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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.

Unlike those things, there have been grandmas buying decorative cat plates for decades. Lolcats are just the same thing with an element of comedy.

I disagree. I thought lolcats were funny for a week or 2. Then I moved on.

I absolutely do not find cats cute though. I'd happily kill the whole species off if I was allowed to.

> 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.)

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?

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.

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?

- Ben Huh, Cheezburger, Inc. Founder and CEO

http://www.quora.com/What-were-the-VCs-thinking-in-investing...

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.

If growing, profitable companies in large markets raising capital means a bubble, may it grow ever more bubbly.

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 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.

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.

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