Local Q&A Site Hipster In Acquisition Talks With Groupon

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/hipster-groupon/

by ssclafani • 15 years ago

31 25 15 years ago

Is anyone else as speechless as me?

It's the continuation of a strange cycle. Path is a social network the encourages you to have only a few friends, why not acquire a company that hasn't launched for the users?

blhack2• 15 years ago

There are several things that seem absolutely insane about this to me.

#1 Groupon is valued at $15 Billion? Have people lost their minds?

#2 They're offering to buy hipster, a company that I've never used, and have only barely heard of. Hipster.com appears to be an ISP in Nevada, and googling hipster turns up things related to hipster culture.

Am I missing something?

olivercameron3• 15 years ago

http://usehipster.com

benologist• 15 years ago

The news gets funnier - Hipster hasn't even launched yet. And they're just another Q&A site.

Tomorrow's news: Quora rejected $11 trillion offer from Groupon!

blhack2• 15 years ago

>Hipster hasn't even launched yet.

This is the scariest part to me. I was kindof under the impression that, at least right now, you're not really buying tech, you're buying users.

"Hipster" has none.

Charuru2• 15 years ago

This is incorrect lol. Hipster has launched in some locales, just not everywhere.

gatsby• 15 years ago

April 2010: Groupon valued in the $1.35b range: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/18/its-official-groupon-announ...

January 2011: Groupon values itself in the $15b range with an IPO: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/groupon-readies-for-a...

Hmmmmm....

olivercameron3• 15 years ago

Welcome to Silicon Valley.

allantyoung• 15 years ago

Except that Groupon is from Chicago.

bretthopper• 15 years ago

It would be interesting to see a timeline of events where people started believing we're in a bubble.

You could mark me down today with this news.

veb• 15 years ago

... sounds like a good time to be doing a startup.

jarek• 15 years ago

Timing your exit turns into a crucial skill.

Charuru2• 15 years ago

The number is not big, less than 10 million dollars. You have no idea many employees they have or what kind of talent they have. This number is well in line with Google's talent acquisitions in prior years.

Also the space they're in is very very relevant.

nlh• 15 years ago

Every bubble always has a "rational explanation" for the valuations. "This time it's different" they say. Always.

This time is no different. Of course you can explain why paying $10M for an unlaunched site makes sense to a company that just turned down $6 billion from Google, who itself is valued at $200B.

Doesn't make it any less of a bubble.

rwhitman2• 15 years ago

Techcrunch also tends to greatly exaggerate acquisition prices when they don't have access to any real figures...

citricsquid• 15 years ago

okay okay okay, I'm leaning towards Techcrunch being trolled here, well I seriously hope that's the case, otherwise does anyone have a good idea that includes social, saving money and local divisions? If so, I've got some mediocre CSS skills and $10 to buy a domain with...

the ONLY way this can be true is if they've built an incredible backend that groupon want to use to expand and aren't interested in doing it themselves.

j_baker• 15 years ago

Yeah. But do you have an HD picture of the Golden Gate Bridge?

Dramatize• 15 years ago

Are you sure it's not Hipster buying Groupon?

chr15• 15 years ago

At first I was skeptical of the bubble, but this is outrageous.

banders• 15 years ago

I feel the exact same way. The Path offer, then this... I never thought I'd say this but we, folks, are in a bubble.

derwiki• 15 years ago

From what I hear, Groupon doesn't do a lot of their engineering in house. Buying a company that can make their site into more of a 'local destination' like Yelp/Hotpot/CitySearch makes a lot of sense. And they can probably get them for a much cheaper price pre-launch.

taylorbuley• 15 years ago

Amazing this was 22 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093662

jaredmck• 15 years ago

This fits into my "hipster is a gimmick run by groupon" theory...would love to see them (or anyone, really) pull off an epic trolling of tech crunch

Local Q&A Site Hipster In Acquisition Talks With Groupon

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