I mean this in a completely good-natured way, but after looking at their site I’m not surprised that someone who would write “<Business I’ve never heard of> selling for $<N>bn” has never heard of them. You don’t strike me as their target audience.
That said, neither am I. Looks like you can’t even view any merchandise on the website, it’s basically an app-only experience it seems. That’s a huge turn-off for me.
It's actually one of the reasons I left the company. On paper I was hired (back in 2015) to build the website, but spent most of my tenure building internal tools. When I finally did get to build it, thankfully I had another web developer working with me by then, but it was also clear there was no interest from the rest of the business in making the website anything more than a lead generator for app downloads.
This was probably a good business decision given their key demographic, but it didn't make me feel good about what my role was, especially as (according to the soon-to-be-CTO) I was one of their stronger engineers. It felt weird to have expertise and constantly feel side-lined. There were definitely some challenging years in the middle, but they seem to have turned it around.
Try signing up/signing in on web and you'll get a whole new experience.
Anonymous browsing/guest checkout might be an avenue that we take another look at in the future; but yes - historically we have been focussed on our mobile apps as first-class citizens.
"This thing" is a hugely popular marketplace for second hand clothing. Probably the first platform to finally crack second hand clothing online, lots of billion dollars being spent on clothes.
The disdain some people have for what is not their niche is crazy. Not everything needs to be a SAAS. It's pretty clear this is meant to be used as an app and it looks like you did your best to ignore it.
> It's pretty clear this is meant to be used as an app and it looks like you did your best to ignore it.
Not clear at all. I looked up the company, opened the website, and there are some "get the app" buttons, but the website does not indicate that the product is an app-first experience at all.
The submitted article even mentions it as a "shopping site", not an app. And looking at play store reviews, it doesn't look like the app is any better. It's filled with various technical issues and 1 or 2 star reviews.
So excuse me for having this crazy assumption that if something is being sold for over a billion dollars, it should at least somewhat work.
If I were Etsy, I would probably buy it for the community and marketing talent, fire every single dev and start from scratch.
Ok boomer. Nobody uses websites anymore. For the proper shopping experience you must install the app. Your precise browsing history and phone location will be used to tailor a bespoke peer-to-peer shopping experience. Don't like a shopping app running 24/7 in your pocket? You just don't get modern fashion.
I did, I didn't see anything that looks like the start of an ecommerce sales funnel. Maybe I missed it, I was just expecting something obvious. I expected the main menu (on mobile) to have some kind of inventory taxonomy. I'm well aware I'm not the target audience and it shows.
I suppose you don't hear often about all the market/advertising companies buying each other. Even though I work in this field, I am almost always clueless about who are these companies.
Advertising companies have a natural size limit since they generally can't work for competing companies. Agencies reach about $500M in revenue and then get sold off to a holding company. It's almost inevitable there are a whole bunch of deals.
Way back when I was a computer systems product manager, I was constantly struck by the random customers that would come through the executive briefing center who were some random boring business (making milk bottles or whatever) and it would turn out they had 75% of the US market or something like that. (This was before really widespread globalization.)
I've always felt one of the fallacies of the startup culture that we surround ourselves in is that winning involves "taking over the world".
There are so many "niche" businesses out there - that will be enough to bring in millions in revenue - simply because there is such a variety in what people want and need. And we'll never hear of them unless our interests happen to coincide with that particular niche.
Case in point - I've just started working for a company that is an upstart small player in the area of document management for construction companies. You'd think document management was a solved problem and there wouldn't be room for specialists in that area - but no, there are several multi-million dollar businesses that do nothing but. And there's still room for small companies like ours to grow into.
Interesting that you used the term "document management" as opposed to "content management." I cut my teeth as a "document management" consultant in the early 90s, when it was really just documents. I thought the "content management" term took over.
They fly under the radar. They keep their heads down and do their job without trying to attract attention in order to avoid unwanted competition. There are myriads of such companies out there we've never heard of.
Depop is very much the opposite of flying under the radar. They are a key player in fashion and love nothing but flashy promotions, they’d love to be associated to any big brand. They are not as big as Farfetch (disclaimer: where I worked) but both companies are pillars of fashion-tech scene in London.
Their marketing and social media presence is as large as they can get it (I know their former Head of Social media and VP Product). Being successful there is a first step to becoming an influencer. As a second-hand market, they’ve been carried by the environmental trend lately, deservingly so. Their audience is younger, more female and fashion-forward and in that very seeked-after demographic, they have incredible numbers. There are American companies, like Vestiaire Collective, that offer a similar service but Depop is making strides around the world.
There might not be a lot of overlap with your interest, or those of many people in Hacker News — and that’s fine. But, to fin equivalents, saying that TikTok or Tampax are "under the radar" brands says more about your curiosity than it says about a product used by half of the population.
Depop really isn't a niche company. It's effectively instagram but the clothes are for sale. Companies relate to the consumers the same way they do with instagram influencers, product placement.
You only get that multiple if you're publicly listed. Usually for M&A the price is discounted from that, but this also varies widely by industry. Never do a hardware startup, for instance :)
