Local Q&A Site Hipster In Acquisition Talks With Groupon | Hacker News Reader

Local Q&A Site Hipster In Acquisition Talks With Groupon

techcrunch.com

31 pointsssclafani25 comments

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?

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!

>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.

Buying users used to be a reason to acquire a product, but not anymore. Users are cheap. And Groupon already has one of the best email distribution channels out there

Its about the product and the team. Hipster is Quora meets Yelp, and the tech was in fact live for a while, just only in Boulder, CO. If Groupon wants to build a team & product to attack social local recommendations, its actually a smart move

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

http://usehipster.com

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.

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

Timing your exit turns into a crucial skill.

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.

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.

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

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?

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....

Welcome to Silicon Valley.

Except that Groupon is from Chicago.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Are you sure it's not Hipster buying Groupon?

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

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