Nautilus to be acquired by an investor group of fans | Hacker News Reader

Nautilus to be acquired by an investor group of fans

nautil.us

266 pointsdnetesn60 comments

I’m one of the new co-owners. All of us are longtime subscribers. This is about love for the magazine and its mission first and last. We’re not going to change Nautilus. We just want to get it into the hands of many more people. We do think we can navigate Nautilus to a sustainable place for the long haul; the market is there and the product is fabulous. We just need to operate it precisely and keep investing in great writing, editing, and art. Nothing fancy, just running it right and for the right reasons.

13 year old account with 13 karma. Wow!

I didn't see anything in the announcement about existing subscriptions and how they'd change. I'm interested in knowing what may happen to lifetime digital subscribers. I can understand it being removed and something else put in place, but the question would be "at what price?"

So it becomes a business, which will focus on generating profit from the magazine, thus Nautilus will become yet another bog standard science magazine subjected to the same structures as other magazines.

And we all know that consumers don't fork enough money to support ads-free journalism, which leads to perverse incentives.

> hus Nautilus will become yet another bog standard science magazine ~subjected to the same structures as other magazines~ that will hopefully pay its contributors now!

https://undark.org/2017/12/13/freelance-writers-nautilus-pay...

Part of the acquisition includes a plan to pay all the contributors debt in full.

> And we all know that consumers don't fork enough money to support ads-free journalism, which leads to perverse incentives.

yes they do. susbcription-based models are doing quite well. besides the big heavyweights, in UK alone there are several smaller and successful subscription-based magazines: the TLS, the economist, the spectator etc. in us sports there's 'the athletic' and its clones.

> 'the athletic' and its clones

None of which have actually taken off their runway as far as I know.

Indeed. This is the first time I've heard of it.

> several smaller and successful subscription-based magazines: ... the economist, ...

Maybe I am misreading, but did you mean to imply that The Economist is a 'small' newspaper? It has been around since the 1840s.

compared to the best known subscription success stories -- the NYT, WP -- it certainly seems significantly smaller. but i agree, that comparison isn't very valid, it's certainly a heavyweight amongst magazines.

Is WP WaPo or something else? WaPo went for only a few hundred million when sold. Economist around the same time was valued 3-5x more at $1B. Did WaPo turn things around that much? Economist is mostly owned by super rich elite families, so prestige would’ve entered what they paid too. But WaPo was purchased by Bezos so not likely he was super skimpy on the price (even being considerably “poorer” back then)

Yeah they did. After being bought by Bezos they made a number of changes that have been for the better. They've turned a profit over the last few years based on their growing subscriber base and their digital publishing business.

Of course they've built it all using AWS and I would love to learn more about how they leverage that platform.

I see. Interesting. I know WaPo used to do deals with Prime too.

Even with that, NYT has to be much bigger and their profit is only around 2x Economists. Economist is pretty big in most metrics.

"Old" doesn't mean "Large".

However, in this case you're right. They have 1.6 million subscribers, 50% are digital.

Interestingly, a 50% digital rate probably puts them far above all of the other "Old" periodicals.

I spent $100 on subscriptions a couple Christmases ago. Never received any product nor was I able to get in contact with anyone at the company.

Really turned me off since I was a big fan of their content and already had a yearly subscription.

Wow that is really disappointing. I recently picked up a copy myself and really liked the print magazine. I was debating subscribing but there are several people in the comment section with the same story about not receiving issues.

I'm sorry you were not able to get through to us...or to get your magazines. Please send your details to me at john.steele@nautilusdigitalmedia.com and we will make it right.

thanks! just sent you an email :)

This is the second time I see a link on HN, mentioning Hypergiant industries.

Their website [0] and their algae bioreactor page [1] is so over the top that it looks fake. I assume this is real company selling real solutions (consulting) but this is puzzling nonetheless.

Look at the case study, "ROD LIFT INVENTORY SYSTEM" [2], they replaced a few excel sheets by an application with a database, this is great for the customer, but not earth shattering either.

[0] https://www.hypergiant.com/ [1] https://www.hypergiant.com/green/ [2] https://www.hypergiant.com/client/rod-lift-inventory-system-...

Yep, that's a serious Aperture Labs vibe there. Or maybe (even worse) Faro Automated Solutions. Very techno-utopian, as though things like ethics and unintended consequences don't exist. Scary.

Scary? It looks like it was made by an excited teenager.

Larry Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University.

this is the guy who was just featured in that article on bill gates rubbing elbows with Jeffrey Epstein.

I thought this was about the filemanager

Hahaha same

Nautilus was good when they started but at some point they seemed to switch to the sort of frothy, inspirational pop-science-as-spiritualism dreck that belongs in Newsweek or Fox News, but with a tiny bit more depth

On top of the content, I was a paid subscriber during 2017-2018, and I received maybe 20% of the editions I was supposed to receive. Probably due to international shipping and their liquidity problems, but it still felt bad.

I had the same problem - but US based. I reached out to their support as they recently sent me an email and they comped me a year of their Prime plan. It was nice of them but kind of too little too late.

I never received my issues, so I disputed on PayPal. They never responded to the dispute so I won it automatically after a month or whatever it was. Then, a year later, I received some issues in the mail. Bizarre.

> inspirational pop-science-as-spiritualism

This is the best description of this type of science writing I've encountered.

I heard the term somewhere, and when I read an article praising science that read suspiciously like the religious tracts that were forced upon me as a kid, I was done

This makes me happy. I Enjiy reading both Nautilus and Quanta. Great articles.

I spent $100 on subscriptions a few years ago for Christmas gifts and never received anything. Still annoyed at that.

I really like Nautilus. I have been subscriber in the past, I got my magazines and they were awesome. I am worried they might lose quality once they need to produce profit, however "fan" those investors are.

But that is life and if they do, there will be something else.

"Group of fans" is a weird way to describe serial entrepreneurs and angel investors. I'm sure they like the product. There's only one person on that list without a background in finance/investing, who happens to be the spouse of another person on the list.

Congrats on the exit, I just think it's odd to describe the acquiring party that way.

Is it? While "syndicate" might have been a more succinct and accurate way of describing that group, it is a little bit uncommon. From most instances I can recall, acquisitions tend to be by a single corporate entity or a private equity fund of some kind. Unless such an entity existed prior to this acquisition, it does seem a bit out of the ordinary.

I think ownership groups aren't uncommon in the small business world (as in not-startups, like family businesses). Totally different world but that's how sports teams' acquisitions are handled these days.

Wow, that's fascinating -- I don't know too much about sports team acquisitions but it's pretty cool if that's how they work. If this is something you know more about, would you mind going into more detail about how that works?

Historically teams (in the US) have been owned by a single person.

But today, a sports team acquisition involves a 10-figure transaction and possibly the construction of a stadium if there's a move, which could also be in the low 10-figures.

There are not that many individuals who can afford to buy a team by themselves. That's why they form ownership groups with a lead investor to be the "owner" face of the team (and sometimes, they'll get big names as minority stakeholders to give them legitimacy). An example of this is when an ownership group bought the Miami Marlins [1].

[1] https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/boston-red-sox/derek-jeter-...

One difference with sports teams is that some members of the ownership group do it for vanity/ego/pride as much as an investment opportunity. There's a lot of prestige in having ownership of a major sports franchise, not only because it's incredibly expensive but because the opportunity to purchase a stake is not common and the entire ownership group is subject to approval from all the other owners in the league. So you can't just buy a team, you have to be ok'd by all the other teams.

The valuation of sports teams for the big 4 (and especially big 3 in terms of big numbers) has skyrocketed. It is quite possible from here on out that no NBA or MLB team will be sold for less than $1B total valuation. And no NFL team for under $2B. It’s a lot for individuals to pay. It’s rare for teams to be owned by companies or funds like the NBA’s Toronto Raptors. But even that holding company has one guy owning a third of it. Or NFL’s Green Bay Packers being a public company.

Most leagues also have requirements for how much of the team can be paid for with debt, loans, etc. For a perspective on how crazy the skyrocketing valuations are, NBA and MLB teams outside major markets were going for under $500M and NFL teams for way under $1B. Major market teams were still going for a lot like NFL’s Washington DC Redskins went for over a billion 20 years ago, but even just five years ago the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks went for around $500M. Now that they have a new stadium, sometimes that stuff is conditional on the purchase, their value has probably doubled (along with currently being a championship contender with an MVP superstar entering his prime).

At this point, almost no individuals can take on a whole team purchase on their own. Or be able to pay up a higher price on their own. Exceptions are also people wildly richer than most owners like Steve Ballmer who’s around top 15 richest people and paid handsomely for the NBA’s LA Clippers, though he will also profit off it as well. Many, if not most, current big 3 majority owners would not be able to afford their own team if you looked at their net worth outside the team.

Just the deals you regularly hear about in the news. JVs and multi fund buyers are not at all unheard of.

I said the same thing in another sibling comment, but I'd love to hear more if you've got some experience in the space and are willing to share!

It made me think it was a group of intrepid readers who got together to invest, which is a much more interesting story than career investors being a fan of a thing they're investing in.

To be sure, it's their wording.

"fast-growing science brand poised for growth", "the literary science magazine with more than 10 thousand monthly paying subscribers and an online reach of more than 10 million"

Between the marketing numbers and the weird detached third-person references to Nautilus, this is written like a marketing pitch, not an acquisition announcement. It's very weird

It's a marketing pitch for the next exit!

Yeah, I've been a fan of it for a few years, but I must have missed the invite on that one.

Ok, we've put investors in the title in the way that the article does in its first sentence.

Am I reading this correctly? It sounds like a group of angel investors. Not "superfans."

The two terms are not mutually exclusive.

Sure. But like talked about above, sports teams are also usually bought by fans. It would be weird to state those purchases that way though.

The investors probably don't see or expect any real RoI. It's Nautil.us -- there is no real money to be made from that site.

Actually it is one of the best file explorers out there, I'm sure they will take in on the right track.

This is one of those rare occasions that it might be worth your while to read the actual article...

Given numerous uses of the term, a modicum of specificity in the title would help. There are even multiple publishing-related instances.

Though as a science fictional character myself, I'm partial to Vernes's. Which might make for an even more interesting story ;-)

"Nautilus Magazine" being a good start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus_(disambiguation)

What else helps is not assuming you know the content of TFA from its title.

I half suspect the original comment was a subtle dig at the ambiguity itself.

Personally, I prefer nnn: https://github.com/jarun/nnn

Very fast, good keyboard navigation, etc. Highly recommend.

imagine the profits if you can get users to pay per file opened

I, for one, am a huge fan of their gym equipment. No wonder they got aquired

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