Hacker News Reader

Comment by timdorr | Hacker News Reader

They've taken $97.3M before: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/etsy

Presumably they had some profitable years prior to 2012 or have maintained limited losses.

Either way, it looks like they're gearing up for some big growth in the next few years. They dipped into the coffers in 2014 and will raise a lot of money from this IPO, so they'll have plenty of cash to burn on fast growth. It should be interesting to watch!

View on HN

Hrm, that's a bit of a red flag to me. Why bother raising so much money if you're not going to utilize it? Surely growing your business will outpace average annual investment returns. I'm sure the investors have to be annoyed they basically just transferred their assets to Etsy to sit on and not utilize.

And now they're trying to raise an additional $100M via an IPO? It's not like Apple who are literally in the position of "We have so much money we don't know what to do with it."

> I'm sure the investors have to be annoyed they basically just transferred their assets to Etsy to sit on and not utilize.

Considering they all stand to make a bundle through the IPO I'm sure the investors are collectively not-annoyed that Etsy hasn't wasted their money.

Just depends if the money could have been used for further growth, or not.

The only challenge will be timing when the Etsy fad bubble bursts.

I think people said the same thing about Ebay.

Having cash on hand has optionality value (larger universe of possible deals and better batna in each deal negotiation).

> Why bother raising so much money if you're not going to utilize it?

How do you know they aren't going to use it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com