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Stack Overflow's CEO doesn't understand Stack Overflow (jlericson.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 43 points 3 years ago (9 children)

Stack Overflow is supposed to be the wiki of developers, not a fucking business.

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood founded it, and it was sold to Prosus, a Netherlands-based consumer internet conglomerate, on 2 June 2021 for $1.8 billion.

I guess someone would like some of that money back.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    lol almost $2 billion for a website with almost no ads and that makes almost no revenue? Especially now that they closed the (paid) jobs section?

    ROI in 10000 years?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Valuation is usually based on potential revenue, not actual revenue. A $2 billion valuation would have been about $50 per user. It seems reasonable Stack Exchange should be able to make that much money per user somehow over the entire future existence of the company... if it's run well. Which doesn't seem to be happening from where I'm sitting.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Valuation is usually based on potential revenue, not actual revenue

    How similar this is to how capitalists look at natural "resources". "This website[wetland] sure is great. Lots of people[animals] are loving it. And it's a vital part of the development[water] cycle... But it's just not making me any money!"

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (4 children)

    I'm unsure of many people know that StackOverflow also had enterprise offerings. Our company has their own StackOverflow instance with very specific content to our tech stacks.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (3 children)

    Yes but they stopped offering that years ago.

    So, no more job classifieds, no saas, only ads from views... I don't see where it can be profitable like that

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    No they didn't? My company just recently introduced it.

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