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Comment by pitdesi | Hacker News Reader

FYI the transaction price was estimated at greater than $10mil. http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/08/google-to-buy-mobile-loyalt...

I like the product and am excited for the team, but $10mil seems a bit high to me for a pretty early product. I'm assuming that this will eventually roll into Google wallet as a competitor to Square's card case.

In any case, this is great news for the young team - looks like they'll continue their work but within the confines of Google. Looks like Dave McClure's hypothesis is getting stronger by the day with a few 500 startups companies getting snapped up recently (Backtype to Twitter and Cardmunch to Linkedin).

(disclosure- we're a fellow 500startups company - go 500!)

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Agreed. Given it's a nascent product with few users/retailers and low barrier to entry (there are at least a dozen similar scan-code-for-punch-card apps), it sounds like a pure talent buy. And $10MM sounds high if that is truly the case.

Firstly, congratulations to the Punchd guys.

Secondly, it is interesting because there are indeed a bunch of other punch-card replacement apps. Even here in Australia I know of at least two. If it's a pure talent acquisition (which seems to be a logical conclusion) then it is indeed quite a large sum.

I can't imagine Google wouldn't already have begun development of a similar concept when creating Google Wallet.

It's fantastic for the founders though. Not having met them, and just based on what I've read here, they seem like great guys.

Patent-pending tech can increase valuation.

Is there any current wisdom out there on this?

It does seem reasonable to start some patent paperwork if it increases our company's leverage. But how interested are larger companies in this sort of thing?

Is patentability a criterion to think about when choosing the direction of a startup?

Issued patents certainly can add tangible value to a deal, but take years to make their way through USPTO and require a lot of money to file, respond to office actions and the examiner.

However, most startups with time and not too much $ can file a provisional patent for "patent pending" status, which is likely what Punchd has. It's really just a way to extend the patent filing deadline an extra year.

Thus the value of an un-examined, pending patent to a deal is negligible -- especially to Google. Most pending patents are never granted.

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