AngelList Acquires Product Hunt (fortune.com)

Product Hunt, an online community of tech product enthusiasts, is no longer going at it alone. The three-year-old San Francisco startup said Thursday it is being acquired by AngelList, a popular crowdfunding platform for startups and angel investors. From a report on Fortune: Though Product Hunt is still a very young startup, it's not hard to see why it made the move to sell to AngelList. Product Hunt debuted three years ago, almost to the day-- founder Ryan Hoover and a friend, Nathan Bashaw, put together the original version of the website during the Thanksgiving weekend. Hoover had initially experimented with sharing apps and other tech products with a small group of friends via email newsletters. The site quickly grew in reputation among Silicon Valley insiders and tech enthusiasts everywhere as a place to share and find new or interesting apps, gadgets, and tech tools. It even had a small job board, which was Product Hunt's first source of revenue. Product Hunt also said it will continue to operate independently.

Comments

This is great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

The other day I was lying in bed thinking about Product Hunt's future. It caused me great distress, so much so, that even a warm glass of milk could not calm my frayed nerves.
This brings me great joy, not just on a personal level, but also on a spiritual level knowing that the few folks who created a web site out of a bunch of public code, can now retire wealthy without accomplishing much. They truly deserve it and have now set the bar to a standard that few of us will be able to reach.

Monitized!

[Anonymous Coward]

So they sold it out.

Re:Monitized!

[lxs]

To me "tech product enthusiasts" conjures up the image of mindless consumers of pointless gadgets and those who market to them. People who have sold out long ago. At least they still have their Wifi kettles to keep them warm at night.

Unbleievable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Up next, we’ll likely to see a big push into monetization from Product Hunt. The startup recently began to dabble with revenue models, such as making it easier for visitors to purchase products they find on the site and taking a small cut from the proceeds.

To date, Product Hunt has raised roughly $7.2 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, and Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments.

They don't have any real idea how to make money, but they still got $7.2 million. And the ideas they do have are totally lame.

I guess you gotta be out there to get suckers like that.

Re:Unbleievable.

[Hognoxious]

Clearly they're complete bell-ends, but I wish I could do it.

How is this "stuff that matters"?

[HBI]

In other important news, I heard the local sewage plant is shutting down a valve for cleanup.

Who acquired what now?

[Chmarr]

Maybe I've been living under a rock (shut up, it's a comfortable rock!), but I have not heard of either of these two companies so... why should I care?

Re:Who acquired what now?

[mattack2]

You must NEVER see commercials (as much as I avoid them, I still see them), because Angie's List does commercials, and AFAIK does podcast commercials too.. She also does a newspaper column.

Angie's List -- the place that I think most people, including me, start off describing as "Oh, you mean the Yelp! that you have to pay for?".

Though the last episode of the "How I Built This" podcast was about Angie's List, and was entertaining. It was more work and started up earlier than I had thought. I'm still not going to subscribe to Angie's List, but it was entertaining.

Re:Who acquired what now?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what I thought when I read his post...at least at first. But go back and read the story again. It's not Angie's List....it's Angel List (as in angel investor, I presume). And with that realization, I bet you've now never heard of either company.

Re:Who acquired what now?

[CannonballHead]

s/Angie's List/AngelList/ :)

Re:Who acquired what now?

[mattack2]

HAHAHAHA!!!!

Wow, I love it when the brain misreads/"fixes" something _over and over_.

Re:Who acquired what now?

[Heart44]

Actually, I had a look at Product Hunt and liked it - lots of good ideas. No, I have no association with either companies and have never heard of either before this slashdot post. I am quite happy to have a slashvertisement that is this interesting.

Re:Who acquired what now?

[NonUniqueNickname]

Maybe I've been living under a rock (shut up, it's a comfortable rock!), but I have not heard of either of these two companies so... why should I care?

So you're saying you've never heard of slashvertisement under your rock? Must be a really nice rock.

Re:Who acquired what now?

[Anonymous Coward]

On first glance this is a naked hype-machine play.

1. Angelist = founders who can't get funded and playboy VC's (with just enough notable exceptions to keep the ball rolling)
2. ProductHunt = invite only cool-kids club to get your first few '000 users for your shitty derivative thing (with just enough notable exceptions to keep the ball rolling)
3. 1 + 2 = profit?

Just pointing these out

[TanjaTheMoogle]

>>"Hoover had initially experimenting with sharing apps..." >>"Product Hunt also said it will continue to operate idependently." .... just pointing those out.

Startups

[Anonymous Coward]

It's to give us geeks hope that we too can have some lameass idea, get millions in funding from Silicon Valley retards - I mean VCs - and then start another lame ass startup and even more money because we have a "track record".

Good grief! When I was in front of investors here in Atlanta, I had 5 minutes to sell my idea and I had to answer THE question: "How are you going to drive revenues?"

If I said I was going to dabble with ideas or take a commission from web sales, they'd just say, "Thank you for coming in. We have your contact information. Next!" and never hear from them.

Re:Startups

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, how is that a bad thing of separating this stupid idiots from their money and pocketing it? Same as you, selling crap is never easy and I usually deal with folks who care about the business model and revenue projections.

I'd totally do this. I'm old and bitter enough not to let this bother me too much; I would keep donating to the Red Cross and use my spare time to coach minor softball or soccer.

Re: Startups

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had several ideas, dismissed them as lameass and obvious, or only capable if delivering relatively small value and thus modest profits, only to see people make millions with essentially the same ideas.

So what's the new company gonna be called

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

AngelHunt? Sounds like the name of a pedo website...

Re:So what's the new company gonna be called

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi dipshit,

Angie, not angel. I get it though, you go to keep up the post quota, you fucktard.

Hugs and kisses,

Juan Epstein

AngelList??

[Anonymous Coward]

Product Hut?

Who....???????

Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary should explain exactly who the fuck these entities are, and exactly why I should care about them.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck are these sites???

In other news...

[DidgetMaster]

SomeCompanyINeverHeardOf acquired SomeOtherCompanyFromWhoKnowsWhere for $LudicrousAmount to do SomethingCompletelyForeignToMe so that I am completely jealous that I didn't think of it first.

Acquires a community?

[drinkypoo]

Product Hunt, an online community of tech product enthusiasts, is no longer going at it alone. The three-year-old San Francisco startup said Thursday it is being acquired by AngelList,

No. Product Hunt, a web startup, is no longer going at it alone. Its community is probably hoping it doesn't get shit upon by AngelList. Acquiring a community is what you call it when you enslave a whole village at once.