News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: What Happened to the Reddit IPO? by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @11:53AM (#33332267)
Reddit is unprofitable. They're telling investors: give us a dollar today and we'll give you ten dollars in as many years. (Hopefully.)

If interest rates are zero, that's a good deal. If rates are 25%, that $1 will almost get there on its own in a Treasury. A good deal in a low-rate environment is a bad one when rates, the price of money, are high.

Re:Ask HN: What Happened to the Reddit IPO? by williamsmj on Wednesday October 26, 2022 @01:59PM (#33347184)
Picking this one at random to reply to, but this goes to everyone: Thanks for all the replies.

I'm still confused. I think of inflation as a thing that devalues a present day $1. But as it applies to companies with revenue it seems like a rising tide that would lift all boats, and something that kind of divides out of the analysis of the future revenue stream of a company.

e.g. If Reddit's daily revenue is $x and inflation is 10%, then its daily revenue in a year is (approximately, caveats about their ability to raise prices, etc.) $1.1x. So Reddit can say "give us a dollar today and we'll give you $10 multiplied by ten years of 10% inflation in ten years". Is that mental model wrong?

I'm also confused why this problem particularly applies to Reddit, which seemed to the the implication of the comment I originally responded to. Is that just because Reddit makes a loss, and this challenge applies to all such companies?

Re:Ask HN: What Happened to the Reddit IPO? by deepstack on Friday October 28, 2022 @03:38AM (#33368667)
I never understood why company like Reddit, which no users give a fuck if it is 50Billion or 250Billion valuations. It is kinda like Craigslist, it provides a benefit to the society as public forum for information sharing. The cost to run it shouldn't be too high. Just keep it running for the purpose of that. Don't get into those MBA talk about making it profitable. There are business that can be profitable. Something like a public forum, should be like digital public utility, kind alike park and public library.