AngelList acquires Product Hunt for an undisclosed amount

AngelList, the company that helps investors find startups to invest in has bought Product Hunt, the platform where people vote on startup products, for an undisclosed amount.

Product Hunt was rumored to be looking to raise its next round, however, it appears to have decided that coming onboard with AngelList would give it the best prospects.

The two companies aren't unknown to each other. AngelList’s Naval Ravikant had previously invested in Product Hunt and as such, was familiar with the platform. But Product Hunt’s founder had some initial concern that AngelList could potentially move into the same consumer-focused product discovery platform he’d built on Product Hunt.

AngelList. On the other side had his own insecurities about Product Hunt turning into a similar fundraising platform for startups but notably both chose to lay fears at rest and join forces instead.

The company’s founder Ryan Hoover declined to comment on the deal terms but says he will continue to run Product Hunt as its own brand under the AngelList umbrella. “The word that AngelList has been using to some extent is ‘continuity,’” Hoover told Recode. “Over time, we’ll explore ways of doing direct integrations. We probably won’t see anything in the short term, but down the road, you might see some of the talent pieces of AngelList come over to Product Hunt and maybe some of the Product Discovery aspects go to AngelList.”

Despite struggling in the past to break out of tech and into mainstream product discovery, the platform has continued to grow as a tech tastemaker, going from a small batch of 1,000 when it launched in late 2013 to now driving over 100 million product discoveries for 50,000 companies, according to Product Hunt.

On being asked, the reason for a sell-out, Hoover said, they needed some help turning that momentum into an actual business. “ requires a whole new focus on our company and a lot more resources to actually make that work, not only from a product perspective but also from a sales and marketing perspective,” Hoover explained. “We’d basically be building some of the same things would be doing to some extent. So on the revenue side, that’s a large accelerant.”