
Y Combinator-backed Humble Bundle sells $1.8M worth of indie games - shawndumas
http://venturebeat.com/2010/12/27/humble-bundle-sale-ends/
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noahth
I'm a big fan and modest (but above-average! :D ) supporter of these Humble
Bundles, but it's hard for me to imagine that the potential upside on this is
big enough to warrant a YC investment.

I suppose time will tell; either way I'll be happy to see the next bundle.

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patio11
If you can sell more than a million dollars of digital goods _twice_ , I like
your chances at finding a scalable model. The solution space is
multidimensional but I think lots of the options in it win. (e.g. Dump the
tip, charge developers 30%, do it weekly, optimize aggressively, etc.)

~~~
citricsquid
I disagree, this is more milliondollarhomepage than anything else. Sure, they
could make money like the way Steam do (<http://store.steampowered.com>) but
not with this specific model. There is legs in the bundle model, but I don't
think it requires any investment... it's a 0 capital start up, they've made
their name so when they approach other indie developers they can work based on
their name alone.

I would however seriously hope they don't do what you're suggesting (weekly)
the idea has very limited usage, there are a finite number of games out there
and a finite amount of interest, this works based on the publicity ("Viral
marketing") and not just the idea. Take a look at appsumo for an idea, their
bundles are crap now (compared to what I as an "early adopter" got accustomed
to) and most lost interest.

This is not an idea to milk.

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c2
Time will tell either way. I suspect the end result of this will be different
then either of you have envisioned. All that can be said today is that the
experiment is by any measure reasonably successful and there is potential
there to go bigger in some capacity.

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8ig8
I'm kinda surprised to see that $5,555.55 anonymous contribution. 4chan
comments aside, I guess it's just someone feeling generous? I know that the
purchaser can indicate the amount to go to charity, but I'm under the
impression that this is not tax deductible. Can anyone confirm this?

Edit (added): Thinking more on this, I wonder if the Humble Bundle folks
actually get the tax benefit of the donations.

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sliverstorm
They have/had a 'top donators' box on the donation page. I saw one entry that
was #1 for at least a little while of $1,000, and it was advertisement. I
thought that was pretty clever, and generally beneficial for everyone.

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bwb
Thanks :)

We got quite a few customers from that, plus donations to good causes, and
some game developers.

Thanks, Ben (Site5)

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erreon
It was awesome to see indie games getting into the hands of people who they
usually wouldn't appeal to.

The best thing though was to see those like Notch and others give back to the
community that gave so much to them.

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pxlpshr
Cool to see Riot Games dev team as a top contributor. We built some
multiplayer technology for their League of Legends game back in 06-07 when it
was called something else and deep in pre-alpha development. Our company went
bankrupt but it was a great learning experience and our influence remains in
the production release.

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gcr
Um, what? Since when was Wolfire games, the guys behind the humble indie
bundle, backed by Y-combinator? This is the first time I've ever heard of this
association.

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srgseg
Anyone know how they drove so much traffic toward their bundle? Did they have
partners that took a revenue share?

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tdoggette
It's an interesting idea and a good deal with a charity angle; it got coverage
on blogs and forums, and spread around like links do.

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trafficlight
Penny Arcade talked about it several times since one of the charities was
Child's Play. That targeted traffic is worth it's weight in gold.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
Very true! I know this for a fact:
[http://blog.aisleten.com/2009/01/28/linked-from-penny-
arcade...](http://blog.aisleten.com/2009/01/28/linked-from-penny-arcade-pa-
day-2009/)

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rokhayakebe
Disruption does not always have to be a new technology, it can also be a new
business model. Fantastic.

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tocomment
Why did someone pay 6k for this? Or am I reading the page wrong?

