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Reading the headline "<Business I've never heard of> selling for $<N>bn" is become an increasingly common occurrence for me
by nly 5y ago
Reading the headline "<Business I've never heard of> selling for $<N>bn" is become an increasingly common occurrence for me
- shankr 5y agoI suppose you don't hear often about all the market/advertising companies buying each other. Even though I work in this field, I am almost always clueless about who are these companies.
- hardtke 5y agoAdvertising companies have a natural size limit since they generally can't work for competing companies. Agencies reach about $500M in revenue and then get sold off to a holding company. It's almost inevitable there are a whole bunch of deals.
- Ekaros 5y agoI'm always surprised in number of these 1B+ businesses... Like is there really this many of them, or is there something weird going on...
- CamelCaseName 5y agoMy guess is that it's driven by multiple inflation. Prior to August 2018, there were no trillion dollar companies, now there are at least 5 (MSFT, AMZN, AAPL, Aramco, Google) and more on the way.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Prior to August 2018, there were no trillion dollar companies, now there are at least 5 (MSFT, AMZN, AAPL, Aramco, Google) This observation seems more likely to be driven by Aramco not being a public company before 2018 than by Aramco not existing before 2018. Just because it's a little harder to see something doesn't mean it isn't there.
- RC_ITR 5y agoSure there’s multiple expansion, but also significant earnings growth...
- elorant 5y agoThey fly under the radar. They keep their heads down and do their job without trying to attract attention in order to avoid unwanted competition. There are myriads of such companies out there we've never heard of.
- bertil 5y agoDepop is very much the opposite of flying under the radar. They are a key player in fashion and love nothing but flashy promotions, they’d love to be associated to any big brand. They are not as big as Farfetch (disclaimer: where I worked) but both companies are pillars of fashion-tech scene in London. Their marketing and social media presence is as large as they can get it (I know their former Head of Social media and VP Product). Being successful there is a first step to becoming an influencer. As a second-hand market, they’ve been carried by the environmental trend lately, deservingly so. Their audience is younger, more female and fashion-forward and in that very seeked-after demographic, they have incredible numbers. There are American companies, like Vestiaire Collective, that offer a similar service but Depop is making strides around the world. There might not be a lot of overlap with your interest, or those of many people in Hacker News — and that’s fine. But, to fin equivalents, saying that TikTok or Tampax are "under the radar" brands says more about your curiosity than it says about a product used by half of the population.
- elorant 5y agoThey're not a "key player in fashion". A key player in fashion is Prada or D&G. They're a niche company dealing with second hand streetware items. How on earth does Tik Tok or Tampax relate with Depop? P.S. As a general rule of thumb we try to avoid personal remarks in here when replying to a person. Just to keep the place a bit more civilized.
- colinmhayes 5y agoDepop really isn't a niche company. It's effectively instagram but the clothes are for sale. Companies relate to the consumers the same way they do with instagram influencers, product placement.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoYes something very weird is going on. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
- nly 5y agoI suppose it's not that much really. If you stick a P/E multiple of 20x on it then it's only annual earnings of $80M.
- rahoulb 5y agoI've always felt one of the fallacies of the startup culture that we surround ourselves in is that winning involves "taking over the world". There are so many "niche" businesses out there - that will be enough to bring in millions in revenue - simply because there is such a variety in what people want and need. And we'll never hear of them unless our interests happen to coincide with that particular niche. Case in point - I've just started working for a company that is an upstart small player in the area of document management for construction companies. You'd think document management was a solved problem and there wouldn't be room for specialists in that area - but no, there are several multi-million dollar businesses that do nothing but. And there's still room for small companies like ours to grow into.
- wintermutestwin 5y agoInteresting that you used the term "document management" as opposed to "content management." I cut my teeth as a "document management" consultant in the early 90s, when it was really just documents. I thought the "content management" term took over.
- rahoulb 5y agoFor this niche it is specifically document management - CAD drawings, PDFs and MS Office files.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoIt's a byproduct of all the VC funny money being thrown around.
- nkrisc 5y agoI mean this in a completely good-natured way, but after looking at their site I’m not surprised that someone who would write “<Business I’ve never heard of> selling for $<N>bn” has never heard of them. You don’t strike me as their target audience. That said, neither am I. Looks like you can’t even view any merchandise on the website, it’s basically an app-only experience it seems. That’s a huge turn-off for me.
- anentropic 5y agoYes you can, just scroll down
- input_sh 5y agoAfter clicking on "Vintage t-shirts", I got no products available. After scrolling a bit more down, I've noticed I can click on what I'm assuming is individual sellers, but that returns 500 internal server error. And this thing is being sold for a billion dollars.
- sandworm101 5y agoOk boomer. Nobody uses websites anymore. For the proper shopping experience you must install the app. Your precise browsing history and phone location will be used to tailor a bespoke peer-to-peer shopping experience. Don't like a shopping app running 24/7 in your pocket? You just don't get modern fashion.
- z29LiTp5qUC30n 5y agoBut I was born in 2002 and I still don't get this crap. It is like people are begging to be psychologically controlled for max financial extraction...
- sandworm101 5y ago>> people are begging to be psychologically controlled for max financial extraction "Shut up and take my money!" Futurama s06e03 - Attack of the Killer App (2010)
- ghaff 5y agoWay back when I was a computer systems product manager, I was constantly struck by the random customers that would come through the executive briefing center who were some random boring business (making milk bottles or whatever) and it would turn out they had 75% of the US market or something like that. (This was before really widespread globalization.)
- nly 5y agoI would be super interested in ways to visualize or learn of these 'background realities'.
- zachrose 5y agoTo think that one day Etsy was one of those businesses, and now they have $1.63B to spend on the new thing