The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Stack Exchange has been sold for $1.8 billion.
What does this mean for the community as a whole? Are there any changes coming as a result? If so, can we expect any Meta posts from the new parent company's execs introducing themselves and/or discussing the changes?
A collection of thoughts on this:
Stack Overflow is all grown up. Like CodeGuru, like LiveJournal, like GitHub, like so many others... Its adolescent innocence is gone, and what happens now must happen with intent and purpose. We'll have to see what that ultimately means...
The TL;DR is not much this year. We have our current strategy, roadmaps and plans for this year and continue to be focused on those. It’s business as usual, as it says in our blog post, we would be operating independently. The leadership team is staying, including me. Most of the company just found out about this today and many are in shock and excited about the future. Prosus is very community-focused and excited about what you all have built. As we start to plan for 2022, I think we will see more opportunities to invest in our public platform sites and community. I will be publishing my State of the Stack blog and meta post this month and will go into more detail there.
For now, if you want to know more, we have a bit more detail on our blog post
The pessimist case goes something like this:
The new company spent a huge sum of money on Stack Overflow and wants results. That'll mean selling us back our answers, charging a membership fee or cranking up ads. Whatever they decide to do, it will prioritize making money over the community who made these sites valuable.
Obviously that could happen. If so, that would be disappointing to say the least. Still, the question is what does a company expect from a $1.8 billion investment?
Prosus is a holding company. Probably the best known holding company is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. (Disclosure: I'm an investor in Berkshire. I also have vested options in Stack Overflow from my time as an employee.) Joel Spolsky's blog post suggests Stack Overflow will be allowed to operate independently, which is not unusual for a holding company. The core competency of a holding company is allocating resources to the most promising subsidiaries rather than actively managing them.
Very likely Stack Overflow will go into the "Ventures" division which includes:
The company's annual report gives us some clues about their intentions:
Ventures is about building the next wave of growth for the group. We invest with a long-term vision in mind but make sure to tether that vision to short- and medium-term operating realities around risks, competitive dynamics, future capital needs, and other considerations. Our capital commitments are commensurate with this balanced assessment. Over time, as we build our understanding and expertise, the amounts invested may grow substantially. A good example of this approach is Food Delivery, which was nurtured as part of Ventures before becoming a standalone core segment last year.—Martin Tschopp COO, Ventures
Cutting through the business speak, this means the Ventures segment hopes to invest in subsidiaries so that they become profitable in future years. For the past few years, Stack Overflow investors have been looking for an exit. Now the investors are looking to build value. It's a real change in incentives that probably will be a net positive for people who benefit from the information bound up in the network. (That means us!)
It's important to recall that CC BY-SA contributions can be used by third parties. Anyone can download the data and create their own resource. So the $1.8 billion isn't about the content. Instead, the value comes from:
In my opinion, this acquisition reduces the odds that Stack Overflow will go dark. There's an incentive to keep the investment in play even if "short- and medium-term operating realities around risks, competitive dynamics, future capital needs, and other considerations" keep Prosus from increasing their investment.
Now there are still risks. For one thing, none of the announcements mention Stack Exchange. Nothing says the new owner will be any better at recognizing the potential of non-coding Q&A than the current owner. I'm also mildly worried about a line from the Prosus press release:
"There is an opportunity to connect more deeply with their community through our other education platforms to further fulfill their learning needs."—Larry Illg, CEO of EdTech at Prosus
Still, the influence is just as likely to go the other way. By coincidence, I interviewed a CM at Brainly a few weeks ago. As we talked I kept thinking there's a potential harmony between a site dedicated to homework help (Brainly) and a network that is suspicious of homework questions (Stack Exchange). Again, holding companies are better than most at allowing subsidiaries some measure of autonomy.
I suspect a large multinational corporation will be an improvement for non-US employees and international Stack Overflows. (Maybe be a little more friendly with China.)
Of all the options (IPO, buyout or status quo) this seems the best outcome. Management no longer needs to put lipstick on the pig. They won't need to spend time looking for investors. Their performance won't be tied to quarterly growth (at least not immediately). Nobody will need to worry about the company making payroll. I don't know a whole lot about Prosus, but it seems like as good a home as any.
In addition to the information listed in Ekadh's answer: From Joel Spolsky's Kinda a big announcement (a small understatement), it says:
Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.
Which should ease concerns about this.
When I first saw this - the first thought that came to mind was....
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
yes, I'm a Babylon 5 fanboy
While this is a very different context from its source - we've been in a time of fairly constant change, and this is a big... unexpected one. I've never heard of Prosus (so, this is a bit of an unknown).
Practically though - the only real way to tell, rather than speculation is to see the actual direction, through actions, not press releases, that the company takes over the next 6-8 months, and beyond.
Rather than speculate - I hope...
for now, at least
From the blog post
How you use our site and our products will not change in the coming weeks or months, just as our company’s goals and strategic priorities remain the same. As the acquisition is finalized, and we continue to partner with Prosus, I will keep you all posted through my regular quarterly blog posts and Teresa Dietrich, our Chief Product and Technology Officer, will do the same in her quarterly community blog posts.
So, for the next couple month at least, nothing is changing.
However...
The blog post also said
Once this acquisition is complete, we will have more resources and support to grow our public platform and paid products, and we can accelerate our global impact tremendously. This might look like more rapid and robust international expansion, M&A opportunities, and deeper partnerships both on Stack Overflow and within Stack Overflow for Teams.
Which might mean more SE ads, and an influx of new users. Or it might mean something completely different, It’s difficult to tell.
It hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread, but the Prosus product that's likely to stand out for many European users is OLX which is the equivalent to craigslist - an online classifieds site. In some countries, OLX has near hegemony of online classified adds (with TV commercials) and being the "go to" resource if you're looking to buy/sell online (for anything, from a hamster to a house).
I've used it for over 10 years as a buyer, and recently all the small-time amateurs and professionals who had their shops online complained about sudden business rule changes that drastically reduced usability for them (over night they were limited in number of pictures and posts - imagine you could only host 10 screenshots at any given time - plus they had to frequently renew their adds manually which made them incur in losing unreasonable amounts of time just to maintain their adds).
So, one worry is if the "long-term investor" applies the same business model they used with OLX to SE where some years down the road functionalities will suddenly be limited to a level that renders participation nearly senseless without some kind of paid tier.
Joel Spolsky, Stack Overflow's chairman of the board, posted "Kinda a big announcement" on his blog.
Quoting a bit from it:
the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.
Which seems very important. You're not going to see the people currently steering the ship forward going anywhere. You're not going to see overarching changes. What you will see (hopefully, anyway) are more awesome people joining Stack Overflow's workforce. This means we should be able to see developmental goals being met, as well as new goals being reachable in a more timely fashion.
I'm not worried about this acquisition, and I don't think you should be either.
