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Comment by gorena | Hacker News Reader

What was the business model for this? Get a lot of users and get bought like Instagram? $40m for $4m seems like a great return for something that doesn't have revenue.

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I doubt the $4m was for 100% of the company. It's unknown what the ROI would've been for the investors.

But still probably something the founders are regretting.

Yeah, wasn't implying that - basically, if the investors have a controlling stake, it's a pretty okay return for something that seemingly had no business model besides "maybe sell ads/filters?".

If the investors didn't have a controlling stake, then the founders would be pretty damn rich.

Anything that can accumulate attention can be easily monetized. The hard part is accumulating attention. Wondering about business models is exceedingly tired.

I disagree. With ads revenue in free falling monetizing eyeballs without any sort of premium service attached makes hard to get any return.

Players who suceede in this space have either 100x the eyeballs and/or their internal ad network with better revenues.

Can you please tell me how to convert attention into money? Genuine question, since it seems like the business model of a lot of B2C startups out there.

Ads, sponsorships, in-app purchases, membership, suscription, pro features, sell the data, premium features, etc, etc, etc.

i consider membership, subscription, pro features, in app purchases and premium features to be almost equal. Same for ads and sponsorships. In other words: that leaves you with ads, premium featues or selling the data. Which can be quite hard to sell, depending on your audience (I consider Twitter a good example).

Depends if they rejected waiting for better buyout, maybe.

If they rejected to better execute their vision, probably not

Yes, and it's totally reasonable if it's actually a good app. Like Instagram, Vine and Periscope.

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