

I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/i-can-has-funding-cheezburger-raises-30m-for-lolcats-fail-blog-and-other-memes/

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ryanwaggoner
How the hell can you all be bitching about how this is a bubble? Were any of
you around for the dot com days? I was young, but I remember companies getting
triple and quadruple digit P/E ratios, for the lucky ones that had earnings at
all. Others went public and were worth hundreds of millions or _billions_
before they had so much as a decent audience, let alone a revenue model. Now
we're crying "bubble" because a _profitable_ company with a huge (profitable)
audience raised money to grow even more profitable? You think their subject is
stupid, I get it. You probably don't watch cheap, cookie-cutter cartoons or
read trashy romance novels, but there are _huge_ markets for those, too.

If growing, profitable companies in large markets raising capital means a
bubble, may it grow ever more bubbly.

~~~
hugh3
I'd want to know the price/earnings and the valuation before I started crying
bubble.

I am somewhat concerned about the long-term sustainability of the audience for
these properties. Will people still be interested in lolcats ten years from
now? Almost certainly not, but the question is whether the Cheezburger Network
can continue to stay on the bleeding edge of whatever zany memes folks might
happen to be interested in in the future.

~~~
cabalamat
> _Will people still be interested in lolcats ten years from now? Almost
> certainly not_

I disagree. The fundamental reason why lolcats are interesting is that people
find cats cute. Cats are a superstimulus that hooks into the human instinct to
look after our young. Since human psychology isn't going to change in the next
10 years, lolcats will still be popular.

~~~
hugh3
s/lolcats/pet rocks/

Pet rocks, after all, are also cute. So, I guess, were Beanie Babies and
Tamagotchis and... probably a bunch of earlier trends that I'm too young to
remember.

What's interesting about lolcats, actually, is that the initial wave of
popularity must have been way back in 2006 if I recall correctly. Those were
the days when "Monorail Cat" and "Invisible Bicycle" had me chuckling at
inappropriate moments for several days. But, like most people, I tired of them
pretty quick. It's quite impressive that there's _still_ a community dedicated
to them.

~~~
ShardPhoenix
Unlike those things, there have been grandmas buying decorative cat plates for
decades. Lolcats are just the same thing with an element of comedy.

------
latch
Bubble? Don't know. I bet they attract very distinct (relative to most
websites) and important segments. If I took at stab at it I'd say something
like non-tech white employed females.

If they do have unique and/or focused segments, and enough of them, they can
monetize it.

~~~
sidek
Failblog is popular with some high school students.

~~~
latch
Ya, I wasn't thinking Failblog was popular amongst the employed-female crowd.
Different property, different segment. As long as you have and can identify a
specific audience, you're in good shape. It'd be interesting to get a
breakdown lolcat's audience...maybe i'm wrong and it's a broad group which
doesn't differentiate itself from a lot of web properties (male geeks).

------
reynolds
There are a lot of reasons to believe we're in another startup bubble, but at
least Cheezburger is profitable.

------
steveplace
Just like facebook, twitter, zynga, and groupon... The fact that this news
pisses off HN commenters leads me to believe that they will be fairly
successful.

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robotys
And what will they do with the money? hire more lolcats?

~~~
gcb
maybe some cheeseburgers

~~~
davidmurphy
Import In-n-Out shipments to Seattle daily?

~~~
gcb
maybe they are working on the secret animal version of the site

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revorad
Any ideas on how much revenue/profit they make?

~~~
redthrowaway
Quite a bit. Ben Huh is worth many millions, and that's from merchandizing and
advertising, not raising capital. It's a very profitable business, considering
it's just 3 year old 4chan memes, and a bunch of newer ones that are nowhere
near funny.

~~~
revorad
Any numbers or sources?

~~~
redthrowaway
Only circumstantial and hearsay, but I do know Huh made a serious pitch to buy
reddit last year. He owns some 40 sites [1], many of which are small, but
quite a few of which are reasonably large and well-capitalized (failblog,
ICHC, Very Demotivational, there I fixed it, etc).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Holdings_Inc.#Websites>

------
shankx
Do cats get a share of that funding?

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Andrenid
Hate to be another "Bubble" preacher, but if this isn't another step in that
direction, I don't know what is.

~~~
hugh3
Well, there's two ways to look at this. Are we buying Cheezburger Network
because of its existing collection of fad-sites, or are we buying it because
we think they have the capacity to keep coming up with new fad-meme-sites
indefinitely?

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plnewman
I've never looked at this site before today. What's the point of it?

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mahmud
That, my friends, is why I wash my hands of this industry.

So much for "smart people doing what they love" eh?

Better get that government job and hunker down; once this pops, your mad
skillz might never see use again.

For those lacking historical context; it took 20 years for anyone to be hired
in industry to work in "artificial intelligence".

~~~
snprbob86
Having met several people who work at Cheezburger, I can verify that they are
indeed very smart people doing what they love. The Cheezburger team works
tirelessly to make sure that their users laugh, every day. That's their
mission and they seem to be achieving it...

~~~
mahmud
Smart people, maybe, but they sure as hell don't need to be working hard to
keep ICHCB running.

As far as technologies that inspire go, there are very, VERY few around.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Just think, if it's so easy, there's a HUGE opportunity for you to swoop in,
solo of course, and build a profitable (from inception) company with 375
million monthly pageviews and 100 million monthly video views. And since you
can run it all by yourself, think of the money you'll save!

Ah, but you're not "inspired" by that kind of thing. Too bad, you could be
rolling in cash.

EDIT: Yes, I'm being snarky. It pisses me off to see some random person on the
Internet tear down the accomplishments of a team that has built something huge
and profitable that their users love. From scratch. In three years. What
experience do you have running a network of the size and scope of theirs that
leads you to denigrate their work?

~~~
mahmud
I would rather take the Stephen Wolfram path to "rolling in cash", thank you
very much.

~~~
hugh3
This dude has been marked down to hell, but I think he has a point. With the
self-congratulation going on in a few other threads about how entrepreneurs
are better than everyone else because they create (oh I'm sorry, "hack")
amazing things which make the world a better place, it's worth noting that 90%
of internet traffic is complete garbage.

~~~
henrikschroder
Why is stuff that makes people laugh garbage?

~~~
mahmud
Kongregate was acquired for this amount (~$30MM); it's also built around
leisure and time wasting, but compare their content offerings. One has games
developed by over 10k developers, indy and professionals, while the other
offers jpegs, crowd-sourced from 4chan and reddit.

Neither is garbage, but $30 mil for an image-board? and that's not even an
acquisition but investment.

meh.

