
AngelList acquires Product Hunt - gjenkin
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/01/angelhunt/
======
cocktailpeanuts
As an early fan of ProductHunt I became saddened to watch their community get
diluted and become more of a place for "growth hackers" to hang out than
people who actually make things.

But I also realize this was because they raised tons of money and was under
heavy pressure to get traction at any cost.

So I think this can be a good news, now that they can just let go and focus on
the startup community instead of artificially trying to grow

~~~
ThomPete
What on earth would you need funding for when you do a site like Product Hunt?
That makes no sense.

~~~
Alex3917
> 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...](https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/-Gk8HmiRSZ-
mrUxE0rH3SQ/deadpooling-launchhear)

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.

~~~
double0jimb0
_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

~~~
Alex3917
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.

------
rkho
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.

------
funkyy
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.

------
DonHopkins
The impression I got from AngelList was that the lights were on, but nobody's
home.

Every time I tried to use their web site, I would encounter a comedy of
errors, and trying to work around each problem would reveal yet another. I
wrote several detailed bug reports to their support email address, and nobody
ever bothered to reply, let alone fix the bugs. Do they even have any full
time web developers working there any more? If they do, they must be asleep at
the wheel. All I ever got from the experience was a bunch of parasitic spam
email. Not one person who ever contacted me through AngelList had anything to
offer that they weren't trying to shill by spamming every other random
AngelList user.

When AngelList had their email privacy scandal [1], other people also
complained that their support was non-existent [2].

So I described my earlier bad experience and lack of support from AngelList on
that HN thread [3] [4], and although dave@angel.co responded to a few other
messages and solicited people contact him with further questions and concerns,
he has never replied to any of my messages [5].

Dave's lack of interest in replying to both the detailed bug report emails I
sent to his support address and also the messages I posted to HN, not to
mention the facts of AngelList's privacy violation email scandal itself, just
reinforces my impression that the lights are on, but nobody's home.

My point still stands: Old unmaintained web sites running on auto-pilot that
collect sensitive private information from their users (and automatically
forge first-person email pretending to be from their users in order to virally
promote themselves) are a dangerous security threat, which should be shut down
for the safety of the internet.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326011)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330160)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326557)

[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350697)

[5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11350504)

~~~
falloutx
> 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.

------
minimaxir
It's common knowledge that Product Hunt is rigged, and they will not heavily
punish startups for soliciting upvotes (blatant example:
[https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/763156319058616321)
), or even paying for promoted Tweets for their PH submission
([https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/786286705263251456)
) Relatedly, there is no disclosure when an investor is closely affiliated
with a submitted startup (and often people upvote just because of the
submitter; the followers system promotes this)

A year ago, I wrote a rant asking about this, among other claims that that
Product Hunt is elitist ([https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-
transparency-...](https://medium.com/@minimaxir/the-questions-on-transparency-
that-product-hunt-is-intentionally-ignoring-b579fba14048) ) 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!

~~~
aartur
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.

~~~
kaolti
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.

~~~
aartur
> 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 :).

~~~
AtheistOfFail
Doesn't allow or has problems storing it?

Any decent comment system should accept that kind of comment without choking
on it.

~~~
aartur
From my investigation it seems that it's some kind of filter provided by
Cloudflare, in this case blocking a possible "shell script injection".

------
Jasber
Don't understand the negativity.

What Ryan and Product Hunt did was incredible. So many people wanted to create
an alternative to Hacker News and Reddit for product people. Everyone else
failed but they figured it out. That's awesome.

Product Hunt personally helped me in my goal of becoming a independent app
maker by showcasing my app
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/focus](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/focus).
As of tomorrow I'm full-time indie (YES!) and I proudly display my Product
Hunt badge on my app's page [https://heyfocus.com/](https://heyfocus.com/). I
didn't have any connections there—I just made a product people liked.

And AngelList seems like a great fit. It looks like they're building a crowd-
funding platform, and Product Hunt as a marketing/discovery engine makes
perfect sense. In that context, Product Hunt is worth a bit of money.

This seems like a great outcome. Congrats!

~~~
untog
I don't mean to sound mean spirited, but I know I am about to.

Your post is an example of what frustrates me about Product Hunt (and, at
times, HN) - people crowbaring in a reference to their startup/project/idea
and throwing in a few links in a very transparent bid to get referral traffic
from a popular message board service. On Product Hunt in particular it starts
to sound like an echo chamber of people shouting startup names at each other.
Worse, it seems like the Product Hunt is the _goal_ rather than the _tool_ \-
much like TechCrunch back in the day, everyone's success metric is attention
from peers rather than customers.

~~~
Jasber
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.

~~~
cyberferret
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.

~~~
alexjv89
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.

------
jscheel
This acquisition seems to make a lot of sense. Product Hunt is awesome, but it
definitely doesn't feel like it's been able to monetize in any meaningful way.
The question, of course, is how will Angellist get their $20 mil back?

~~~
traviswingo
Do we know the acquisition price?

~~~
ricardonunez
"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...](http://www.recode.net/2016/12/1/13802154/angellist-product-hunt-
acquisition)

~~~
apadmarao
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.

~~~
wwalser
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.

~~~
exogeny
It's absurd that you think PH was doing anywhere close to that revenue.

The sale price to me is baffling, even if it was stock. You're not buying
revenue, you're not buying valuable technology IP, and you're sure as hell not
buying a world-class team that innovated and built some rocketship product.

So how do you explain it? Maybe the fact that it was bought by one of their
investors is a start..

~~~
wwalser
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.

~~~
skinnymuch
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.

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

------
pdeuchler
This smells fishy to me.

ProductHunt had no hope of ever becoming an actual business with realized
monetization, it was a glorified marketing tool built by SV insiders to sell
the ventures of their friends, colleagues, and investors. Slimy, but I guess
not illegal.

I start to draw the line though, when PH raises millions of dollars on XX
million valuations (that anyone could easily see they had no chance of ever
meeting), seemingly funnels most of that money into things that simply make
promoting _other startups_ more effective, but don't create value or revenue,
and then gets bought by another startup _who shares multiple investors_ for
(supposedly) something around their ridiculous valuation.

I guess it's probably not outright fraud, but somehow we ended up in a
scenario where we have investors shelling out (in some cases paying
themselves!!) a (rumored) total of ~28 million dollars for a community website
with no real revenue, no actual product, not even any technology that they
could theoretically pivot on... it's just a glorified phpBB theme with a
relatively small community of fans who just happen to all be in on the take as
well. And I'm sure all investors involved get to mark it as a "win" on the
books and pad their stats.

Next time Silicon Valley tries to portray itself as a meritocracy I guess we
can just point to this...

~~~
L_Rahman
That this is the top comment on this post gives me a lot of faith in this
community.

The general tone here can at times feel like an uncritical adoration of the
valley ecosystem. I'm glad that some of us react differently.

~~~
sgrove
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.

~~~
CPLX
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.

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

~~~
birken
Unless AngelList is teeming in cash, which they probably aren't, the deal is
likely either all stock or mostly stock. So imagine AngelList internally
values themselves at $500M (a number I just made up), to get to the 20M figure
they would be offering ~4% of their stock in exchange for PH. Most likely
common stock. Adjust that figure up or down depending on what you think AL
thinks they are worth.

~~~
nostrademons
Likely they pay out enough in cash to make the VCs whole. So assuming 1x
participating preferred and 30% of the company owned by VCs, that's $8M + 0.3
* 12M ~= $12M cash returned to VCs, and then the remaining $8M is in Angellist
stock distributed to the founders and employees. Assuming 20% employee
ownership, it'd be just under $2M to employees collectively and $6+M to Ryan
(I think he's a solo founder, right?). If I assume an internal Angellist
valuation of $200M (also made up, but you're more generous than I am), PH
employees collectively get 1% of AngelList stock, and Ryan gets 3%.

Also seems to fit everyone's incentives nicely. a16z & seed investors get
their money back, so they at least don't have to take a loss. Ryan Hoover gets
F-U money, assuming AngelList doesn't tank. Employees get enough for the down
payment on a house, also assuming AngelList doesn't tank before they can
liquidate. AngelList acquires a pre-made team with a proven track record for
not much more equity than they would spend on the open market. Pretty typical
SV acquihire.

~~~
birken
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.

~~~
nostrademons
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.

~~~
birken
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/](https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/12/angellist-csc/)

------
rokhayakebe
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.

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

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

------
josh_carterPDX
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.

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

------
debt
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.

------
koliber
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.

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

------
exogeny
Why are we applauding Ryan again?

This is a saving face bailout from one of their own investors and a
particularly embarrassing one at that given his statements of "I wouldn't
consider anything under $100mm" and the pedigree of his investors.

They raised a shit ton of money and built nothing. No real technology, no
significant additions to their platform, no development of community. And now
the result is an all-stock acquihire from AL, which will amount of a purchase
of their users and a one year rental of the same engineers and team that
failed to build anything worthwhile.

Raising money at a $22m val from A16Z and selling for less than that - all
stock no less - is a failure, and we need to stop lauding it as if it's
somehow notable or impressive to take money and waste it.

~~~
brentm
I think that's being a little harsh. If you started something and A16Z offered
you 7M you'd probably take it on the spot regardless of what it was you built.
I'm sure when Ryan launched this thing he never thought it would be more than
fun. It ended up spiraling into something much more than that. He was offered
an investment from a grade A firm who was willing to let him to try and figure
it out so he took it like any of us would have.

Good for them, let them have their moment.

~~~
exogeny
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.

------
nathancahill
Congrats Ryan!

------
olalonde
> He gets asked where he "summers" and then walks out confused.

Anyone cares to explain that one?

~~~
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082318)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
olalonde
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?

~~~
dang
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.

~~~
WayneBro
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064089)

My response -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064489)

~~~
dang
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](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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](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.

------
svskeptic
'Experiment' with no conceivable way of monetization gets 'investment' for
some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons.

Bros funding Bros, and then bro acquiring bro when the first-bro has blown
through 7.1M. Its the Silicon Valley version of nepotism. Its all play money,
but is only available if you are in the circle.

Now that you have an exit to your name, next stop, VC partner. And then ask
all the startups pitching, what's unique about you?

Yo!

~~~
dang
Much of this ("for some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons") you've
simply made up for rhetorical reasons.

But even if you were right on the facts, this kind of rant makes for a bad HN
comment. A good HN comment is one that contributes to thoughtful, curious
discussion. Stimulating rage among those who already agree with you is the
opposite of that. Since such comments routinely get upvoted, they're a
particularly bad risk to this site.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
j4pe
I'm not happy with your detaching this comment. Thanks for noting that you did
it, and why, but other inflammatory comments in this thread have been tempered
by well-reasoned child responses. That's reasonable dialogue.

Detaching an on-topic comment for taking the wrong tone doesn't feel like fair
discussion.

~~~
dang
"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.

~~~
j4pe
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 : )

~~~
dang
Thanks for such a decent reply, and for making me laugh at the end.

------
stonesvsglass
svskeptic 1 hour ago [-]

'Experiment' with no conceivable way of monetization gets 'investment' for
some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons. Bros funding Bros, and then
bro acquiring bro when the first-bro has blown through 7.1M. Its the Silicon
Valley version of nepotism. Its all play money, but is only available if you
are in the circle. Now that you have an exit to your name, next stop, VC
partner. And then ask all the startups pitching, what's unique about you? Yo!
reply

dang 40 minutes ago [-]

Much of this ("for some behind-the-scenes, non-investment reasons") you've
simply made up for rhetorical reasons. But even if you were right on the
facts, this kind of rant makes for a bad HN comment. A good HN comment is one
that contributes to thoughtful, curious discussion. Stimulating rage among
those who already agree with you is the opposite of that. Since such comments
routinely get upvoted, they're a particularly bad risk to this site. We
detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432)
and marked it off-topic.

Dang, this is a post full of brevity - yes - nevertheless very right. He could
have tried to paraphrase it - but this would make it even more exclusive to
somebody never involved in the industry before.

~~~
gkoberger
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-...](https://medium.com/@rrhoover/from-rejection-to-product-
hunt-2127f5973679))

~~~
exogeny
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.

~~~
dang
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.

~~~
exogeny
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.

~~~
dang
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.

~~~
exogeny
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.

~~~
dang
> _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.

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

~~~
dang
Please don't take personal swipes at people in comments here.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082451)
and marked it off-topic.

------
huac
“On the plus side we’ll no longer be homeless and we’l [sic] be able to focus
on building what we’re building.”

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable when SF tech workers, in this case a CEO
of an acquired startup, talk about homelessness in this way? Trivializing a
very real problem to nothing more than a 'headache' or 'distraction' from the
greater goal of, I guess, funding more startups?

~~~
csallen
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.

------
2drew3
that haterade tho
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/minimaxir.com)

~~~
austinhutch
His personal website isn't a business looking for an exit... weird comment

~~~
minimaxir
But if any investors are interested, send me an email. :p

------
rjain15
Why AngelList? Not sure if this is right alignment It doesn't make sense at
all. I use Product Hunt to find what is new and awesome product coming up?

~~~
basch
I use AngelList for the same purpose.

[https://angel.co/markets](https://angel.co/markets)

[https://angel.co/fashion](https://angel.co/fashion)

[https://angel.co/fintech-2](https://angel.co/fintech-2)

[https://angel.co/construction](https://angel.co/construction)

