[goatforce5]

It's a beautifully designed app with tons of attention of detail to tiny little things.

How the hell you monetize it to turn $8.6m in to an even bigger pile of cash is beyond me though.

I guess that's why i'm not an entrepreneur.

[enjo]

It used to be that investors said "I want a part of the next Compaq". Then it was "the next Google".

What this shows is that investors now want to be a part of the next Instagram or WhatsApp. They are literally throwing away the notion of profitability or monetization. Now the model is to get as popular as possible as quickly as possible. If you win that lottery Facebook or Google will sink BILLIONS of dollars into you.

My bet is these investors are looking at an app that has existed for less than two months and think they are getting in early on the next one of those. I'd love to know what the valuation was (north of $17M at least).

[thisisrobv]

"They are literally throwing away the notion of profitability or monetization."

To be fair Google had no idea how they were going to monetize search for a significant amount of time.

I'd say the pivot is from usefulness / utility to entertainment / novelty.

[qq66]

You realize that WhatsApp has hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue?

[nandemo]

Remember, on HN "I and my friends don't use it" implies "that company can't possibly have revenues". Just look at any thread about Yahoo.

[w1ntermute]

Or Microsoft.

[melvinmt]

The valuation is $50M.

[pbreit]

"I guess that's why i'm not an entrepreneur."

Yep. Attention is the most valuable commodity these days and Secret has certainly managed to obtain it. Ad-based monetization would be pretty easy...if they even want to try monetizing before getting much bigger.

[anon808]

Attention?, I think you mean 'eyeballs'.

[alaskamiller]

Please. Eyeballs was so dotcom, attention is so web 2.0, that's not who we are anymore. Now it's all about mindshare, sharing secrets to one another.

[bagels]

You monetize it by doing another cash out round, or getting acquired 1-3 years from now.

[mrbogle]

I'm with you. I read this article hoping for an explanation of what they might do with the money. I suppose it might be a case of 'raise more than you need' because they are hot right now.

I'm a fan of secret, but where is it going? What is the bigger play? Surely there must be one for > $8 million.