
Harland Clarke Acquires RetailMeNot for $630M - polysaturate
http://www.siliconhillsnews.com/2017/04/10/san-antonio-based-harland-clarke-acquires-retailmenot-for-630-million/
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AznHisoka
"Never build your startup on another conpany's platform"

That's true.. and if you followed that advice..

\- You would never have started retailmenot (too dependent on Google traffic)

\- You would never start Buffer and have over 10 million in annual revenue
(too dependent on twitter api)

\- You would never would have started Heroku and get acquired for millions
(too dependent on AWS)

\- You would never have started SimilarWeb and be valued at over 100 million
dollars (too dependent on browser extensions and Google)

~~~
theGimp
Google traffic and AWS are commodities to an extent since they're replaceable.
So Heroku and RetailMeNot don't qualify in my book.

More importantly though, the trend is that most companies relying on someone
else's platform for survival are cannibalized. A few examples to the contrary
don't make it a good idea.

~~~
AznHisoka
There basically is no replacement for Google traffic. Paid ads are not the
same since they cut into margin. Plus you can't even buy many brand related
terms too.

~~~
problems
I think the point is that if something else took over as the king search
engine, they'd likely be able to get traffic there too.

~~~
MichaelGG
Overtaking Google is unlikely, but Google deciding a certain coupon site is
spam/scammy and deranking them is quite the threat and would basically kill
them overnight.

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poxrud
They've successful gamed SEO to show up for every "<site> coupon/promo code"
search result. Unfortunately it's been years since I've actually found a
working code on their site. These days I don't even bother clicking on their
links.

~~~
VuWall-Matt
Last week I saved ~$400 by googling "Lenovo Coupon Code" and using a few it
spit out. So yes, sometimes they're bunk, but sometimes you get lucky.

~~~
sixothree
When I bought my Lenovo I made a reddit post asking for such and got exactly
that from a Lenovo employee.

~~~
Stratoscope
One good way to buy from Lenovo is to go through corporateperks.com. Very
simple and you get these kinds of discounts all the time. We bought our last
couple of machines this way and got a very nice price. (No affiliation with
them other than a happy customer.)

~~~
bitexploder
One way to buy Lenovo is to google for Lot of X on ebay.com where X is about 3
years old. The off-lease deals and lots of great machines you can find is
amazing.

~~~
nvarsj
Indeed, I got a top spec x220 for about 450. It was about a year old and still
under extended warranty, and practically brand new when I got it. Buying a new
Lenovo is worse than buying a new car in terms of depreciation.

~~~
sspiff
The depreciation is mostly because of the vast volumes of company leases
ending.

Despite the fairly high reliability of thwir thinkpads, you can easily get
good deals on second hand models.

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madebysquares
Wow, I always thought retailmenot was like a small 2 person company with a
bunch of scripts to scrape coupons and rank high in SEO. What do their 500+
employees do.

~~~
altoz
Former employee here.

It used to be a 2-person company before it was acquired. A large part,
surprisingly is scale. During Black Friday to Cyber Monday, for instance, the
site is hit pretty hard by all the on-line shoppers. There's also a ton of
different sites they manage, of which RetailMeNot is just one (deals2buy is
another, a bunch of other international sites). They also have iOS and Android
apps, mobile versions of the sites and a lot of community engagement.

There's a whole department to figure out which coupons do well and which
affiliates pay better than which other ones to figure out which ones to
feature. There's another department to manage all the different commission
rates (mostly to call those companies to pay more). There's a whole community
engagement group that tries to get more users to submit coupons or more users
to use the site. There's a sales department that tries to get exclusive
coupons in return for featuring them. There's even customer service to deal
with users that are having trouble. Finally, there's a department to acquire
new properties. Also, all those international coupon sites have their own mini
versions of all these departments.

You also need HR, finance, office manager, etc. The headcount goes up pretty
quick. When I left it was around 400 employees. It actually hasn't grown that
much in 3+ years.

~~~
mistermann
Wow, very interesting. I too thought it was a 1 man website, largely based on
the aesthetics - is that accidental or deliberate? I think the 1 man show
might be a better image.

~~~
altoz
There's a whole slew of designers and UX people, so whatever you see is
definitely deliberate. They do a lot of usability testing, not just for the
website, but the app, mobile site, etc. You would not believe how many
iterations of something tiny like a slight change in the thumbs up button goes
through. Everything is related to clicks and revenue, so there's a lot at
stake for even small changes.

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rcarrigan87
Pretty horrible outcome for anyone who got in on their IPO ($21/share) just 4
years ago.

It's kind of a fitting end for mostly a sham company. The business model was
shaky at best, mostly just milking first page rankings all over google.

The argument that coupon codes incent buying activity is valid, but literally
all this company did was be the first on google. If the actual retailer ranked
ahead of RTMN for coupon searches, RTMN wouldn't be anywhere near where it is
today, and retailers sales would be exactly the same.

~~~
qeternity
Retailers sales would be the same, but they wouldn't be paying unnecessary
commission to RMN. Sales commissions make sense when someone is directing new
customers to a business. But as has been said in this thread, they were simply
better at SEO. The customer was already a) aware of said product and b)
showing intention to purchase. These are precisely the value propositions that
affiliate marketing was designed for.

~~~
rcarrigan87
I was with you until that last sentence. Are you saying RTMN's model is the
same value proposition as all affiliate marketers?

Sites like Expedia, Wirecutter, and hundreds of other review or aggregator
websites that monetize through affiliate marketing add way more value to the
user than RTMN.

~~~
qeternity
No, that was my point. The exact value that affiliate marketers are supposed
to provide, RTMN does very little, and probably none at all. They are a
complete failure in delivering on the affiliate value proposition.

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aaron695
BugMeNot started RetailMeNot.

Good example of a pivot from what I assume? was a hack for fun to a business.

Also a good example of SV style buyouts etc

~~~
jasongill
The BugMeNot guys started the site, but they sold it shortly after creating it
- they have nothing to do with the (public) company it turned in to

~~~
aaron695
BugMeNot sold it for $90 million to WhaleShark Media

Sounds like a good pivot to me.

[https://delimiter.com.au/2010/12/03/90-million-payday-
aussie...](https://delimiter.com.au/2010/12/03/90-million-payday-aussie-
startup-sells-retailmenot/)

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elvirs
how do borderline scam businesses like these go public? why do people buy
their shares? why has ipo market turned into a swamp where sneaky insiders
unload their useless shares to?

~~~
nkkollaw
Why is it a borderline scam business?

~~~
elvirs
'cookie stuffing' is a pretty scammy practice

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knownothing
Once upon a time RetailMeNot was just a fly-by-night operation that scammed
retailers using PPC ads and affiliate links. Look at them now.

~~~
omarchowdhury
In what way were they scamming retailers?

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55555
They pretend (or pretended) to have coupons that you needed to click in order
to reveal. Often upon clicking, the coupons were invalid. Perhaps some were
never real. But upon clicking, a pop-under would launch which would drop their
cookie.

So a user who was already committed to buying, and in the process of doing so,
who simply checked for a coupon while going through the checkout process,
would end up generating an affiliate commission for RetailMeNot even though
RMN provided no value to either the customer or the merchant.

This is basically a scam that pretty much all coupon sites pull, which is why
many companies ban coupon sites from joining their affiliate programs.

~~~
ipsum2
What you're describing is cookie stuffing
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing)).
People have been prosecuted over this: [http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-
the-fbi-shawn-hogan-and-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-the-fbi-
shawn-hogan-and-brian-dunning-2013-4?op=1). I'm surprised about your claims
that a public company would be doing this.

~~~
dangrossman
I run affiliate programs for my businesses, none of which have a box for
coupon codes when you sign up. Despite that, nearly every day new coupon sites
sign up for the affiliate program.

They usually have a webpage full of "coupon codes" offering discounts that
don't exist made up, ready to add the referral link to. I remove all these
sites from the program, some leave the pages up anyway.

Even coupons.com has a page for my business with several "Click to Save"
buttons that do nothing. They're publicly traded as well.

~~~
rcarrigan87
Some of the sneakier coupon sites will put up other, competing products that
do have affiliate programs to try and flip people into a product where they
get paid.

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mwexler
They started as such the un-mainstream group, trying to aggregate coupon codes
so you could get fair prices without getting hammered with marketing. My, how
things have changed. Kudos to them for the payout, but sigh.

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unixhero
Unbelievable

