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OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date
- joejohnson 15y agoThe name was changed from "iminlikewithyou" to "OMGPOP"? Wow, they really never planned on leaving the 10-12 year-old market.
- ntkachov 15y agoIf you can appeal to the 10-12 year old market you appeal to the whole world. Because who, really, considers themselves older than 10-12 on the inside?
- k33n 15y agoYou're attempting (and failing) to belittle a company which just sold for $200,000,000. They clearly had very broad appeal. Sorry you're feeling a little jealous. Try not to let it show so much.
- ebf 15y agoMy whole dorm played their games when they were iminlikewithyou.com. My friends never thought the name was childish, and it went with their cute art direction.
- waxy 15y agoIs it a cash deal though? If not, it might take a few years until their stock vests and until than zynga might not be worth much. So i really hope it's at least 50% cash.
- swombat 15y agoIirc, Zynga is public, so their stock is basically (almost) as good as cash in terms of liquidity.
- hngryhppos 15y agoZynga is a publicly traded company. That being said, sometimes their are sometimes restrictions on when employees can sell their stock (i.e. a waiting period after acquisition).
- wheels 15y agoThat's orthogonal to what waxy said. Public stock can vest as well. The liquidity of the stock is only relevant at which point it vests. So, if, as suggested, ZNGA were to lose some percent of its value before the first cliff hits, the effective value of the transaction would that percentage of the sticker price in an all stock deal.
- swombat 15y agoWould an investor in startup X accept vesting stock from company Y as a payment for their stock in company X? Surely for investors, the stock has to vest immediately (if it's paid in stock)... It doesn't make sense to try and "keep the investor around", does it?
- benatkin 15y agoYes, but it would make for a less impressive deal. OMGPOP being acquired for much less is plausible, so another kind of a less impressive deal is plausible too. Zynga could go bust. Without being acquired OMGPOP could go bust. So the investor would have to weigh the risk. I also think there would have to be some cash and/or stock that would be available right away, for it to be an enticing deal.
- schoudha 15y agoWow, great call by YC and patience by the founders.
- brico 15y agoYes, but this one was pure luck. They didn't plan on building games for android and iOS. I remember them for being a 100% flash-site that offered a mediocre tetris-clone until they were sued by the tetris-copyright-holders. "Draw Something" was an extremely fortunate product: a) they finally had a hugely popular game which took everyone by surprise and b) they made so much money that Zynga decided to just buy them instead of spending weeks/months on copying them and losing money every day they didn't have an alternative to "Draw Something"
- inovica 15y agoMany successes are based around 'luck' - or more accurately capitalising on it when it comes your way. I know my business has continuously evolved over the years and people have often used the term 'lucky' for me. I find it irritating when people say that someones success is purely down to luck - I'm sure that there were a lot of decisions that were made that contributed to their success here, as that's what it is
- brico 15y agosorry for not being clear: not the people running OMGPOP were lucky, the investors were, they just couldn't have known how things turned out to be. When they invested in the initial round my guess is that the idea behind the startup and the business ideas were completely different from what the company represents now
- stevenj 15y agoThe article forgot about Reddit. Not sure what the terms were though.
- scrame 15y agoReddit was pretty low, I think. It was an undisclosed sum, but Reddit was not the internet juggernaut it is today.
- redthrowaway 15y agoI believe reddit was sold for ~$10MM. It was acquired when it was ~18 months old, long before it was as large as it is today.
- jacoblyles 15y agoreddit was one of the most undervalued sales of all time.
- philwelch 15y agoWas it? They're not exactly rolling in profits seven years after launch.
- brico 15y agobecause they are very concerned about annoying/destroying the community. in the hands of a purely profit-oriented company they would make enormous amounts of money and milk the site until its demise a couple of years in
- dlokshin 15y agoThis is taking the word "exit" a bit liberally, but has YC sold any stock in later rounds of financing for companies like Dropbox and Airbnb?
- est 15y agoFrom one of the earlier days http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52206 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52206
- parfe 15y agoAny issues dealing with a Zynga and their business practices? Will the founders and later employees of OMGPOP be protected from Zynga's underhandedness (reported aggressive clawbacks)?
- sambeau 15y agoThis acquisition demonstrates the wisdom of investing in people rather than products. A good team will be flexible and have the ability to take advantage of small pieces of success and build them into hard-won 'luck'. Being lucky requires the ability to see when you've been handed an advantage and the tenacity to step into and exploit a lucky situation. Many people just let luck pass them by.
- danssig 15y agoCongratulations to them. The bad news is; now they work for Zynga. I hope none of the founders is a chef.