
Local Q&A Site Hipster In Acquisition Talks With Groupon - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/hipster-groupon/
======
blhack
There are several things that seem absolutely _insane_ about this to me.

#1 Groupon is valued at $15 Billion? Have people lost their minds?

#2 They're offering to buy hipster, a company that I've never used, and have
only barely heard of. Hipster.com appears to be an ISP in Nevada, and googling
hipster turns up things related to hipster culture.

Am I missing something?

~~~
benologist
The news gets funnier - Hipster hasn't even _launched_ yet. And they're just
another Q&A site.

Tomorrow's news: Quora rejected $11 trillion offer from Groupon!

~~~
blhack
>Hipster hasn't even launched yet.

This is the scariest part to me. I was kindof under the impression that, at
least right now, you're not really buying _tech_ , you're buying users.

"Hipster" has none.

~~~
rwhitman
Buying users used to be a reason to acquire a product, but not anymore. Users
are cheap. And Groupon already has one of the best email distribution channels
out there

Its about the product and the team. Hipster is Quora meets Yelp, and the tech
was in fact live for a while, just only in Boulder, CO. If Groupon wants to
build a team & product to attack social local recommendations, its actually a
smart move

------
bretthopper
It would be interesting to see a timeline of events where people started
believing we're in a bubble.

You could mark me down today with this news.

~~~
Charuru
The number is not big, less than 10 million dollars. You have no idea many
employees they have or what kind of talent they have. This number is well in
line with Google's talent acquisitions in prior years.

Also the space they're in is very very relevant.

~~~
nlh
Every bubble always has a "rational explanation" for the valuations. "This
time it's different" they say. Always.

This time is no different. Of course you can explain why paying $10M for an
unlaunched site makes sense to a company that just turned down $6 billion from
Google, who itself is valued at $200B.

Doesn't make it any less of a bubble.

------
olivercameron
Is anyone else as speechless as me?

~~~
mikecarlucci
It's the continuation of a strange cycle. Path is a social network the
encourages you to have only a few friends, why not acquire a company that
hasn't launched for the users?

------
gatsby
April 2010: Groupon valued in the $1.35b range:
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/18/its-official-groupon-
announ...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/18/its-official-groupon-announces-
that-1-35-billion-valuation-round/)

January 2011: Groupon values itself in the $15b range with an IPO:
[http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/groupon-readies-
for-a...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/groupon-readies-for-an-i-
p-o/)

Hmmmmm....

~~~
olivercameron
Welcome to Silicon Valley.

~~~
allantyoung
Except that Groupon is from Chicago.

------
chr15
At first I was skeptical of the bubble, but this is outrageous.

~~~
banders
I feel the exact same way. The Path offer, then this... I never thought I'd
say this but we, folks, are in a bubble.

------
derwiki
From what I hear, Groupon doesn't do a lot of their engineering in house.
Buying a company that can make their site into more of a 'local destination'
like Yelp/Hotpot/CitySearch makes a lot of sense. And they can probably get
them for a much cheaper price pre-launch.

------
citricsquid
okay okay okay, I'm leaning towards Techcrunch being trolled here, well I
seriously hope that's the case, otherwise does anyone have a good idea that
includes social, saving money and local divisions? If so, I've got some
mediocre CSS skills and $10 to buy a domain with...

the ONLY way this can be true is if they've built an incredible backend that
groupon want to use to expand and aren't interested in doing it themselves.

~~~
j_baker
Yeah. But do you have an HD picture of the Golden Gate Bridge?

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jaredmck
This fits into my "hipster is a gimmick run by groupon" theory...would love to
see them (or anyone, really) pull off an epic trolling of tech crunch

------
Dramatize
Are you sure it's not Hipster buying Groupon?

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taylorbuley
Amazing this was 22 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093662>

