and would much rather work with people we like than people we find distasteful.
It's completely counter-productive to frame this as everyone else just being superficial ass-kissing hypocrites.
You're right, it's less about ass kissing and more about cultural fit which is kind of a dog whistle but not exactly since you can hang if you're a "cool" Indian dude who drinks beer and plays ping pong, beer pong or foosball and doesn't smell funny.
> 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
> 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.
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
> 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.
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.
You could start an internet religion and instead of tithing some percentage of your salary you donate CPU time for Bitcoin mining.
> 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
And there just went an hour of my time :-) Good collection of posts.
And there just went an hour of my time :-) Good collection of posts.
What on earth would you need funding for when you do a site like Product Hunt? That makes no sense.
Because they had no significant revenue, didn't have anything personal to invest into it, and were in a community surrounded by investors. I agree, it doesn't make much sense.
You need a team to curate and engineers / product folk to build the product. Web app, mobile apps, Chrome extensions, ...
Curious about this myself. Marketing? Ads?
Well thats the thing though. Angel List got of the ground because it had some solid names behind it, can't remember if Product Hunt is the same. Did he do something before?
I understand there can be things like server cost and development etc. and if you want to do it quickly you need to build faster. But it just seems so unnecessary to me.
I understand there can be things like server cost and development etc. and if you want to do it quickly you need to build faster. But it just seems so unnecessary to me.
If you consider them as they are today (a niche site in the tech space) it 100% doesn't make sense.
If you think of it as funding to try and expand the site and topics and community into something much larger it makes considerably more sense.
If you think of it as funding to try and expand the site and topics and community into something much larger it makes considerably more 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 product makers to make the site viable.
C.f. why I shut down my previous startup: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/-Gk8HmiRSZ-mrUxE0rH3SQ/deadpoo...
It's definitely possible to do something successful in this space, but not as a bootstrapped startup. The AngelList acquisition makes perfect sense, because they can share the cost of leadgen while creating the opportunity to meet a wide range of founders' needs. There is a big opportunity here if someone is able to come in and execute a rollup and IPO, but those are extremely tricky to pull off.
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 product makers to make the site viable.
C.f. why I shut down my previous startup: https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/-Gk8HmiRSZ-mrUxE0rH3SQ/deadpoo...
It's definitely possible to do something successful in this space, but not as a bootstrapped startup. The AngelList acquisition makes perfect sense, because they can share the cost of leadgen while creating the opportunity to meet a wide range of founders' needs. There is a big opportunity here if someone is able to come in and execute a rollup and IPO, but those are extremely tricky to pull off.
While true, I don't know that is the role that Product Hunt is actually playing. The curated nature means that highly placed products were defined more by what VCs and those connected to VCs wanted to feature, which (naturally) tended to be things they invested in or wanted to do the founder a favor instead of things that were "actually interesting".
Once you have categories called 'Slack', 'Amazon' and 'Netflix' as maybe half the current top products do, you've sort of given up your claim to being primarily focused on helping startups.
Once you have categories called 'Slack', 'Amazon' and 'Netflix' as maybe half the current top products do, you've sort of given up your claim to being primarily focused on helping startups.
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 product makers to make the site viable.
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
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
It wasn't a sales product, we were hosting events to connect startups with bloggers, and also building scaleable promotion tools.
The issue with the food space is that most new products start out at their local farmers market, then get into Whole Foods, and then maybe attend the Fancy Food Show. And that's it for a long time. Trying to displace any of those channels is basically impossible. Building an additional channel is possible, but in addition to needing an exceedingly good cost/benefit ratio, you also need a very large source of targeted inexpensive leads.
The issue with the food space is that most new products start out at their local farmers market, then get into Whole Foods, and then maybe attend the Fancy Food Show. And that's it for a long time. Trying to displace any of those channels is basically impossible. Building an additional channel is possible, but in addition to needing an exceedingly good cost/benefit ratio, you also need a very large source of targeted inexpensive leads.
Seriously. I've only recently started following Product Hunt, but at least for it's email updates, it seems to heavily focus on companies that are pretty far from "startup". Most recent featured products are from Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, AirBnB, Snapchat. These are hardly young startups in desperate need of attention for product announcements.
Maybe I'm late in the game but Product Hunt was never about finding some new and useful product I might use or buy. And why would be? They also clearly say: "Discover the latest mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone's talking about." The keyword here is "talking about".
Now, "growth hackers" ended up believing that being popular on product hunt will get you customers. No - it will not. People who are reading and following Product Hunt are VC - and that is why acquisition by AngelList is an excellent move.
Now, "growth hackers" ended up believing that being popular on product hunt will get you customers. No - it will not. People who are reading and following Product Hunt are VC - and that is why acquisition by AngelList is an excellent move.
I look PH as a very good place to promote products, and it's born to promote products. No matter it's a good or bad product, they all don't want to miss a chance to reach their customers.
> True users vote for USEFUL and/or LOVELY products for themselves, growth hackers try their best to drive users vote for specific products.
I can't see that's good or evil, growth hacking may hurt the community, or may bring a lot of users and traffic in a short period.
And I think every community has possibility to become a place for growth hackers if it needs to attract more users and grow bigger.
Just like every corner has possibility to become a place for advertisements. If I don't like it, I just ignore it. And that also makes opportunity for competitors or products like ad-block to stand out.
Anyway I love PH and really feel sad for the acquisition.
> True users vote for USEFUL and/or LOVELY products for themselves, growth hackers try their best to drive users vote for specific products.
I can't see that's good or evil, growth hacking may hurt the community, or may bring a lot of users and traffic in a short period.
And I think every community has possibility to become a place for growth hackers if it needs to attract more users and grow bigger.
Just like every corner has possibility to become a place for advertisements. If I don't like it, I just ignore it. And that also makes opportunity for competitors or products like ad-block to stand out.
Anyway I love PH and really feel sad for the acquisition.
> 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
Well, I've never heard the term "growth hacker" used unironically outside of startups (honestly even SV specifically) so I don't think that's likely.
And AngelList needs to recoup their millions somehow. How often is a product acquired and all the investment-round cruft and garbage suddenly disappeared? Doesn't it usually just get worse?
Well, I've never heard the term "growth hacker" used unironically outside of startups (honestly even SV specifically) so I don't think that's likely.
And AngelList needs to recoup their millions somehow. How often is a product acquired and all the investment-round cruft and garbage suddenly disappeared? Doesn't it usually just get worse?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 [email protected] 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
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504
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 [email protected] 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
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504
> 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.
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.
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 ), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission (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-... ) 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!
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-... ) 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!
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
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
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
Great point - too often realism is mis-labeled as cynicism by those who have drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid. It's one of the things about SV that gradually wore me down over time: the constant need for people to declare everything great because to admit otherwise (i.e. accept reality) went against the prevailing start-up ethos.
I submitted my startup two days ago by myself, as someone who didn't have any PH "karma", but I somehow was granted permissions for submitting products (probably because I was subscribed to a newsletter for a long time). I asked by email if it's ok if I submit my startup by myself. I was told it's ok and wished good luck.
On the launch day my site received literally five visits (in the first hours, probably a few more later). It was dead from the start and didn't get a real chance to be seen by the community. Lesson for everyone: under no circumstances have your product submitted to PH by a non-mod account.
I'm actually not angry at PH. They have their rules which are obviously working. The "elitist" model is working (to some degree at least). My fault was that I didn't follow the guides which mention what I learned. And I think they should give a warning when submitting a product by an account like mine, because there's no practical chance such product will be visible.
On the launch day my site received literally five visits (in the first hours, probably a few more later). It was dead from the start and didn't get a real chance to be seen by the community. Lesson for everyone: under no circumstances have your product submitted to PH by a non-mod account.
I'm actually not angry at PH. They have their rules which are obviously working. The "elitist" model is working (to some degree at least). My fault was that I didn't follow the guides which mention what I learned. And I think they should give a warning when submitting a product by an account like mine, because there's no practical chance such product will be visible.
As a counter-example, someone posted our product on PH and we only noticed when we saw a spike in signups and had a look at where they were coming from. It ended up being #1 that day and still is the main source of signups.
I don't have a PH account myself though and never go to that website, it was pretty bad in terms of design/UX.
I don't have a PH account myself though and never go to that website, it was pretty bad in terms of design/UX.
The same happened here. One of the mods found our product and put it on PH. We just had a signup button, but there was no activity that a signed in user could do. People still signed up. Who posts your product on PH matters, I think. If we had posted it ourself it would have looked pretty sad.
> They have their rules which are obviously working.
Their comment section doesnt work. It feels like stumbling into North Korea or Stepford, Connecticut along with some Idol worship. I dont know if ive been anywhere moderated that strictly, with such low insight dense comments.
Their comment section doesnt work. It feels like stumbling into North Korea or Stepford, Connecticut along with some Idol worship. I dont know if ive been anywhere moderated that strictly, with such low insight dense comments.
Just to provide a counterpoint, I submitted a pretty simple Chrome extension 2 months ago and got 270 upvotes and around 2k visits to it's website. It ended up no. 6 for the day so almost made it in the daily newsletter. It was my first time submitting anything, was pretty much inactive before it and all the promotion I did at the time was tweeting to my 400 followers.
> tweeting to my 400 followers.
That must be the difference (or I was blocked by some filter). I didn't try to make a social-media call-for-action, because I didn't want to trigger voting-ring protections.
EDIT. As for the filters... PH doesn't allow comments which include "ps aux" or "curl" strings. I learned this by studying HTTP responses using Developer Tools, because the error was not signalled in PH's UI :).
That must be the difference (or I was blocked by some filter). I didn't try to make a social-media call-for-action, because I didn't want to trigger voting-ring protections.
EDIT. As for the filters... PH doesn't allow comments which include "ps aux" or "curl" strings. I learned this by studying HTTP responses using Developer Tools, because the error was not signalled in PH's UI :).
Yep, the absence of enforcement ends up hurting people who abide by the rules.
Doesn't allow or has problems storing it?
Any decent comment system should accept that kind of comment without choking on it.
Any decent comment system should accept that kind of comment without choking on it.
From my investigation it seems that it's some kind of filter provided by Cloudflare, in this case blocking a possible "shell script injection".
[deleted]
It IS possible to get lucky on content aggregation sites without any magic. I've had this happen for me in several places – HN, Reddit, Medium. But it's very hit and miss. You can post something great and have it totally miss 9 out of 10 times. Most people aren't interested in sifting through the new stuff – they just want to engage with whatever's already popular. If even 5-10% of a community was committed to rigorously assessing new submissions, then quality would rise to the top – but most people tend to just upvote whatever is already on the up-and-up.
This "Mathew effect" is the case with a lot of things – book deals and record deals, for instance. Unknown artists occasionally do get their big breaks by being in the right place at the right time. But if you're managing one (even if it's yourself), it makes sense to improve your odds by being systematic, and yes, basically cosying up to the gatekeepers whoever they are.
This "Mathew effect" is the case with a lot of things – book deals and record deals, for instance. Unknown artists occasionally do get their big breaks by being in the right place at the right time. But if you're managing one (even if it's yourself), it makes sense to improve your odds by being systematic, and yes, basically cosying up to the gatekeepers whoever they are.
I think PH is different because it seems that if a superuser/mod will not upvote an item, it will be practically dead. On HN/Reddit/Medium you will always get at least 20-50 views. On PH I got 5. It's even more stark when you count the fact that top PH submissions get many more views than on HN/Reddit/Medium.
I don't disagree with your assertions and in fact I think you're pointing out something that's important for people to generally understand. However, It's important to understand that this is more of a _rule_ than an exception. Very similar accusations could be leveled against most anything that's A) popular but not ubiquitous B) vote driven. Hacker News and Reddit have voting rings as well.
I'd go so far as to say that all niche markets have non-disclosed "syndicates" of sorts. Life and wealth seminars, professional conferences, information products people, church leaders, podcasts - all promote other people/products/things similar to themselves who also promote them.
It seem more important to understand this and to take it into consideration when looking at something like AngelList or PH. Advocating that these organizations work against the grain of how all niche markets work seems unlikely to be effective.
I'd go so far as to say that all niche markets have non-disclosed "syndicates" of sorts. Life and wealth seminars, professional conferences, information products people, church leaders, podcasts - all promote other people/products/things similar to themselves who also promote them.
It seem more important to understand this and to take it into consideration when looking at something like AngelList or PH. Advocating that these organizations work against the grain of how all niche markets work seems unlikely to be effective.
> I'd go so far as to say that all niche markets have non-disclosed "syndicates" of sorts.
I think this might be human nature. My wife told me about the group behavior of a Facebook group she belongs to (women's fitness Facebook group), and how over time some of the women become mini-celebrities – everytime they post anything, they get all the Likes and comments. Human networks just seem to naturally coalesce this way, with power law distributions.
I think this might be human nature. My wife told me about the group behavior of a Facebook group she belongs to (women's fitness Facebook group), and how over time some of the women become mini-celebrities – everytime they post anything, they get all the Likes and comments. Human networks just seem to naturally coalesce this way, with power law distributions.
It's not just voting rings on PH though. There's an clique of PH friends that skip the voting completely and go directly to the front page. (See previous HN discussion [0]) PH even admitted that this is the case, and then defended it with the standard Silicon Valley "meritocracy" bullshit that there's just no smarter and better people than my friends and investors, so it's cool.
That's just good ol boy bullshit. After I read about that, it became dead to me.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875
That's just good ol boy bullshit. After I read about that, it became dead to me.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875
Again I don't disagree. I acknowledge the very likely truth in the claims. I get why it pisses people off. I'm a founder, I want distribution as much as the next person and being bootstrapped I know it's less likely for me than for someone who sold 20% of their company to someone with connections. Those facts just doesn't disqualify PH as a source of interesting things to look at for me. For clarity though I've spend a grand total of like 4 hours on PH in my life[0], I just don't have that much time to waste.
HN has super voters. There's also a trait that your account can be tagged with which makes content that you share less likely to get to the front page (all votes on your content count as some percentage of a "real" vote). That attribute is usually added to non-insiders whose content often makes it to the front page.
I don't think they do it out of malice. They are design decisions in service of amplifying/dampening some desirable/undesirable effect. It doesn't make the creators evil, it just means that they have goals, metrics or influences other than the purity of their voting mechanisms. Community sites are super fucking hard and the people who have built successful ones have my respect.
0. https://twitter.com/wewals/status/798759401892941826
HN has super voters. There's also a trait that your account can be tagged with which makes content that you share less likely to get to the front page (all votes on your content count as some percentage of a "real" vote). That attribute is usually added to non-insiders whose content often makes it to the front page.
I don't think they do it out of malice. They are design decisions in service of amplifying/dampening some desirable/undesirable effect. It doesn't make the creators evil, it just means that they have goals, metrics or influences other than the purity of their voting mechanisms. Community sites are super fucking hard and the people who have built successful ones have my respect.
0. https://twitter.com/wewals/status/798759401892941826
>There's also a trait that your account can be tagged with which makes content that you share less likely to get to the front page (all votes on your content count as some percentage of a "real" vote). That attribute is usually added to non-insiders whose content often makes it to the front page.
I've noticed for a while now that I'll only receive a fraction of total points for a submission, perhaps 50-60% of the submission's displayed upvotes.
I've noticed for a while now that I'll only receive a fraction of total points for a submission, perhaps 50-60% of the submission's displayed upvotes.
Just to add my 2c.
About a year ago, someone submitted us to PH after I had submitted our site to Show HN. We ended up as the second highest product of the day. I didn't even know we'd been submitted until my co-founder mentioned it (him thinking I had actually been the one behind it). Ultimately we got around 3k to 4k visitors from PH over a space of 3 or 4 days.
So while there may be examples of it being fixed that doesn't mean there isn't significant numbers of startups - with no inside connections - getting a bit limelight from it.
About a year ago, someone submitted us to PH after I had submitted our site to Show HN. We ended up as the second highest product of the day. I didn't even know we'd been submitted until my co-founder mentioned it (him thinking I had actually been the one behind it). Ultimately we got around 3k to 4k visitors from PH over a space of 3 or 4 days.
So while there may be examples of it being fixed that doesn't mean there isn't significant numbers of startups - with no inside connections - getting a bit limelight from it.
Dude, it's good that you write these articles and I appreciate them. But for gods sake, let them have today.
There are a lot of difficulties in running a community and I'm sure they considered different options but couldn't move forward because they were under too much pressure.
They deserve congrats for today.
There are a lot of difficulties in running a community and I'm sure they considered different options but couldn't move forward because they were under too much pressure.
They deserve congrats for today.
that kind of attitude is responsible for a lot of awful behavior in the startup community—why should a business venture be exempt from criticism for unethical/misleading practices just because they managed to parlay those practices into eventual financial success? what does that say about startup culture and the rewards, the "deserved congrats," we give out?
Let them have what exactly? The whole entire site smelled like a get rich quick scheme from the start for the founder. I tried submitting something only to later come to the same realizations of the vote rigging aforementioned.
Congrats on playing the VC system, I guess.
Congrats on playing the VC system, I guess.
What? Ryan started a newsletter out of a love of discovering new products. I'm sure he was very surprised how popular it became.
This is a bizarre sentiment (to me). Success should never act as some sort of temporary shield to criticism.
Here's a similar case that I was disappointed to see: http://leafo.net/shotslp/2016-12-01_20-43-41.png
They apparently emailed all their paying customers. What a "big surprise."
They apparently emailed all their paying customers. What a "big surprise."
100% agree and the main reason why I don't go on product hunt at all. I am glad for the founder, but the site in general is manipulated and controlled by people with influence and the rest sit on the sidelines.
Every site which uses the Reddit upvoting model is subject to this type of attack. The correct name for it is a Sybil Attack[1]
I suspect a large portion of Reddit accounts are sockpuppet[2] accounts, alongside Product Hunt.
It's the Law of Manipulatable Numbers where if you put a number next to somebody's name online, then the person sometimes (not often) tries to manipulate the number.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
Also noteworthy:
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-p...
I suspect a large portion of Reddit accounts are sockpuppet[2] accounts, alongside Product Hunt.
It's the Law of Manipulatable Numbers where if you put a number next to somebody's name online, then the person sometimes (not often) tries to manipulate the number.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
Also noteworthy:
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-p...
[deleted]
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. 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/. 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!
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. 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/. 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also don't mean to be a downer or salty, but you might as well have said "The lotto system was built to make people like me wealthy".
Until it is a platform that offers universal opportunity to everybody who builds something, then it is really no more than a pot luck draw that is too reliant on timing, marketing shine, and debasing yourself in front of 'influencers' in the hope that they will give you their royal blessing.
I've self posted, and had other post to PH in the past, with dismal results. Once I had a product of mine 'hunted' on there by a total stranger, which was cool, but I couldn't add anything to the conversation because I was never added as a 'maker' despite several requests via the site and Twitter. I missed that magical 24 hour window and the product listing sank like a stone never to be heard of again (because of their 'no posting repeats' rule).
Don't even get me started on the humiliating experience of having to beg around for an invite in the early days just so I could participate in discussions.
Until it is a platform that offers universal opportunity to everybody who builds something, then it is really no more than a pot luck draw that is too reliant on timing, marketing shine, and debasing yourself in front of 'influencers' in the hope that they will give you their royal blessing.
I've self posted, and had other post to PH in the past, with dismal results. Once I had a product of mine 'hunted' on there by a total stranger, which was cool, but I couldn't add anything to the conversation because I was never added as a 'maker' despite several requests via the site and Twitter. I missed that magical 24 hour window and the product listing sank like a stone never to be heard of again (because of their 'no posting repeats' rule).
Don't even get me started on the humiliating experience of having to beg around for an invite in the early days just so I could participate in discussions.
Thats weird, we build something. Someone posted it, and we were made makers pretty quickly.. I guess every time a system fails, it does turn a couple of people away. I would had similar feeling if we were not made makers immediately.
Congrats on going full time. Don't sweat the salty comments.
You mention it but I just want to reinforce it. I don't go to PH at all but I see the issue on HN all the time. People writing a comment and suddenly the "at [company], we bla bla..."
Really? I don't see it all the time, and I think a little bit of referring to your own company/startup in relevant contexts is ok.
If people overdo it, we ask them to stop (and in extreme cases ban them), so feel free to email [email protected] if someone is overdoing it.
If people overdo it, we ask them to stop (and in extreme cases ban them), so feel free to email [email protected] if someone is overdoing it.
I might just be that the comments I do read (in relevant contexts or not) stands out for me a lot due to their predictive formula.
Is there some way to search comments for regex? Just for my curiosity.
Is there some way to search comments for regex? Just for my curiosity.
> Is there some way to search comments for regex?
Not publicly that I know of. Might make a good API project.
Not publicly that I know of. Might make a good API project.
It generally annoys me when I see it no matter what site I'm on but you're right, on here it's rare and more importantly this is HN so you should expect a bit here and there. Most of the time these people are just excited about something they're creating.
> just excited about something they're creating
Well put. That's the kind we want to encourage, and if someone goes beyond that and overdoes it, it's not hard to take care of.
Well put. That's the kind we want to encourage, and if someone goes beyond that and overdoes it, it's not hard to take care of.
[deleted]
> 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.
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.
Question about your Mac app -- these blocker apps seem to be a dime-a-dozen, but I don't understand how people think they're effective. People have so many mobile devices now, just because I block my Macbook doesn't mean I can't waste time on my iPhone/iPad, or use another computer. In the end, it's pure will that is the best means to stop distraction, no app will solve the problem.
I keep all my distractions on devices other than my work machine, out of my reach. Mindlessly slipping into a browser is many times more easier than standing up and going for a "leisure place".
Do you have any tips for improving willpower?
Check out the book Willpower Instinct:
https://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Instinct-Self-Control-Works...
https://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Instinct-Self-Control-Works...
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?
> 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?
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?
AL users might have a more meaningful way in the future to invest in hot PH products.
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.
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.
I think Betalist will be next as well. But I'd think AL/PH would try their own BetaList like section.
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.
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.
Do we know the acquisition price?
"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...
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
[2] https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=product%20hunt
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity
[2] https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=product%20hunt
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.
Interesting to see the trend chart. At least PH kept their numbers over the past two years.
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.
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.
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.
>> "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.
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.
I thought $20 million was way too high.
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.
$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.
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..
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..
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.
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.
It's not absurd just looking at the numbers. But looking at the actual site, then yeah it seems absurd. They weren't exactly doing that much to push revenue. I doubt they did 6 figures a month.
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).
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).
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-r...
0. https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/product-hunt-is-ready-to-r...
It's better to earn out than burn out.
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.
So much for a16z "genius" investors...
They'd raised ~$7.5M over three rounds according to crunchbase[1].
1: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity
1: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/product-hunt#/entity
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So PH was acquired for half the price of Pebble?
This doesn't make any sense... Wow...
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...
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...
1) An investor isn't marking a 1x as a win. Locking up their LP's money for many years to return 1x isn't making anybody happy.
2) AngelList isn't giving PH investors/employees $28M cash, or $20M cash, or whatever the figure is reported as. They are very likely giving them mostly stock, stock in a private company with an unknown valuation. Probably only enough cash to cover the taxes (10-20%). The 20M figure is pulled out of thin air based on whatever AL thinks their valuation is. How much stock do you think they'd have to give out to hire 20 people? How much stock are they giving out to acquire a company with 20 employees?
3) People said Google had no hope of ever making money, they were just a search engine and those don't make any money. Sitting on the sidelines and saying every investment is stupid is really easy when 95% of them fail.
2) AngelList isn't giving PH investors/employees $28M cash, or $20M cash, or whatever the figure is reported as. They are very likely giving them mostly stock, stock in a private company with an unknown valuation. Probably only enough cash to cover the taxes (10-20%). The 20M figure is pulled out of thin air based on whatever AL thinks their valuation is. How much stock do you think they'd have to give out to hire 20 people? How much stock are they giving out to acquire a company with 20 employees?
3) People said Google had no hope of ever making money, they were just a search engine and those don't make any money. Sitting on the sidelines and saying every investment is stupid is really easy when 95% of them fail.
1) Being pedantic real quick, it's a ~2x win. And yeah, it's not the 100x most VCs dream about, but it's still a heck of a lot better than an embarrassing 0x loss after your founder shouts his billion dollar aspirations from the rooftops. The important thing here isn't that VC's are making money, it's that they're using an elitist social circle to absolve losses. "Too connected to fail", if you will.
2) How does this make it any better? What you're essentially saying here is instead of investors paying themselves cash they're just shuffling shares of stock from one investment vehicle to another... if this is true then in some cases investors are actually increasing their share in AngelList simply by, in your own words ("1x isn't making anybody happy"), making a failed investment. That doesn't seem above board to me.
3) If you're honestly trying to compare late 90's era Google with ProductHunt then I think that proves my point more than anything I can say myself
2) How does this make it any better? What you're essentially saying here is instead of investors paying themselves cash they're just shuffling shares of stock from one investment vehicle to another... if this is true then in some cases investors are actually increasing their share in AngelList simply by, in your own words ("1x isn't making anybody happy"), making a failed investment. That doesn't seem above board to me.
3) If you're honestly trying to compare late 90's era Google with ProductHunt then I think that proves my point more than anything I can say myself
Do you think the behavior of these companies could possibly be explained by doing what they think is in their own selfish best interest instead of somehow using "elitist social circles" to "absolve losses"? And who is absolving the losses anyways? Wouldn't some of the people in the "elitist social circles" be investors in AL but not PH and be upset that these "losses" were being inflicted upon them? Why wouldn't they use their elite social clout to stop it?
Anecdote time: I've personally seen a few startups that were failing attempt to sell themselves to the startup I was somewhat senior in. I interviewed and chatted with founders of the startups that were trying to get acquired. My meetings were not interfered with by the VCs or the angels or anybody else. They are far far too busy to care about every minute detail of what goes on at their portfolio companies. Had we ever gone through with one of the acquisitions (which we never did when I was there), my guess is the board would have tried very hard to convince us not to do it, as an acquisition has a much higher chance of going wrong than going well and can be a huge distraction.
Anecdote time: I've personally seen a few startups that were failing attempt to sell themselves to the startup I was somewhat senior in. I interviewed and chatted with founders of the startups that were trying to get acquired. My meetings were not interfered with by the VCs or the angels or anybody else. They are far far too busy to care about every minute detail of what goes on at their portfolio companies. Had we ever gone through with one of the acquisitions (which we never did when I was there), my guess is the board would have tried very hard to convince us not to do it, as an acquisition has a much higher chance of going wrong than going well and can be a huge distraction.
It's only in hindsight that 90's era Google is an "obvious win". It was "just another Search engine with a bunch of Stanford buddies for investors" in the 90's and probably would've been called so on HN.
Its seems to me that convincing a bunch of people to part with their money for your idea and then relentlessly trying to execute on it (as PH's founder seems to have done) is very meritorious.
Some investments are clearly made to friends, but you aren't convincing any investor to NOT invest in their friends who they think are great, personally. Now if only there was a process to democratise this discovery more....
P.S: I was referring to AngelList in the end there.
Its seems to me that convincing a bunch of people to part with their money for your idea and then relentlessly trying to execute on it (as PH's founder seems to have done) is very meritorious.
Some investments are clearly made to friends, but you aren't convincing any investor to NOT invest in their friends who they think are great, personally. Now if only there was a process to democratise this discovery more....
P.S: I was referring to AngelList in the end there.
20-20 hindsight works both ways; it's easy to see both obvious failures and successes once we know the results with certainty.
For Google, I don't think it was certain at all that they would succeed and there was a real chance they could have failed. Their first business model was selling their search engine to enterprises via hardware boxes, which grew very haltingly.
In fact it wasn't until Google came across Overture's idea of selling advertising tied to web search results that they found the success they now have, and which they appropriated despite Overture's patent because they were so desperate to find a working business model.
Overture(later acquired by Yahoo) sued Google, and Google had to pay in stock worth hundreds of millions in 2004 (tens of billions now had Yahoo kept them).
So how does this relate to ProductHunt? Google had a real product, knew who their users were and put their experience first. ProductHunt has polluted their site with junk and allowed their voting process to be distorted, making it practically useless to anyone who came there to find great products.
See here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/business/technology-google...
For Google, I don't think it was certain at all that they would succeed and there was a real chance they could have failed. Their first business model was selling their search engine to enterprises via hardware boxes, which grew very haltingly.
In fact it wasn't until Google came across Overture's idea of selling advertising tied to web search results that they found the success they now have, and which they appropriated despite Overture's patent because they were so desperate to find a working business model.
Overture(later acquired by Yahoo) sued Google, and Google had to pay in stock worth hundreds of millions in 2004 (tens of billions now had Yahoo kept them).
So how does this relate to ProductHunt? Google had a real product, knew who their users were and put their experience first. ProductHunt has polluted their site with junk and allowed their voting process to be distorted, making it practically useless to anyone who came there to find great products.
See here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/business/technology-google...
Nice hindsight review of Google. Often overlooked.
I recall a podcast interview Ryan Hoover gave some time ago, where he said (if I'm recalling this correctly) that he wouldn't consider offers to sell under $100M, and his goal was 1B or greater.
At the time it sounded perfectly reasonable, though he since took the company in a direction that lead to today. The writing on the wall has been evident since at least a year ago.
>ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, ...
While I largely agree there, I think that Product Hunt could have made itself an otherwise incredibly valuable acquisition target. Had Product Hunt chosen a different path around late 2014, it's very possible it could have met or exceeded that 1B figure.
If I had to give a postmortem, I'd say the primary cause of death was an over-emphasis on the site's existing pattern of serendipitous discovery, compounded by community mismanagement, and attempts to monetize via turning PH into a store and/or referral engine.
The community mismanagement aspect in particular was unfortunate, since Ryan was one of the most voracious and effective community builders I've ever seen. Some of the bad press PH received was perhaps unfair and overblown. The original intent of ruthless product curation seems to have went somewhat awry—resulting in a self-promoting insider network of sorts. Unlike the bad press though, I don't think that it was the result of malicious intent.
Of course, armchair analysis in hindsight is easy. None of us were actually on the ground in his shoes, so there's probably a lot we don't know. At the end of the day, a 20M exit isn't the worst thing in the world.
At the time it sounded perfectly reasonable, though he since took the company in a direction that lead to today. The writing on the wall has been evident since at least a year ago.
>ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized monetization, ...
While I largely agree there, I think that Product Hunt could have made itself an otherwise incredibly valuable acquisition target. Had Product Hunt chosen a different path around late 2014, it's very possible it could have met or exceeded that 1B figure.
If I had to give a postmortem, I'd say the primary cause of death was an over-emphasis on the site's existing pattern of serendipitous discovery, compounded by community mismanagement, and attempts to monetize via turning PH into a store and/or referral engine.
The community mismanagement aspect in particular was unfortunate, since Ryan was one of the most voracious and effective community builders I've ever seen. Some of the bad press PH received was perhaps unfair and overblown. The original intent of ruthless product curation seems to have went somewhat awry—resulting in a self-promoting insider network of sorts. Unlike the bad press though, I don't think that it was the result of malicious intent.
Of course, armchair analysis in hindsight is easy. None of us were actually on the ground in his shoes, so there's probably a lot we don't know. At the end of the day, a 20M exit isn't the worst thing in the world.
I recall a podcast interview Ryan Hoover gave some time ago, where he said (if I'm recalling this correctly) that he wouldn't consider offers to sell under $100M, and his goal was 1B or greater.
Even if you don't believe this, unquestionably you have to say it in order to get venture money.
Even if you don't believe this, unquestionably you have to say it in order to get venture money.
I think you underestimate the global reach PH has achieved within such a short time across the five continents. Most startups everywhere - including mine - building their product has a key milestone - almost as a habit- to get it on PH and shout loud about that this is a significant milestone for their users and customers to know about.
I am grateful to PH and the team lead by Ryan because they helped MyAppConverter raise our profile despite we are not based in SV. I will always remember one day one early user who found us, used our product and put it directly on PH. Soon after that, we got a huge spike in our sign-up and platform usage and gave us global coverage.
So thank you PH, Ryan Hoover & team and best of luck with the next chapter.
I am grateful to PH and the team lead by Ryan because they helped MyAppConverter raise our profile despite we are not based in SV. I will always remember one day one early user who found us, used our product and put it directly on PH. Soon after that, we got a huge spike in our sign-up and platform usage and gave us global coverage.
So thank you PH, Ryan Hoover & team and best of luck with the next chapter.
I also feel that PH itself has no chance of generating meaningful revenue. That's not to say they don't add value to the users/products that get featured. I feel like if they try to monetize it, what they built will be lost.
I see HN is a combo of PH and very early Digg; with added bonus of better community discussion. What if HN started charging users $20/mo and/or $100 to post. Would it generate meaningful revenue? Would it remain "the same" enough to continue generating that revenue in the future? I don't think so.
That said, I think AL may have some strategery at work. They want to bring early stage companies into their AL network. These often start as just products, so it kind of makes sense, although I don't know if it makes XX million sense
I see HN is a combo of PH and very early Digg; with added bonus of better community discussion. What if HN started charging users $20/mo and/or $100 to post. Would it generate meaningful revenue? Would it remain "the same" enough to continue generating that revenue in the future? I don't think so.
That said, I think AL may have some strategery at work. They want to bring early stage companies into their AL network. These often start as just products, so it kind of makes sense, although I don't know if it makes XX million sense
> funnels most of that money into things that simply make promoting other startups more effective, but don't create value
Making it easier for startups to promote themselves is a huge source of value. It's just hard to capture that value, because the newest and most interesting startups don't have any money, and the companies that do have a lot of money aren't new or interesting so no one wants to hear about them.
There's nothing shady or fraudulent. The problem is just that early stage companies in this space are walking a tightrope with basically zero optionality. E.g. normally you want to build a product with ten or twenty different paths to success without having to make any core changes to the technology. This space doesn't really lend itself to that.
There is a huge pot of gold at the end of the journey for anyone who can get there, but it's just really tricky because a lot of the things you'd ideally like to have in a startup just aren't there. (E.g. lots of optionality, low cost of leadgen, costs that substantially decrease over time, etc.)
PH is actually doing pretty well, I think it's too early to say if the PH/AngelList combo will eventually win the space, but I think they have as good a chance as anyone.
Making it easier for startups to promote themselves is a huge source of value. It's just hard to capture that value, because the newest and most interesting startups don't have any money, and the companies that do have a lot of money aren't new or interesting so no one wants to hear about them.
There's nothing shady or fraudulent. The problem is just that early stage companies in this space are walking a tightrope with basically zero optionality. E.g. normally you want to build a product with ten or twenty different paths to success without having to make any core changes to the technology. This space doesn't really lend itself to that.
There is a huge pot of gold at the end of the journey for anyone who can get there, but it's just really tricky because a lot of the things you'd ideally like to have in a startup just aren't there. (E.g. lots of optionality, low cost of leadgen, costs that substantially decrease over time, etc.)
PH is actually doing pretty well, I think it's too early to say if the PH/AngelList combo will eventually win the space, but I think they have as good a chance as anyone.
> that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever meeting
sigh. I hope one day people would stop being so cocksure around an industry that has always proven otherwise. I mean, yes, SV does have a slew of absurd valuations based on non-existent business models but doesn't the past success of some of these ventures imply that it can actually work? And all those obvious facts are just "hindsight bias" at work?
sigh. I hope one day people would stop being so cocksure around an industry that has always proven otherwise. I mean, yes, SV does have a slew of absurd valuations based on non-existent business models but doesn't the past success of some of these ventures imply that it can actually work? And all those obvious facts are just "hindsight bias" at work?
Was there a possibility of them having a profitable revenue stream? Sure. Was there a probability? Definitely not, and people (myself included) have been saying this about PH ever since its inclusion in YC. These same people have been around the internet block so to speak, and personally I've seen dozens of much larger, much more valuable, and much more active communities die off because even after bombarding their users with ads, trying affiliate sales (PH's most recent revenue model), and charging subscriptions it is incredibly hard to monetize an internet community that is not predicated on money changing hands.
It's not a business, it's a social club. So why was $28mm pumped into it?
It's not a business, it's a social club. So why was $28mm pumped into it?
You have no idea what the probability is. It's not 100%, but it's also not 0%. You also have no idea what Instagram's probability (and hence, expected value) was at the time of their acquisition. Having such a short-sighted, negative outlook isn't healthy.
This is such a negative, short-sighted outlook. A company doesn't need an immediate monetization strategy that's open to the public for it to have value that's attractive to an acquiring company.
Edit: Furthermore, PH definitely does have potential to have a large scale revenue stream. Any "destination" site that millions of people visit daily with intent to try/buy new products has major potential.
Edit: Furthermore, PH definitely does have potential to have a large scale revenue stream. Any "destination" site that millions of people visit daily with intent to try/buy new products has major potential.
Definitely. Anyone who's tried to market a new product should see the value that PH offers. There are issues with execution, fairness, and a cliquey community, but it can still get you real customers--lots of them--who have a sympathetic early adopter mindset. Finding these sorts of people in the early stages is crucial for anything new, and there aren't that many places you can go to find them. Show HN is decent, but interested and supportive folks are often drowned out by the same smug negativity on display in this thread.
Where such a rare and valuable resource is being offered, there are certainly paths to monetization available. And since PH is a discovery platform as much as it is a community, advertising doesn't necessarily conflict with the core value proposition if it's done smartly.
Where such a rare and valuable resource is being offered, there are certainly paths to monetization available. And since PH is a discovery platform as much as it is a community, advertising doesn't necessarily conflict with the core value proposition if it's done smartly.
Daft Punk's lead singer is telling you to get back to work.
>relatively small community
Lmk when you create a website with this much traffic. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/producthunt.com
Lmk when you create a website with this much traffic. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/producthunt.com
"Relatively small" is correct when Hacker News and Reddit are the competitors.
Well, I would say it is relatively small, I made this https://www.similarweb.com/website/yout.com which in theory is bigger than https://www.similarweb.com/website/producthunt.com
1. There is no proof Alexa data is reliable.
2. Traffic isn't fungible. Reddit is one of the most viewed websites in the world (top 10?) and roughly yet makes as much money in a year as Facebook does in an hour.
2. Traffic isn't fungible. Reddit is one of the most viewed websites in the world (top 10?) and roughly yet makes as much money in a year as Facebook does in an hour.
The number of daily visitors is behind a paywall.
could anybody point out the reason behind the spike during october?
OK, but if this is "slimy" and "almost fraud" then who is the person being screwed over?
The investors??
I feel like if you are going to call something almost fraud you have to point to a group of people being actually damaged.
The investors??
I feel like if you are going to call something almost fraud you have to point to a group of people being actually damaged.
If it had no discernable value, why would AngelList shell out to buy PH? That's nontrivial money to them, and they certainly aren't doing this as a favor to PH's investors.
Startups are hard. I don't know Ryan personally, but he really started PH as barebones as possible and grew it to millions of uniques. Without being on the inside, you have no idea the pressure or stresses he was under. Why are people so critical when they see a startup exit for less than a billion dollars? I am sure it's a huge learning experience for him and I congratulate him and wish him the best.
I love entrepreneurs, I just love the people overcoming all the obstacles and following their dreams and passion and just hustling and hustling until they succeed. They are plenty of stories like this.
PH was far from a meritocracy. It was basically a forum with SV insiders and people trying to "get in" in that ecosystem. But it was totally rigged, so that's the opposite of a tool who supposed to democratize access to exposure.
I don't believe people are hating on this, most of us just are just shaking our heads.
I understand this criticism and would love to see a more accessible version of PH find success, but exposure is in its very essence extremely non-democratic. Very few have the time or desire to check out even a tiny fraction of the thousands of new products that are created every day. People rely on filters, and those filters are always going to require some sort of barrier to access that leaves out many, many more than it features.
I think you're underestimating the level of traffic this "glorified phpBB theme with a relatively small community of fans" receives. Their Alexa rank sits at 3327 which alone means they're receiving tremendous traffic. Not to mention the whole concept of the site is to connect product enthusiasts with products they might end up purchasing. There's actually a fairly significant amount of upside if they can turn PH into a sales platform and take a commission.
I feel that product hunt can easily make money by having sponsored postings. However, that may upset part of the community.
If PH delivered 100M clicks then clearly they have a business model.
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.
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 that's just with 20 seconds of thought put into it. I'm sure there are many other angles as well.
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.
TechCrunch was WAY more popular that ProductHunt ever will be, was in a different and more frothy media landscape, had a very real and lucrative sub-business called the TC Disrupt conference (which I hear accounted for something like 75% of TechCrunch profits at the time) and still was acquired for only about $25-40MM, depending on who you ask.
Which makes this PH acquisition even more of a head scratcher.
Which makes this PH acquisition even more of a head scratcher.
Care to share how? I don't have a dog in the fight but the onus is on you since you're saying there is path to significant monetization.
Possibility and strategy are totally different animals. The fact is it is really hard to monetize a directory of things when you are not a party to the transaction.
The not-sexy model of charging businesses for exposure and leads works (see http://www.capterra.com/) but is probably not nearly rich enough to satisfy Product Hunt's VCs.
The not-sexy model of charging businesses for exposure and leads works (see http://www.capterra.com/) but is probably not nearly rich enough to satisfy Product Hunt's VCs.
Hmm...only number I could find is $2.4mm in revenue back in 2007
>uncritical adoration
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.
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.
such...irony
> The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the valley ecosystem
This is a classic perceptual bias. Everyone feels like HN is full of whatever they identify against, because those are the things we notice the most. Since you identify against "the valley ecosystem", HN seems full of uncritical adoration for it. It's a mirror of your own preferences.
There's also the enormous home-team advantage that anything "anti" has in the human brain, which gives rise to all the snark, cynicism, and rage-fests that take over online communities by default.
This is a classic perceptual bias. Everyone feels like HN is full of whatever they identify against, because those are the things we notice the most. Since you identify against "the valley ecosystem", HN seems full of uncritical adoration for it. It's a mirror of your own preferences.
There's also the enormous home-team advantage that anything "anti" has in the human brain, which gives rise to all the snark, cynicism, and rage-fests that take over online communities by default.
This is fascinating. I want to turn as many of my biases as possible from unknowns to knowns, so I appreciate you pointing this out.
An exercise I've now decided to undertake is as follows:
Every time I see something that I feel is "uncritical adoration" I will challenge myself to look for evidence for the opposite of that in the same thread. I'll start with HN, but if this works I want to extend that elsewhere.
An exercise I've now decided to undertake is as follows:
Every time I see something that I feel is "uncritical adoration" I will challenge myself to look for evidence for the opposite of that in the same thread. I'll start with HN, but if this works I want to extend that elsewhere.
Well, you made my evening by actually getting that particular point and finding it interesting. That is so rare! And it's such an interesting phenomenon.
I stumbled on this because the moderation job involves reading tons of comments I wouldn't otherwise see, and the various descriptions of HN they contain are quite incompatible. But they all fit the pattern described above.
I stumbled on this because the moderation job involves reading tons of comments I wouldn't otherwise see, and the various descriptions of HN they contain are quite incompatible. But they all fit the pattern described above.
I'm glad it gives you faith, because for me it does the opposite. It makes me long for the days where people in this community took an open mind and could entertain the idea that they might not know everything about everything.
I think there are some very smart comments here about the toxicity of internet communities over time that, unfortunately, seem to be evidenced in this exact conversation.
I think there are some very smart comments here about the toxicity of internet communities over time that, unfortunately, seem to be evidenced in this exact conversation.
Having opposing viewpoints discuss topics gives me faith.
A comment that is on top does not mean every one shares the sentiment. I usually upvote comments I strongly disagree with and add my own thoughts with the attempt to rectify the line of thinking. The idea is if something is "very" wrong then all the more reason to upvote and enlighten others.
I usually see nothing but negativity on here so I can't relate at all. The top comment was exactly what I expected when opening the thread.
As incredibly gifted, talented, intellectual, and intelligent as many of the fine people in the community are technically it boggles my mind how naive the average HNer seems to be about social intelligence.
This whole "meritocracy" thing is an incredibly effective marketing tool to get people from all over the world to move to an overpriced, dilapidating part of the world, with poop in the streets everywhere to sacrifice part of their lives to try to make something that matters.
If you fail at your own hopefully you impress some people who didn't enough you get to work with them.
If you don't you wash out.
The meritocracy its true but you have to either
1. have been born a mega genius
2. been raised in a wealthy well connected family
3. be a sociopath who manipulates everyone around you into doing your bidding
4. fake it til you make it and make the right friends along the way
5. Or struggle and toil until you figure out how to do one of the previous
This game is hard and lots of people don't win.
You can be jealous but don't say the system doesn't work when so many multi billion dollar companies have been created this way.
Survival of the fittest.
This whole "meritocracy" thing is an incredibly effective marketing tool to get people from all over the world to move to an overpriced, dilapidating part of the world, with poop in the streets everywhere to sacrifice part of their lives to try to make something that matters.
If you fail at your own hopefully you impress some people who didn't enough you get to work with them.
If you don't you wash out.
The meritocracy its true but you have to either
1. have been born a mega genius
2. been raised in a wealthy well connected family
3. be a sociopath who manipulates everyone around you into doing your bidding
4. fake it til you make it and make the right friends along the way
5. Or struggle and toil until you figure out how to do one of the previous
This game is hard and lots of people don't win.
You can be jealous but don't say the system doesn't work when so many multi billion dollar companies have been created this way.
Survival of the fittest.
People who like to advocate "meritocracy" continually forget that actual people have to be the ones that decide what the "merit" is that is judged, and who has more merit than others.
I previously built the community sites Techendo, MakerSpace, and the now defunct SchoolYard. I love building community. I also love tech, and I owe a lot to what this community has done for me. It's been there when I was alone, when I needed help, and when I wanted brilliant, likeminded individuals to collaborate with. I want to help make the tech scene better through creating a stronger community of people who want to inspire and help one another.
I want to create something with a real lifespan that pays forward everything everyone has ever done for me. I want to amplify all that is good and right with tech and the community that dug this loner outcast kid out of a very non tech- friendly area, helped him find something he could love, and gave him hope that he could build something beautiful.
If you want to help, check out what we're working on over at Baqqer[0]. Give me feedback about what you love/hate so we can build a strong community. I'm not interested in selling out, or colluding to drive any one particular message/theme/group. Tech can be better than this, and should strive to that end, and we should all support independent endeavors to make this as fun and fair for everyone.
[0] https://baqqer.com/
I want to create something with a real lifespan that pays forward everything everyone has ever done for me. I want to amplify all that is good and right with tech and the community that dug this loner outcast kid out of a very non tech- friendly area, helped him find something he could love, and gave him hope that he could build something beautiful.
If you want to help, check out what we're working on over at Baqqer[0]. Give me feedback about what you love/hate so we can build a strong community. I'm not interested in selling out, or colluding to drive any one particular message/theme/group. Tech can be better than this, and should strive to that end, and we should all support independent endeavors to make this as fun and fair for everyone.
[0] https://baqqer.com/
> I guess it's probably not outright fraud
"Once you eliminate the impossible..."
"Once you eliminate the impossible..."
It looks like Product Hunt raised about $8 million. Can someone explain how this type of acquisition pays out?
not too well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crunchbase shows AngelList's funds raised at $400M - there were 3 follow-on rounds with undisclosed amounts after their $24M Series B. (I have to revise my estimate of AngelList's valuation up and my estimate of the percent ownership of PH founders/employees down after this - with $400M raised, they're almost certainly worth at least a billion, and Hoover's equity share would be worth < 1%, also in line for a talent acquisition.)
I certainly can't speak for a16z in this particular case, but in other talent acquisitions the VCs usually prefer cash to shares in the acquirer. If they wanted shares in the acquirer, they would've invested directly in their funding rounds. Among other problems with taking shares, it opens them up to potential conflicts of interest (particularly relevant for a16z + AngelList), and it leads to having large positions in companies of which they don't have board seats or any significant visibility.
Ryan Hoover gets "FU" paper money in the form of AngelList shares; he has to wait for AngelList to have its own liquidity event before he gets to realize any of those gains. Still, if his own startup is foundering, that's probably a better bet than going down with the ship.
I certainly can't speak for a16z in this particular case, but in other talent acquisitions the VCs usually prefer cash to shares in the acquirer. If they wanted shares in the acquirer, they would've invested directly in their funding rounds. Among other problems with taking shares, it opens them up to potential conflicts of interest (particularly relevant for a16z + AngelList), and it leads to having large positions in companies of which they don't have board seats or any significant visibility.
Ryan Hoover gets "FU" paper money in the form of AngelList shares; he has to wait for AngelList to have its own liquidity event before he gets to realize any of those gains. Still, if his own startup is foundering, that's probably a better bet than going down with the ship.
I think the $400M refers to this [1], which based on the reporting seems to be money AngelList has set aside by some other VC to invest in startups on their platform, but I don't think that money is invested in AngelList itself. I couldn't find any other articles talking about investments in AngelList themselves, but who knows maybe they are worth a ton.
That is a fair point about conflicts, that makes sense. Still though if the cash isn't there, it isn't there. I cannot grasp a startup giving up $12M in cash in this environment unless they are absolutely rolling in dough. Doing an equity deal instead of cash is the equivalent of raising $12M at your current valuation (or whatever made up valuation you give yourself in the acquisition negotiations), which seems like a great deal.
Yes, I have no doubt in this deal the founders have "FU" paper money, but I know for a fact most shops and landlords don't accept that as payment :)
1: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/angellist-csc/
That is a fair point about conflicts, that makes sense. Still though if the cash isn't there, it isn't there. I cannot grasp a startup giving up $12M in cash in this environment unless they are absolutely rolling in dough. Doing an equity deal instead of cash is the equivalent of raising $12M at your current valuation (or whatever made up valuation you give yourself in the acquisition negotiations), which seems like a great deal.
Yes, I have no doubt in this deal the founders have "FU" paper money, but I know for a fact most shops and landlords don't accept that as payment :)
1: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/angellist-csc/
Yeah, birken is right, that $400 million is to a fund they are helping to manage. The fund money is not theirs and is not a direct factor in AL's valuation.
Since that $400M funding is a misunderstanding and not what they raised. What they raised is mostly $24M, then there's no way they are giving $12M cash out to buy PH, no?
Given how hyped the company was, I doubt they got participating preferred terms. Otherwise looks ok.
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.
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.
It reminds me of the time when Sun Microsystems bought StorageTek.
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.
i hear the system is totally gamed though.
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.
One has a decidedly more edgy sound, while the other could not be more bland and boring.
This is pretty exciting. Both parties are pretty awesome folk. Not too bad of an exit for an 'experiment.'
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.
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.
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.
Good for them, let them have their moment.
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.
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.
Congrats Ryan!
> He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused.
Anyone cares to explain that one?
Anyone cares to explain that one?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082318 and marked it off-topic.
Why is it off-topic? In my ~7 years on HN, I've only had comments detached as "off-topic" twice, both times in the past week and by you. Is HN just getting more heavy on moderation?
Although your question was well-intentioned, you inadvertently triggered a subthread that had nothing to do with the topic at hand (Product Hunt). Also, the point you were asking for clarification about happened to be made-up bullshit. That term isn't in wide use in SV; rather, the commenter was fabricating things. It would have been better to mark that comment off-topic rather than yours, since the rot started there, but then people would accuse us of censoring criticism of Silicon Valley.
Pretty sure the twice in one week thing is just randomness doing its usual. The intention behind HN moderation is to keep it pretty steady.
Pretty sure the twice in one week thing is just randomness doing its usual. The intention behind HN moderation is to keep it pretty steady.
Thanks, dang. I know the moderation was most likely a coincidence and not some kind of personal vendetta or my commenting getting worse, but I couldn't help but wonder.
I believe that SV, with all its flaws, is as close to meritocracy as it gets (after professional sports?) and was really just wondering what "summers" meant.
I believe that SV, with all its flaws, is as close to meritocracy as it gets (after professional sports?) and was really just wondering what "summers" meant.
No, I'm pretty sure sctb is a little to heavy-handed with this off-topic detachment bullshit.
He also detached my comment in which I responded directly to a statement that somebody made, but not the statement itself which. Both my comment and the statement were about the same exact thing.
Original statement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064089
My response - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064489
He also detached my comment in which I responded directly to a statement that somebody made, but not the statement itself which. Both my comment and the statement were about the same exact thing.
Original statement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064089
My response - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064489
It's not always obvious where to snip those threads, and yes, you have a point about that one. Whatever point you had, though, you more than ruined with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13100359. That's the kind of thing that will get you banned here, regardless of how good your point was.
So, how about we be a bit more careful about snipping threads, and you be a bit more careful about following https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html?
Edit: I see that we've had to warn you several times before. If you don't want to be banned, you need to change your ways on HN. I'm not going to ban you in this case because the proximate cause was something we did. But the pattern is something you need to work on.
So, how about we be a bit more careful about snipping threads, and you be a bit more careful about following https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html?
Edit: I see that we've had to warn you several times before. If you don't want to be banned, you need to change your ways on HN. I'm not going to ban you in this case because the proximate cause was something we did. But the pattern is something you need to work on.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, the whole thing seem to be about going somewhere that has weather your home doesn't have. In norcal that means snow.
Sure, but Tahoe/snow residences are mostly called cabins and at any rate most people don't spend the whole season there so much as use it as home base when skiing or spending weekends and occasional weeks there.
Yes, the differences (and lack of, really) "summering culture" is something I acknowledged in the first sentence of my earlier comment.
While I don't agree with the comment, it is referencing the fact that very wealthy people often go to a summer estate or some destination. Thus, someone who responds with a known wealthy summer hot spot is identifiable as coming from a certain level of wealth.
The parent was then taking that a step further and insinuating that a VC might casually ask about this and lose interest in the person unless they come from wealth.
The parent was then taking that a step further and insinuating that a VC might casually ask about this and lose interest in the person unless they come from wealth.
'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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
Detaching an on-topic comment for taking the wrong tone doesn't feel like fair discussion.
"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.
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.
Tone's a perfectly valid word when talking about a fuzzy line between insightful and inflammatory. Some people on e.g. Twitter might complain that justified bans were for mere "tone", but it'd be, what, a compositional fallacy(?) to toss out every argument that uses the word.
Regardless, I see what you mean with the state-changing here. It uses this topic as fodder to rekindle an ongoing internet fight. Something to be avoided. Fair enough.
Perhaps if you do this frequently enough your moderation tools can append the parent link + explanation to the comment body and save yourself some work - but then I guess that'd technically be editing user comments : )
Regardless, I see what you mean with the state-changing here. It uses this topic as fodder to rekindle an ongoing internet fight. Something to be avoided. Fair enough.
Perhaps if you do this frequently enough your moderation tools can append the parent link + explanation to the comment body and save yourself some work - but then I guess that'd technically be editing user comments : )
Thanks for such a decent reply, and for making me laugh at the end.
This was actually one of the more insightful comments on this page…
Hi dang,
I don't understand what detached means in this context. I am still seeing the comment in the main thread. Is this because of a setting I have?
I don't understand what detached means in this context. I am still seeing the comment in the main thread. Is this because of a setting I have?
It means it's no longer nested under its original parent (13080432). That way, marking it offtopic will cause it to rank lower on the page.
[deleted]
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 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.
'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 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-...)
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-...)
> 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.
No discredit to Ryan, but this isn't necessarily true. Prior to Product Hunt he hustled his way into the circle by interviewing individuals connected in the VC community:
http://ryanhoover.me/post/69599262875/product-hunt-began-as-...
Ash Bhoopathy, entrepreneur-in-action at Sequoia Capital.
partner at Union Square Ventures, Andrew Weissman:
Talton Figgins, product support lead, Disqus:
get a free copy of the upcoming book, Hooked, by habit-design researcher and blogger, Nir Eyal, in collaboration with myself
Sequioa, USV, Disqus, Nir Eyal...most people on HN can't even get any of these people to open an email from them, much less get a response about an app idea.
No discredit to Ryan, but this isn't necessarily true. Prior to Product Hunt he hustled his way into the circle by interviewing individuals connected in the VC community:
http://ryanhoover.me/post/69599262875/product-hunt-began-as-...
Ash Bhoopathy, entrepreneur-in-action at Sequoia Capital.
partner at Union Square Ventures, Andrew Weissman:
Talton Figgins, product support lead, Disqus:
get a free copy of the upcoming book, Hooked, by habit-design researcher and blogger, Nir Eyal, in collaboration with myself
Sequioa, USV, Disqus, Nir Eyal...most people on HN can't even get any of these people to open an email from them, much less get a response about an app idea.
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.
Nice guy? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids. You lose that excuse when you raise a Series A.
Personal characteristics may be irrelevant to the economics, but the comments you're responding to weren't about the economics.
Please don't get nasty, as in your last paragraph, when commenting here. It literally adds nothing except bile, and we need less of that.
Edit: your several comments in this thread smack of a vendetta. Schadenfreude is human, but I think it's fair to ask people not to go hog wild with it.
Please don't get nasty, as in your last paragraph, when commenting here. It literally adds nothing except bile, and we need less of that.
Edit: your several comments in this thread smack of a vendetta. Schadenfreude is human, but I think it's fair to ask people not to go hog wild with it.
The profanity is a movie reference, which if you've seen that movie would perfectly illustrate my personal frustration towards the tacit acceptance of incompetence that this thread signifies.
They did very little with an extreme amount of advantages handed to them vis-a-vis A16Z's involvement. It's not intellectually honest to praise them for being able to raise money while simultaneous consider them immune from criticism for failing to do anything notable with that investment.
I staunchly disagree with the general ethos of accepting failure as if the mere effort of trying is somehow notable. Ryan may have made the best decision that was presented to him at the time, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that a whole host of poor preceding decisions placed him into that bind in the first place.
I also find myself extremely skeptical that you'd take the time to so vociferously defend the "tone" of this conversation had PH not been a YC company. Given that a large part of this acquisition looks and smells like a life preserver thrown by one of their existing investors, it makes me cringe even further at PH's inability to harness that emotional capital into anything more substantial and at the amount of which people will ignore the reality to defend their own biased interests.
They did very little with an extreme amount of advantages handed to them vis-a-vis A16Z's involvement. It's not intellectually honest to praise them for being able to raise money while simultaneous consider them immune from criticism for failing to do anything notable with that investment.
I staunchly disagree with the general ethos of accepting failure as if the mere effort of trying is somehow notable. Ryan may have made the best decision that was presented to him at the time, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that a whole host of poor preceding decisions placed him into that bind in the first place.
I also find myself extremely skeptical that you'd take the time to so vociferously defend the "tone" of this conversation had PH not been a YC company. Given that a large part of this acquisition looks and smells like a life preserver thrown by one of their existing investors, it makes me cringe even further at PH's inability to harness that emotional capital into anything more substantial and at the amount of which people will ignore the reality to defend their own biased interests.
Now that you mention it, I have seen that movie! Okay. The rest of your comments, though, including this one, are just the same cocktail of bile and snark, with more than a dash of personal attack. That's not cool. It has nothing to do with how right you are; it has to do with what a jerk you're being on this site. If you want to comment here, please make your points substantively, without that.
I don't care about what you're arguing for or against, or who owns it. What I care about is trying to stave off the toxicity that poisons this community. It really is that simple, as you'd realize if you looked into how much effort we put into doing that all day, every day. There is no energy left for anything else.
Dark insinuations ("I also find myself extremely skeptical") are sure fun, but from my very weary point of view, a little pompous and a lot tedious. I wish I could share with you how this stuff feels on the 10,000th iteration.
I don't care about what you're arguing for or against, or who owns it. What I care about is trying to stave off the toxicity that poisons this community. It really is that simple, as you'd realize if you looked into how much effort we put into doing that all day, every day. There is no energy left for anything else.
Dark insinuations ("I also find myself extremely skeptical") are sure fun, but from my very weary point of view, a little pompous and a lot tedious. I wish I could share with you how this stuff feels on the 10,000th iteration.
I would counterargue that the pervasive "A for effort!" sunshine and happiness that you're trying to embed is just as dangerous, if not more so, than the bile and snark you're trying to ward off. The success of the overall startup ecosystem needs to be equally supported by the naked, cold truth than it does by blind optimism; ultimately it does no one seeking lessons and guidance any good to look retrospectively at the case study of PH and conclude "Wow, what a great company, they did nothing wrong! Ryan forever!"
Also, just because you prefer to read fluff replies of support and cheerleading and just because you are tired of people calling out editorial and financial conflict, it doesn't make the point of the replies you find bothersome moot. But it's your igloo and not mine; by virtue of me being here I am ultimately a guest at the discretion of you, and thus am bound by your rules in order to stay. I can also appreciate that your specific role can feel like shoveling shit against the tide, and that it's a thankless, rote task that can be at times extremely unpleasant. So, fair enough.
Also, just because you prefer to read fluff replies of support and cheerleading and just because you are tired of people calling out editorial and financial conflict, it doesn't make the point of the replies you find bothersome moot. But it's your igloo and not mine; by virtue of me being here I am ultimately a guest at the discretion of you, and thus am bound by your rules in order to stay. I can also appreciate that your specific role can feel like shoveling shit against the tide, and that it's a thankless, rote task that can be at times extremely unpleasant. So, fair enough.
> the pervasive "A for effort!" sunshine and happiness that you're trying to embed
You've imagined this. Nobody wants that, certainly not us. The day that HN shows signs of it becoming a top risk, we'll adapt accordingly.
Meanwhile, the risk that I'm talking about (and that you've been worsening) is the one that keeps us up at night. So yes, please follow the rules when commenting here from now on.
You've imagined this. Nobody wants that, certainly not us. The day that HN shows signs of it becoming a top risk, we'll adapt accordingly.
Meanwhile, the risk that I'm talking about (and that you've been worsening) is the one that keeps us up at night. So yes, please follow the rules when commenting here from now on.
I think you could have made your point a lot better with dropping the profanity and really in full that whole last line.
Please don't copy and paste comments that appear elsewhere in the thread (and especially not as an end-run around moderation, if that happens to be why you did it). We have nested threads here so people can reply to what they read directly.
The issue isn't brevity, but the toxicity that I described in my comment. I'm not sure I can describe it any better than that.
The issue isn't brevity, but the toxicity that I described in my comment. I'm not sure I can describe it any better than that.
It was a comment not everybody wants to hear (esp. everybody who got their jobs this way), but that very true accounts how this kind of meetings go -- as you mention Schadenfreude, ask the Germans how the burning of books works, exactly this way
> not everybody wants to hear
No, but you're reading this thread inaccurately, in my view, if you think the rage and snark side is in the minority, let alone so weak that it needs additional protecting.
I appreciate that you're concerned about the integrity of the discourse—we share that—but you don't seem to consider the costs of what I just called the rage and snark side. Those are considerable, and probably the largest risk to this community.
If people start getting rah-rah and kumbaya about everything, I don't think we'll have trouble adapting how we manage this site. The goal is the same either way—substantive discussion. But we humans deceive ourselves into believing that the merely bilious is substantive, when it's not.
No, but you're reading this thread inaccurately, in my view, if you think the rage and snark side is in the minority, let alone so weak that it needs additional protecting.
I appreciate that you're concerned about the integrity of the discourse—we share that—but you don't seem to consider the costs of what I just called the rage and snark side. Those are considerable, and probably the largest risk to this community.
If people start getting rah-rah and kumbaya about everything, I don't think we'll have trouble adapting how we manage this site. The goal is the same either way—substantive discussion. But we humans deceive ourselves into believing that the merely bilious is substantive, when it's not.
I don't support any follow-up comments ala "fuck you" etc. - however, if you consider this sort of "accurate" representation of how things go already as harmful, you know the reason of president-elect Trump.
...just because you don't want to hear it, doesn't mean it does not accurately describe a situation. And the OP was not overly mean - just very concise in describing a typical SV situation.
...I don't have any stakes in convincing you, nevertheless I considered it an overreaction worthwhile to react myself
...just because you don't want to hear it, doesn't mean it does not accurately describe a situation. And the OP was not overly mean - just very concise in describing a typical SV situation.
...I don't have any stakes in convincing you, nevertheless I considered it an overreaction worthwhile to react myself
Lol ok, yes you seem to love marketing, you would like it.
Please don't take personal swipes at people in comments here.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451 and marked it off-topic.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451 and marked it off-topic.
“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?
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
It just contributes to the disconnect PH & SV have to the bigger issues at their doorstep.
that haterade tho http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com
Affecting that type of dialect when "drew" is in your username isn't really a good look.
That is higher than I expected considering I only publish new content every few weeks on average.
His personal website isn't a business looking for an exit... weird comment
But if any investors are interested, send me an email. :p
[deleted]
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 and marked it off-topic.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082125 and marked it off-topic.
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?
I use AngelList for the same purpose.
https://angel.co/markets
https://angel.co/fashion
https://angel.co/fintech-2
https://angel.co/construction
https://angel.co/markets
https://angel.co/fashion
https://angel.co/fintech-2
https://angel.co/construction
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