[jamaicabound]

Wow, pretty crazy. It's amazing to see the valuations many of these apps are getting, especially so many which to me seem stupid and I would never use, although this one actually seems sorta cool, as far as some of the stuff out there though I just don't get it. I think alot of times these comapnies buying up these apps don't necessarily value the company or even idea so much as they can implement their own payment techologies or other things into what's already built. I still think these valuations are really high.

[Nemencine]

@jamaicabound.

Amazon is paying $970 million in raw cash to acquire a 3 year old company called "Twitch". Yes, 3 years ago "Twitch" didn't even exist.

Read the letter from the CEO here.

Company founded/spun off in 2011... the Amazon buyout completed 3 days ago this august, 25th, 2014. It was actually a battle between Google and Amazon to acquire Twitch. Google came in with $1 billion, i guess for synergistic reasons and the allure of pure cash offer of $970 million, Twitch went with Amazon.

Anyways, here is the story.


@ice and @ magellan.

I dont know enough about Venture Capital to competently say one way or the other; or to know how much the fat asian chick was paid. Gingruito has an exceptional thread on business where he talks about some of the negatives of venture capital funding.

David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals has a lot of very nasty things to say about VC in this very informative video from Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner Videos: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMateri...l?mid=2351

Nonetheless, creating an app called "foodspotting" that spots food, and turning around to sell it for $10million in raw cash is quite a hustle.

regards,

Nemencine

[jamaicabound]

Yeah Im no expert in VC but something which strikes me as odd. If you watch sharktank a critique they often have is you dont have a company you have an idea or product or even a temporary fad. This is what many of these apps strike me as...fads. I think the buyer must have a vision for turning the app into a payment platform or using the technology for something else as many of these things are fads. I heard of twotch as that basically just some app where you send funny face pics to each other. Saw some stupid app the other day that got bought for a ridiculous price.

[Chemistry]

(08-27-2014 12:44 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

Yeah Im no expert in VC but something which strikes me as odd. If you watch sharktank a critique they often have is you dont have a company you have an idea or product or even a temporary fad. This is what many of these apps strike me as...fads.
...
Saw some stupid app the other day that got bought for a ridiculous price.

I think that's because the Shark Tank VC's know what they're doing. I'm no expert either but I'm under the impression that a lot of people are just throwing spare money around hoping to get rich.

From a Forbes article titled "Justin Beiber, Venture Capitalist":

Quote:

Bieber ... embraces a Peter Lynch model of investing—“I’m not going to invest in something I don’t like; I have to believe in the product”—but rather than load up on buy-what-you-know value stocks, the singer has been quietly plowing millions into private tech startups. According to his manager, Bieber holds stakes in a dozen such companies.

Beiber probably has someone making recommendations for him, but whoever it is, I don't imagine they're as calculating and careful as the Shark Tank guys.

[Jack198]

(08-27-2014 01:23 PM)Chemistry Wrote:  

(08-27-2014 12:44 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

Yeah Im no expert in VC but something which strikes me as odd. If you watch sharktank a critique they often have is you dont have a company you have an idea or product or even a temporary fad. This is what many of these apps strike me as...fads.
...
Saw some stupid app the other day that got bought for a ridiculous price.

I think that's because the Shark Tank VC's know what they're doing. I'm no expert either but I'm under the impression that a lot of people are just throwing spare money around hoping to get rich.

From a Forbes article titled "Justin Beiber, Venture Capitalist":

Quote:

Bieber ... embraces a Peter Lynch model of investing—“I’m not going to invest in something I don’t like; I have to believe in the product”—but rather than load up on buy-what-you-know value stocks, the singer has been quietly plowing millions into private tech startups. According to his manager, Bieber holds stakes in a dozen such companies.

Beiber probably has someone making recommendations for him, but whoever it is, I don't imagine they're as calculating and careful as the Shark Tank guys.

Beiber has already been exposed in a penny stock scam a year or two ago, and I suspect any such investing he's doing is being done for him by financial advisors. That kid is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and does not impress me as one who does well without constant supervision.

Shark Tank crew are the real deal. You will find them asking about numbers, scalability and patents. Things that prove the concept as well as where it can go and the difficulty of someone else duplicating the business are what rings their bell. Also, if they get the sense the entrepreneur is not one thousand percent dedicated to their business, they run for the hills.