Hacker News Reader

Comment by SnowingXIV | Hacker News Reader

> Looka has also raised around $7 million in funding, with a $900,000 seed round and $6 million Series A in November 2018.

That seems like excessive funding for what this company is. A neat little tool he could have solely owned and kept majority of the profits. Really curious to why this webapp required so many employees to run. Rebrand was obviously a disaster LogoJoy was a great name that didn't require a total rebrand just for wanting to include additional assets, I'm not even sure what Looka is.

View on HN

You beat me to this.

There's a lot here that doesn't make sense. Supposed 5mil entrepreneurs used it. I assume that's paying customers because why count looky-loos that don't buy a logo as a customer? $20 is the cheapest logo plan. That's $100mil. They're having trouble because? Plus I mean, their "AI" technology is supposed to eliminate the need of employees anyways... so... what's the problem?

Unless... gasp... they're full of shit and it's not AI, just a randomly generated template system with a large library of symbols that are keyworded extensively since the entire process requires you to actually pick within narrow parameters?

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes.

3 years ago he was a 1 man shop doing 70k/month revenue. https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/creating-an-ai-powere...

Seems like they should have used their own capital to grow rather than take outside money. I'm sure with the influx of investor money, they were pressured to hire staff. Inflated themselves and felt they needed to get "professional" with a new brand.

He was likely throwing off a ton of money at $70k/month as a sole owner, why not just hire a few people at a time?

With $7m comes an army of VC endorsed people. You need a board, because what company doesnt have a board, right? New CEO is a no-brainer. New CEO means rebranding! because he needs to leave his mark and the name is obviously wrong, you pay $50k (bargain!) for a new one, its too important to make one yourself. Bumblebloggel sounds great, has great emotions embedded in its core. Dont worry, 3-5 months down the line you will be renaming the product again because CEO is bored (or you got a new one in the mean time) and you didnt run out of money yet. You need managers, to manage. Managers need something to manage, so you hire a bunch of people. Colors are important, so you pay another $50-100k to pick a right color for you. Etc

For reference how Andy Rubin, silicon valley darling, runs his VC investments: https://theamphour.com/394-jeri-ellsworth-and-the-demise-of-...

Turns out they didn't need that many employees to run after all, since they seems to be doing fine cutting from 40 to 8... Sounds a lot like someone trying to create a big business out of a little tool.

Yeah, I wondered about that as well. "Design as a Service" type tools are a dime a dozen, and there are a few I've seen on IndieHackers already, so we're talking 1-5 person shops that outsource the work to designers in Eastern Europe or Asia.

The "AI play" is likely a big selling point for the VCs, even if it's not impressive in practice.

But still, considering how much harder it is for Canadian companies in the right sectors (cloud, AI/ML, marketing automation) to get funding compared to US ones, it seems strange that they picked up $7 million.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com