Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by ryanwaggoner on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:41AM
(#2114899)
How the hell can you all be bitching about how this is a bubble? Were any of you around for the dot com days? I was young, but I remember companies getting triple and quadruple digit P/E ratios, for the lucky ones that had earnings at all. Others went public and were worth hundreds of millions or billions before they had so much as a decent audience, let alone a revenue model. Now we're crying "bubble" because a profitable company with a huge (profitable) audience raised money to grow even more profitable? You think their subject is stupid, I get it. You probably don't watch cheap, cookie-cutter cartoons or read trashy romance novels, but there are huge markets for those, too.
If growing, profitable companies in large markets raising capital means a bubble, may it grow ever more bubbly.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by hugh3 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:53AM
(#2114929)
I'd want to know the price/earnings and the valuation before I started crying bubble.
I am somewhat concerned about the long-term sustainability of the audience for these properties. Will people still be interested in lolcats ten years from now? Almost certainly not, but the question is whether the Cheezburger Network can continue to stay on the bleeding edge of whatever zany memes folks might happen to be interested in in the future.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by cabalamat on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @03:25AM
(#2115094)
> Will people still be interested in lolcats ten years from now? Almost certainly not
I disagree. The fundamental reason why lolcats are interesting is that people find cats cute. Cats are a superstimulus that hooks into the human instinct to look after our young. Since human psychology isn't going to change in the next 10 years, lolcats will still be popular.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by hugh3 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:08AM
(#2115176)
s/lolcats/pet rocks/
Pet rocks, after all, are also cute. So, I guess, were Beanie Babies and Tamagotchis and... probably a bunch of earlier trends that I'm too young to remember.
What's interesting about lolcats, actually, is that the initial wave of popularity must have been way back in 2006 if I recall correctly. Those were the days when "Monorail Cat" and "Invisible Bicycle" had me chuckling at inappropriate moments for several days. But, like most people, I tired of them pretty quick. It's quite impressive that there's still a community dedicated to them.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by danilocampos on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @03:31AM
(#2115105)
> Will people still be interested in lolcats ten years from now?
It's a fair point. Another questionable investment: Those guys with the Apple II. Who is going to be interested in having an Apple II ten years hence? The guys peddling DOS are some scam artists, too.
If only smart people could shift their business from one success into another, leveraging their talent, assets and experience in the process...
(And before the pedants jump in: of course ICHC isn't anywhere close to the same level of impact.)
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by hugh3 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:13AM
(#2115186)
If we're going to argue from analogy: Man, that Vanilla Ice really has a hit on his hands with "Ice Ice Baby". I'm sure he'll continue to have an equal string of successes for many years to come. I definitely need to invest in him!
This is the point: making popular memes is unpredictable. I Can Haz Cheezburgr certainly has a pretty good system in place for detecting and capitalising on new memes as they come up , but what about the meta-meme upon which they're based... the idea that it's horrendously amusing to put a big 36-point Impact caption on a random picture? If people get tired of doing that, can they adapt?
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by natrius on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:45AM
(#2115265)
I think the better analogy would be: "Man, EMI (née SBK) has really done well for themselves by signing Vanilla Ice. I'm sure they'll continue to sign good acts in the future."
Making popular music is unpredictable, but if you're good enough at marketing, you'll make a lot of money when a hit comes your way. I'd guess that's the Cheezburger business plan.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by revorad on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:11AM
(#2115181)
I honestly don't mind the curious reactions of people. I think it's helpful to know what we felt at the time of the posting and to see people's reaction changing as answers are revealed. If I can't laugh at us, who will?
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by jcfrei on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @08:58AM
(#2115762)
A simple question remains: what are they going to do with 30 mil $? If the site is profitable already, and the business model won't change significantly then the only space for growth is yet another meme niche site ( which they have been doing in the past). Anyway I think their potential for growth is limited and the 30 mil valuation doesnt reflect the potential earnings - bubble or not.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by latch on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:52AM
(#2114925)
I did an internship at a place in 99...I never saw a product or a client..but I saw fancy offices and foosball tables. It set certain ..ahh...unrealistic expectations.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by brc on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @02:07AM
(#2114959)
That must have sucked going into a downhill ride in both work and office expectations. I imagine within three years you were working in some crappy location jammed with developers.
I was lucky. I started work in a major recession after 12 months of searching. Every year was an improvement in both salary, conditions and offices. By the time the bubble came and went I'd seen it all anyway.
Still, good times. I remember having a golf putter beside my desk and engaging in golf competitions with senior management. And my coworkers writing cool multiplayer games instead of actually, you know, writing code that paid bills. Oh there was deadlines and projects and stuff like that.
Another one of my friends was having visa troubles, and had to produce evidence of employment. All he had was a couple of employement documents on a letterhead of a company that didn't exist anymore, and the domain name went to some crazy domain parking company. The INS people were skeptical to say the least when he tried to explain what they did.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by latch on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:03AM
(#2114803)
Bubble? Don't know. I bet they attract very distinct (relative to most websites) and important segments. If I took at stab at it I'd say something like non-tech white employed females.
If they do have unique and/or focused segments, and enough of them, they can monetize it.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by JacobAldridge on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:48AM
(#2115272)
Yeah, for what it's worth I tend to check out a few of their properties most days. I stopped with the lolcats when the ironic crowd were overrun with the 'oh-it's-a-cute-kittie' crowd, but I still check out Fail Blog, Ugliest Tattoos, and Failbook. I think you're right that focused segments is the key to the growth and success so far.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by latch on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:48AM
(#2114914)
Ya, I wasn't thinking Failblog was popular amongst the employed-female crowd. Different property, different segment. As long as you have and can identify a specific audience, you're in good shape. It'd be interesting to get a breakdown lolcat's audience...maybe i'm wrong and it's a broad group which doesn't differentiate itself from a lot of web properties (male geeks).
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by steveplace on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @08:32AM
(#2115682)
Just like facebook, twitter, zynga, and groupon... The fact that this news pisses off HN commenters leads me to believe that they will be fairly successful.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by rhizome on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @02:06PM
(#2116921)
I don't usually complain about downvotes, but this time? They're going to have to expand horizontally to get past hot-or-not vitality, though I suppose they could just be planning growth based on discovering more cute-able animals.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by redthrowaway on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @07:22AM
(#2115515)
Quite a bit. Ben Huh is worth many millions, and that's from merchandizing and advertising, not raising capital. It's a very profitable business, considering it's just 3 year old 4chan memes, and a bunch of newer ones that are nowhere near funny.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by redthrowaway on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @08:12AM
(#2115634)
Only circumstantial and hearsay, but I do know Huh made a serious pitch to buy reddit last year. He owns some 40 sites [1], many of which are small, but quite a few of which are reasonably large and well-capitalized (failblog, ICHC, Very Demotivational, there I fixed it, etc).
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by hugh3 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:03AM
(#2114804)
Well, there's two ways to look at this. Are we buying Cheezburger Network because of its existing collection of fad-sites, or are we buying it because we think they have the capacity to keep coming up with new fad-meme-sites indefinitely?
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by snprbob86 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:34AM
(#2114886)
Having met several people who work at Cheezburger, I can verify that they are indeed very smart people doing what they love. The Cheezburger team works tirelessly to make sure that their users laugh, every day. That's their mission and they seem to be achieving it...
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by ryanwaggoner on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @01:47AM
(#2114910)
Just think, if it's so easy, there's a HUGE opportunity for you to swoop in, solo of course, and build a profitable (from inception) company with 375 million monthly pageviews and 100 million monthly video views. And since you can run it all by yourself, think of the money you'll save!
Ah, but you're not "inspired" by that kind of thing. Too bad, you could be rolling in cash.
EDIT: Yes, I'm being snarky. It pisses me off to see some random person on the Internet tear down the accomplishments of a team that has built something huge and profitable that their users love. From scratch. In three years. What experience do you have running a network of the size and scope of theirs that leads you to denigrate their work?
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by hugh3 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:16AM
(#2115192)
This dude has been marked down to hell, but I think he has a point. With the self-congratulation going on in a few other threads about how entrepreneurs are better than everyone else because they create (oh I'm sorry, "hack") amazing things which make the world a better place, it's worth noting that 90% of internet traffic is complete garbage.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by mahmud on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:53AM
(#2115281)
Kongregate was acquired for this amount (~$30MM); it's also built around leisure and time wasting, but compare their content offerings. One has games developed by over 10k developers, indy and professionals, while the other offers jpegs, crowd-sourced from 4chan and reddit.
Neither is garbage, but $30 mil for an image-board? and that's not even an acquisition but investment.
Re:I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M
by dualogy on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:51AM
(#2115277)
Same with TV and other media. The point is that 90% is garbage for everyone -- but it's also a different 90% for everyone. So I don't think this argument matters. Witness that companies building something loved by more than 10% of people (Facebook, Apple, Google) also yield way higher valuations and returns.
If growing, profitable companies in large markets raising capital means a bubble, may it grow ever more bubbly.
I am somewhat concerned about the long-term sustainability of the audience for these properties. Will people still be interested in lolcats ten years from now? Almost certainly not, but the question is whether the Cheezburger Network can continue to stay on the bleeding edge of whatever zany memes folks might happen to be interested in in the future.
I disagree. The fundamental reason why lolcats are interesting is that people find cats cute. Cats are a superstimulus that hooks into the human instinct to look after our young. Since human psychology isn't going to change in the next 10 years, lolcats will still be popular.
Pet rocks, after all, are also cute. So, I guess, were Beanie Babies and Tamagotchis and... probably a bunch of earlier trends that I'm too young to remember.
What's interesting about lolcats, actually, is that the initial wave of popularity must have been way back in 2006 if I recall correctly. Those were the days when "Monorail Cat" and "Invisible Bicycle" had me chuckling at inappropriate moments for several days. But, like most people, I tired of them pretty quick. It's quite impressive that there's still a community dedicated to them.
I absolutely do not find cats cute though. I'd happily kill the whole species off if I was allowed to.
It's a fair point. Another questionable investment: Those guys with the Apple II. Who is going to be interested in having an Apple II ten years hence? The guys peddling DOS are some scam artists, too.
If only smart people could shift their business from one success into another, leveraging their talent, assets and experience in the process...
(And before the pedants jump in: of course ICHC isn't anywhere close to the same level of impact.)
This is the point: making popular memes is unpredictable. I Can Haz Cheezburgr certainly has a pretty good system in place for detecting and capitalising on new memes as they come up , but what about the meta-meme upon which they're based... the idea that it's horrendously amusing to put a big 36-point Impact caption on a random picture? If people get tired of doing that, can they adapt?
Making popular music is unpredictable, but if you're good enough at marketing, you'll make a lot of money when a hit comes your way. I'd guess that's the Cheezburger business plan.
- Ben Huh, Cheezburger, Inc. Founder and CEO
http://www.quora.com/What-were-the-VCs-thinking-in-investing...
Two things: 1. Some people will profit in a bubble. 2. That things aren't as stupid as 1999 doesn't mean this isn't one.
I was lucky. I started work in a major recession after 12 months of searching. Every year was an improvement in both salary, conditions and offices. By the time the bubble came and went I'd seen it all anyway.
Still, good times. I remember having a golf putter beside my desk and engaging in golf competitions with senior management. And my coworkers writing cool multiplayer games instead of actually, you know, writing code that paid bills. Oh there was deadlines and projects and stuff like that.
Another one of my friends was having visa troubles, and had to produce evidence of employment. All he had was a couple of employement documents on a letterhead of a company that didn't exist anymore, and the domain name went to some crazy domain parking company. The INS people were skeptical to say the least when he tried to explain what they did.
If they do have unique and/or focused segments, and enough of them, they can monetize it.
http://failblog.org/ http://ugliesttattoos.com/ http://failbook.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Holdings_Inc.#Websites
So much for "smart people doing what they love" eh?
Better get that government job and hunker down; once this pops, your mad skillz might never see use again.
For those lacking historical context; it took 20 years for anyone to be hired in industry to work in "artificial intelligence".
As far as technologies that inspire go, there are very, VERY few around.
Ah, but you're not "inspired" by that kind of thing. Too bad, you could be rolling in cash.
EDIT: Yes, I'm being snarky. It pisses me off to see some random person on the Internet tear down the accomplishments of a team that has built something huge and profitable that their users love. From scratch. In three years. What experience do you have running a network of the size and scope of theirs that leads you to denigrate their work?
Neither is garbage, but $30 mil for an image-board? and that's not even an acquisition but investment.
meh.