Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Calendly raising a $350mm Series B [1] has to be in the top ten peak-2021 moments.

[1] https://openviewpartners.com/blog/calendly-series-b/

Seriously. I reimplemented and launched the core scheduling features from scratch in like 12 days. React and firestore. Then google calendar integration was something on the order of another day or two.

Very useful little thing, but I sure don't know how you could spend $350 million doing it. The company I made it for absolutely is nowhere in sight of a number like that.

The market value of a solution is not equal to the inputs/resources that it took to create the solution. I doubt they spent anywhere near their company's value creating it.

Indeed. Rare as it is these days, a sign of a good business can be that its outputs are bigger than its inputs.

I didn't say that. Calendly took $350 million from investors. That isn't what their product is earning in the market; it's what they're using to build it. That's what's wild.

scheduling is simple in the core but gets very complex fast. intake forms, wait lists, classes, multiple appointment calendars, resource limits (say for example company cars ), overlapping appointments , multiple bookings at once (hair cut, dye, blow out) that might require synchronization of multiple people’s schedules, rescheduling and limits on it, handling no shows, etc, not to mention the number of integrations. it’s also a huge market, both for major enterprise companies and literally millions of single proprietors running businesses that make money through appointments

It's certainly up there, although crypto rock jpegs make it look positively sane

I saw founders abandon businesses that were working to pivot to "web3." It was wild.

It will happen again when the market picks up! Web4 we should call it!

Had a chat with a big time VC the other day about a project, told “I’m not sure this is venture fundable”.

Things like this make me think just because I’m not willing to lie and sell the hype that the true sentiment here is “you’re not venture fundable”

Bootstrap life it is.

I’m part of a venture-backed business today but recently told a friend that my next move would be to a non-VC tech business for the right opportunity.

You are probably aiming for a high chance of a successful business? They don't want that. They want a low chance of a unicorn.

If anyone wants a wake up call of what normal investors (not VC) value typical companies at, watch the UK series Dragons Den, where they offer people 50,000 pounds for 33% of the company, and suchlike.

I'm also in the UK, but I'm aware there's a US spin-off called Shark Tank that many here might be already/more familiar with. I've never seen it, but I assume it's similarly low valuation - what they would call 'mom and pop' businesses.

Oh I’m very aware. I’ve raised over $60m in my career to date. I wish the world was different, but it isn’t and you’re right, the math for them doesn’t work in other circumstances.

It’s hard trying to bootstrap but it’s depressing trying to run a venture business knowing how much you give up and how it actually reduces your chances of success. Someone recently referred to their past success as a lightening strike, it’s the perfect wording to me. It happens, it’s real, but you shouldn’t expect it too many times in your life.

The truth is more likely that a single VC's opinion carries limited information and you'd need to both do more building and talk to more people in order to learn a more certain answer.

In fact, notice the words of the VC: "I'm not sure..."

Also, lying is bad.

VC valuations have largely ignored presence of competitive pressures.

Simply because for most of the past decade there was a much smaller pool of talent and fewer resources available to spin these things up easily. No longer the case.

This is an app that can be cloned easily and has a low barrier to switching for existing customers. SaaS with high costs of switching are the ones with defensible margins.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com