Simple: (1) spend 30M acquiring bunch of high-usage apps with lil revenue (2) collect anon user data (3) license / sell data to ad firms on ad exchanges and

Simple: (1) spend 30M acquiring bunch of high-usage apps with lil revenue (2) collect anon user data (3) license / sell data to ad firms on ad exchanges and more Most of HN has no idea how crazy the ad exchange business is because they are pretty tightly controlled and require high minimums to play. I wouldn't know if I didn't have a brother working inside day to day. Suffice to say, there is a flourishing market where anon user data is bought and sold for millions to improve ad targeting. One great example is rapleaf. When they launched, I was like "meh, another reputation management co." Turns out they are doing alright doing what I describe here. Yet if you simply judged them when they launched or from their consumer front they put up, you'd never know.