Pinterest Acquires Hackermeter (YC S13)

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/11/pinterest-acquires-hackermeter-right-out-of-the-gate-will-shut-it-down/

by minimaxir • 13 years ago

61 32 13 years ago

derefr• 13 years ago

Does anyone else feel that buying out Hackermeter this early on is almost somehow polite of Pinterest, relative to the behavior of other bigcorps that practice acquihiring?

Most companies will only acquihire once a startup is pretty mature, and has thousands/millions of people relying on its service--even though it would be equally easy to judge whatever attributes of the startup's product/service signals "good team, do buy out" from much earlier on in its lifecycle. I had never even heard of Hackermeter, but on reading the pitch in the article, and seeing a bit of the product, it's immediately obvious what kind of tech/UX/design/product-sense expertise would be required to produce it, and what I could do if I could put the same talent behind my own venture.

Maybe this should be the start of something. I'm picturing a PR-wire-like service for startups to post their MVPs, which bigcorps can subscribe to, and offer to buy out the talent that catches their eye before the service is even out of closed beta. (In fact, just to go a bit crazy: imagine if the use of this service became commonplace. Acquihiring a startup with traction might be considered "bad business!")

minimaxir• 13 years ago

I believe Exitround is doing something along those lines.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/09/exitround-first-exit/

rhizome• 13 years ago

Consider the possibility that someone from Hackermeter sent their resume to Pinterest unprompted, and that's what put them on the radar.

far33d• 13 years ago

It's called AngelList.

jtbigwoo2• 13 years ago

They don't appear to have much of a product or much business. Let's call it what it is: a signing bonus, not an acquisition.

Perhaps I should use this approach the next time I apply for a job. "You're going to have to acquire my side project in order to get me to start working here."

Maybe I could make techcrunch.

chadwickthebold• 13 years ago

Agreed. I wonder how the folks YC feels about this. Must be pretty embarrassing that an alum has so little confidence in their product that they'll bite at the first acquisition offer that comes around. They probably could have saved everyone the trouble by applying to Pinterest directly.

But, like you said, they probably wouldn't have gotten the signing bonus.

timr• 13 years ago

"Must be pretty embarrassing that an alum has so little confidence in their product that they'll bite at the first acquisition offer that comes around. They probably could have saved everyone the trouble by applying to Pinterest directly."

When you're funding dozens of startups a year, this kind of thing is going to happen once in a while. It's an expected outcome. I'm glad the founders had an exit that makes them happy.

SurfScore• 13 years ago

From Ycombinator's "What We Do" page:

One concrete consequence is that Y Combinator funding lets you sell early, if you want to. It can sometimes make sense to sell yourself when you're small for a few million, rather than take more funding and roll the dice again. Google likes to do early-stage acquisitions, and we expect them to become increasingly common as other companies learn what Google has.

If you take a large amount of money from an investor, you usually give up this option. But we realize (having been there) that an early offer from an acquirer can be very tempting for a group of young hackers. So if you want to sell early, that's ok. We'd make more if you went for an IPO, but we're not going to force anyone to do anything they don't want to.

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

Let's partner up and get rich in a few hours. Got any business models you want to loosely pitch with a game plan drawn in sand? I'm down.

nwenzel2• 13 years ago

Only if you take the first step. YC S14 applications are still open.

nostrademons2• 13 years ago

It's W14 I think now, unless I suddenly missed 6 months.

pg2• 13 years ago

What a mean-spirited thing to say, and to upvote. It makes me sad to see this kind of snark as the top comment on HN threads.

frankc• 13 years ago

It could do without the snark, but it does have a ring of truth to it, doesn't it?

ghc• 13 years ago

As went Reddit, so goes Hacker News (albeit far more slowly). With some sadness, I feel that it is just about time for the next refuge for hackers to spring up out of nowhere and captivate us. Even Hacker News, it seems, can't escape becoming too big.

woah• 13 years ago

cmon man... the last jibe about Techcrunch was a bit was a bit snarky, but this post speaks the truth. Product shut down, founders joining as engineers. is there anything mean spirited about stating the obvious?

foobarqux2• 13 years ago

Is the problem with the comment the tone or the content?

dionidium2• 13 years ago

Don't you know that when you ask for civility you're a tone troll and that everything you're asking for can be dismissed because the words "tone troll" are a magical incantation against which no defense can be mounted?

mathattack• 13 years ago

In this case this was a full time side project that had plenty of deliverables - enough to highlight why these would be a great addition to the team.

TheMakeA• 13 years ago

I seem to recall them raising money on Wefunder. In fact, a number of S13 companies appear to be[1]. Unfortunately, it looks like most of the companies are having trouble raising even small sums of money.

I wonder if some investors might take the $ currently raised as a proxy for interest. Investors already follow a herd mentality. I wonder if this open + crowdfunding model might actually make it even harder to raise money.

[1] https://ycombinator.wefunder.com/

lahwf• 13 years ago

why is this here? a couple engineers get hired from a startup they couldn't make money.

aelaguiz• 13 years ago

Congrats guys! Pinterest is a great company you'll be happy there.

nwenzel2• 13 years ago

Congrats! Pinterest is a great place filled with great people.

ergest• 13 years ago

Entrepreneurs are the new labor http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

pvdm2• 13 years ago

Sorry, I could not make it through all that dense verbiage. Quick summary please ?

cml• 13 years ago

It has been a while since I read that series of articles, but the gist of it was:

-The author predicts that the business side of entrepreneurship will become increasingly commoditized, with programs like YC supplanting business school as the expected qualification for executives. The author parallels the unique skills required by railroad and steel entrepreneurs (access to funding networks, an ability to act on incomplete and indistinct market data and so on) with those of today's tech entrepreneurs and then observes how those skills became less valuable as the railroad and steel markets matured and consolidated to the point where the risk-taking entrepreneurs were no longer necessary and were replaced by dry MBA-types.

-The author predicts that the tech side will evolve into something like the guild system used by artisans prior to the industrial revolution, since engineers are still the gatekeepers to technology.

-Finally, the author predicts that both of these groups will become increasingly beholden to finance-types, albeit with the engineers having quite a lot more leverage if they can manage to establish some kind of collective bargaining platform (i.e. a guild). By nature of being individually indistinct and for the most part interchangeable in terms of skills as tech markets become less risky, business-oriented entrepreneurs are therefore the new labor in the way that manufacturing jobs were the old labor.

By the way, I thought it was a long but pretty fantastic read and would highly recommend it if you can find a few hours of free time.

Pinterest Acquires Hackermeter (YC S13)

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