9 ms·

Product Hunt Raises $6M from A16Z

98 points by moritzplassnig 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nodesocket 12y ago
Wow, congratulations Ryan. It was probably quite easy (relatively) for PH to raise, since top tier investors have been sourcing potential deal flow from PH for months. Also, it does not hurt that they are a YC company, increasing their social proof.
garysvpa 12y ago
Amazing!
programminggeek 12y ago
Congrats on raising money, I'm not sure what Product Hunt will do with $6 million and how it will get a return on that investment, but I guess while a gold rush is on you sell pickaxes right? I'm sure what they are doing is valuable and they certainly have an interesting audience, I just don't have the imagination to understand what they plan on doing with it.
- bramgg 12y ago
  Well I think it's well known that Ryan plans on splitting it into many different communities "subreddit" style, I believe he even discussed the move with a co-founder of Reddit on his podcast. $6 million is a lot of money though, so you'd think there was something more.
- capkutay 12y ago
  "but I guess while a gold rush is on you sell pickaxes right?" Translation: anything that doesn't seem useful or profitable can be analogous to selling pickaxes during the gold rush
  - programminggeek 12y ago
    No, I meant it. There are quite a lot of VC's and angel investors throwing money around (gold rush), so instead of being the companies trying to get investment (digging for gold), product hunt is connecting investors to products (selling pickaxes), though I guess they must be successful enough to be invested in, so that sort of spoils the metaphor I guess.
shirazi 12y ago
Congrats!
craigmccaskill 12y ago
Congrats to Ryan and the team! I know there must be more to the plan (in addition to divide and conquer), can't wait to see what's in the works.
rokhayakebe 12y ago
Who really needs Product Hunt? 1) Moms: Well, since they make "all" the buying decisions for the family. 2) Small businesses: Sadly enough, your local dentist, or local mechanic, still need to know what are the latest, shiny tools for their trade. Software engineers and product makers, I just do not see their monetary value, other than testers for PH.
higherpurpose 12y ago
As a non-Silicon Valley non-American this is unbelievable to me. It would take a lifetime and you still wouldn't get this kind of investment money in Europe for a site like ProductHunt.
justinmares 12y ago
After having a product - Traction (book) - hit #2 on PH a few weeks ago, I can say that PH drove more and higher quality traffic than several other well-known blogs we were mentioned on. PH is great and Ryan is awesome - really excited to see where PH goes after the raise!
brianstorms 12y ago
This funding seems nuts to me.
- swartkrans 12y ago
  $6m is not a lot of money. It's big for the average series A for YC, and $6m is a 4 year runway for a 30 person team if they don't blow it on a fancy office. High quality traffic + a job board. The $22m valuation seems high though when you think about what they think that company will be worth.
  - jschuur 12y ago
    30 people for 4 years seems far more than PH should need for even for even ambitious expansion plans. When you consider the highly concentrated audience of product development users of the site, the valuation makes sense.
    - GamblersFallacy 12y ago
      Repeat traffic demographics is destiny.
  - wslh 12y ago
    How did you calculate that?
  - ibdknox 12y ago
    I'm not sure where $6M would carry a team of 30 for 4 years, but it certainly isn't in any of the tech hubs. Total cost for an employee around SF is between $150-180k (office, taxes, benefits, etc). For the sake of being generous, let's say we're in Seattle and it's 120k: 120,000 * 30 * 4 = $14.4M Even at 60k total cost you break 6M in 4 years: 60,000 * 30 * 4 = $7.2M > It's big for the average series A for YC That's not true, it would be huge for a Seed, but that's a fairly middle of the road series A. Big would be in the 10M+ range.
  - korzun 12y ago
    > $6m is not a lot of money It's a shit load of money that tons of companies would kill for. You are living in a fantasy land.
cyphunk 12y ago
I have not looked at PH for months. too US/siliconvalley centric. hopefully the cash means they can deal with this problem now
- xiepie 12y ago
  It makes sense when a community starts with a group of people from smaller community and later on expands to other areas and communities. It has been what, 6 months since PH's launch? Its a great MVP refactored out of Show HNs!
  - cyphunk 12y ago
    it is definitely a great product. what I like about Show HN is that it utilises reputation systems but lets everyone submit creating less of a filter bubble experience. Anyway, as you said, its only 6 months old. i just get the feeling though that people living in the valley can't actually see or understand the filter bubble I'm talking about.
- jccalhoun 12y ago
  It is definitely US centric. It is also very Apple-centric. Many times I see a blurb "New app X that does Y" which sounds interesting only to click on it and because they use url shortener/redirect find out it is either a direct link to the ios store or that it is an ios app. It would be nice if they would indicate that something was only for one platform or at least directly link to the page so you could see that it was a link to apple or google or whatever before clicking on it.
  - erikto 12y ago
    Hey HN! Erik from Product Hunt here. Just wanted to chime in to say that 45% of site visitors are outside the U.S. also, good feedback.
    - cyphunk 12y ago
      great. next to contributors.
BillFranklin 12y ago
That TechCrunch article is very defensive.
acoyfellow 12y ago
Congrats PH team.. The PH Philly Meetup was a great time, and I love the direction you guys are moving in. Looking forward to seeing the next evolution!
bobsil1 12y ago
This is marginally less silly than Snapchat being "worth" as much as SpaceX.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Wow, congratulations Ryan. It was probably quite easy (relatively) for PH to raise, since top tier investors have been sourcing potential deal flow from PH for months. Also, it does not hurt that they are a YC company, increasing their social proof.

garysvpa 12y ago

Amazing!

programminggeek 12y ago

Congrats on raising money, I'm not sure what Product Hunt will do with $6 million and how it will get a return on that investment, but I guess while a gold rush is on you sell pickaxes right? I'm sure what they are doing is valuable and they certainly have an interesting audience, I just don't have the imagination to understand what they plan on doing with it.

bramgg 12y ago
Well I think it's well known that Ryan plans on splitting it into many different communities "subreddit" style, I believe he even discussed the move with a co-founder of Reddit on his podcast. $6 million is a lot of money though, so you'd think there was something more.
capkutay 12y ago
"but I guess while a gold rush is on you sell pickaxes right?" Translation: anything that doesn't seem useful or profitable can be analogous to selling pickaxes during the gold rush
- programminggeek 12y ago
  No, I meant it. There are quite a lot of VC's and angel investors throwing money around (gold rush), so instead of being the companies trying to get investment (digging for gold), product hunt is connecting investors to products (selling pickaxes), though I guess they must be successful enough to be invested in, so that sort of spoils the metaphor I guess.

shirazi 12y ago

Congrats!

craigmccaskill 12y ago

Congrats to Ryan and the team! I know there must be more to the plan (in addition to divide and conquer), can't wait to see what's in the works.

rokhayakebe 12y ago

Who really needs Product Hunt? 1) Moms: Well, since they make "all" the buying decisions for the family. 2) Small businesses: Sadly enough, your local dentist, or local mechanic, still need to know what are the latest, shiny tools for their trade. Software engineers and product makers, I just do not see their monetary value, other than testers for PH.

higherpurpose 12y ago

As a non-Silicon Valley non-American this is unbelievable to me. It would take a lifetime and you still wouldn't get this kind of investment money in Europe for a site like ProductHunt.

justinmares 12y ago

After having a product - Traction (book) - hit #2 on PH a few weeks ago, I can say that PH drove more and higher quality traffic than several other well-known blogs we were mentioned on. PH is great and Ryan is awesome - really excited to see where PH goes after the raise!

brianstorms 12y ago

This funding seems nuts to me.

swartkrans 12y ago
$6m is not a lot of money. It's big for the average series A for YC, and $6m is a 4 year runway for a 30 person team if they don't blow it on a fancy office. High quality traffic + a job board. The $22m valuation seems high though when you think about what they think that company will be worth.
- jschuur 12y ago
  30 people for 4 years seems far more than PH should need for even for even ambitious expansion plans. When you consider the highly concentrated audience of product development users of the site, the valuation makes sense.
  - GamblersFallacy 12y ago
    Repeat traffic demographics is destiny.
- wslh 12y ago
  How did you calculate that?
- ibdknox 12y ago
  I'm not sure where $6M would carry a team of 30 for 4 years, but it certainly isn't in any of the tech hubs. Total cost for an employee around SF is between $150-180k (office, taxes, benefits, etc). For the sake of being generous, let's say we're in Seattle and it's 120k: 120,000 * 30 * 4 = $14.4M Even at 60k total cost you break 6M in 4 years: 60,000 * 30 * 4 = $7.2M > It's big for the average series A for YC That's not true, it would be huge for a Seed, but that's a fairly middle of the road series A. Big would be in the 10M+ range.
- korzun 12y ago
  > $6m is not a lot of money It's a shit load of money that tons of companies would kill for. You are living in a fantasy land.

cyphunk 12y ago

I have not looked at PH for months. too US/siliconvalley centric. hopefully the cash means they can deal with this problem now

xiepie 12y ago
It makes sense when a community starts with a group of people from smaller community and later on expands to other areas and communities. It has been what, 6 months since PH's launch? Its a great MVP refactored out of Show HNs!
- cyphunk 12y ago
  it is definitely a great product. what I like about Show HN is that it utilises reputation systems but lets everyone submit creating less of a filter bubble experience. Anyway, as you said, its only 6 months old. i just get the feeling though that people living in the valley can't actually see or understand the filter bubble I'm talking about.
jccalhoun 12y ago
It is definitely US centric. It is also very Apple-centric. Many times I see a blurb "New app X that does Y" which sounds interesting only to click on it and because they use url shortener/redirect find out it is either a direct link to the ios store or that it is an ios app. It would be nice if they would indicate that something was only for one platform or at least directly link to the page so you could see that it was a link to apple or google or whatever before clicking on it.
- erikto 12y ago
  Hey HN! Erik from Product Hunt here. Just wanted to chime in to say that 45% of site visitors are outside the U.S. also, good feedback.
  - cyphunk 12y ago
    great. next to contributors.

BillFranklin 12y ago

That TechCrunch article is very defensive.

acoyfellow 12y ago

Congrats PH team.. The PH Philly Meetup was a great time, and I love the direction you guys are moving in. Looking forward to seeing the next evolution!

bobsil1 12y ago

This is marginally less silly than Snapchat being "worth" as much as SpaceX.