

Union Square Ventures Leads $3 Million Round in Moot's Startup, Canvas - bproper
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/06/13/canvas-scores-a-3-m-round-led-by-union-square-ventures/

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AndrewWarner
The article doesn't seem to have a single link to the site or to any other
site except its own.

<http://canv.as/>

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hugh3
Ohh, so that's what it is. I've been hearing about it, and never actually
bothered to figure out what it does.

So... it's a fancy lolcat generator?

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arihelgason
That's the big use case right now. A more flexible version of
<http://www.quickmeme.com> \- though I'm sure users will come up with other
cool uses in the coming months.

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hugh3
I see. I wouldn't invest in that at $3 million.

The "let's put captions on pictures" fad surely can't last forever. It's still
only five years since the first lolcat, and the super-meme here has acquired
hundreds of mini-memes (lolcats, advice dog, courage wolf, yo dawg, FAIL,
philoso-raptor,... and a serious bunch of crap that's probably hilarious to
about six dozen people in the world). Anyway, it surely has to get old
eventually... I can't imagine that my kids will still be captioning things.

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ebiester
Captions are as old as the New Yorker or The Far Side and quite likely older.
A large portion of Reddit's popularity is based on pictures. More to it,
people send each other pictures through Facebook.

Lolcats may not be forever, but captions are. So are people who think they
have comedic talent. Make a great online photoshop option, and there are many
options.

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ltamake
On an unprofessional note, Canvas is basically 4chan for hipsters.

But Poole's growth of this startup is incredible. I do enjoy the product
occasionally, but it's definitely a game changer for messageboards.

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dreamdu5t
Game-changer for message-boards? In what way, exactly?

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rokhayakebe
I am also interested in knowing how it is a game changer (honest curiosity).

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ltamake
Just because of the "remix" feature and the community behind it. Hasn't been
done before afaik. Kinda neat.

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hristov
I wonder if somebody went back in time to the early 00s and told the kids from
something awful that their photoshop Fridays would eventually inspire a
business with a 3 million startup investment, what they would say.

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dreamdu5t
How will Canvas generate revenue? Is the investment purely about unique
views/traction?

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bproper
Union Square Ventures has made a lot of big bets on big networks of highly
engaged users without a clear biz model. Tumblr and Twitter are the most
obvious.

Course, they sold a stake in Twitter on secondary markets already...

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fredwilson
we did not sell twitter on "secondary markets"

we do not participate in the "secondary markets"

if we sell, we sell in a financing organized or facilitated by the company we
have invested in

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scythe
In his recent reddit AMA, moot mentioned that Facebook logins would stop being
mandatory for Canvas in the future. That would probably expand the userbase
significantly, but I'm guessing anonymous users are less likely on average to
pay for things.

On a side note, hopefully this won't interfere with the future of 4chan. It's
a favorite of mine.

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dolvlo
That's good news on all fronts, except I'd like to point out that anonymous
users will not always be less likely to pay for things.

The economic catastrophe hit disproportionately hard the age demographics of
4chan, and this in turn has manifested an entire generation of people
unwilling (unable) to spend money on anything but necessities.

As the economy recovers, these people will eventually get decent jobs (I am an
example of this) and will have money to spend. In the last month, (now that I
have blow money) I've bought multiple items from J-List mainly due to their
continued support of 4chan over the years. Thanks for supporting one of the
last truly great communities on the internet, J-List.

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shazow
I imagine anonymous users, who are such by choice, are less likely to pay for
things purely because it breaks their anonymity.

