On Thursday AngelList, the LinkedIn for the startup community, acquired Product Hunt, a 3-year-old platform that helps tech lovers discover new products.
The selling price remains undisclosed. Recode, however, reports a price of $20 million – similar to the valuation of Product Hunt from late 2014.
“We remain committed to the vision I shared with Naval when we first met in 2014 — to help makers get discovered and surface great products,” said Ryan Hoover, the CEO of Product Hunt. He confirms that AngelList will not shut his company down – he and “most” of his 14 employees will now report to Naval Ravikant, the CEO of AngelList.
“Product Hunt will remain an independent platform alongside AngelList. We’ll continue to use excessive emojis, drink Philz, and build in public with our community.”
Product Hunt is the most popular website for discovering new products and apps. Over 100 million products and 50,000 startups were introduced on Product Hunt. The most popular ones receive thousands of upvotes. Angellist is one of the biggest platforms in the startup community. Its main objective is to help startups in fundraising (the total raised by companies via AngelList reached almost $500 million) and recruiting (matched over 325,000 people with startups looking for employees).
These two platforms are complementary to the extent that Hoover, when he first met Ravikant in 2014, felt somewhat anxious about the future of his new website.
“I approached this first meeting with caution, aware that I might be speaking with a future competitor,” said Hoover. Luckily, they discovered that while the communities are likely to overlap, the platforms are heading in different directions. Now, their merger will make it easier to provide great opportunities to tech makers.
Both companies will celebrate the acquisition during an event held in San Francisco on 26th January 2017.
