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More Useful Thoughts On The OpenTable IPO Than John Paczkowski

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Fri 6th of Feb, 2009 03:30:23 PM

I use OpenTable often–I’ve even cashed in like $200 in gift certificates for my frequent use–and I’m not as dumb as most ANALysts/no-little-about-actual-finance journalists so that makes me qualified to give a solid opinion.

After all, I can’t do much worse than THIS useless article–which is sadly becoming an adjective to use more and more often for the once decent AllThingsD–by John Paczkowski who basically just says online restaurant reservations aren’t hot during recessions.

Wow, earthshattering Johnny Boy! Seriously guy, you’re “an award-winning journalist”?!?!?! Maybe blogger of the year as voted on by the Forrest Gump School for retards. you gotta do better than quoting some legal jargon from the company’s prospectus, just-in-case jargon that EVERY SINGLE PUBLIC COMPANY IN THE WORLD USES!! I mean my God man, Google’s gonna ban you if you ever write an article that wastes readers time like that. I pray that you didn’t write it, that maybe you were stoned or hungover and you had some idiot of an intern write it, right? C’mon you can tell me, it’s just me and my few thousand readers, we won’t tell many others.

Because if you truly were award-winning, you might include numbers like the NY Times blog did:

In the nine months ending Sept. 30, OpenTable lost $149,000 on $41.3 million in revenue, up from a $191,000 loss on $29.4 million in revenue in the same period the year before, according to the registration statement it filed with the S.E.C. It charges restaurants $1 per seated customer and also makes money from charging restaurants a subscription fee for its software.

OpenTable has signed on 10,000 restaurants as customers, one-third the number that take reservations in North America, the company said in the filing. OpenTable also hopes to expand internationally (it already has sites in Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom).

Numbers that show exactly how crappy a company OpenTable is–especially after 10 years in the game and such market penetration….it’s pathetic!

Oh yes Johnny boy, I agree with you that the IPO stinks, but unlike you I’m not award-winning, I don’t have idiot interns–well, I do, i just don’t use them to ghost write–and I don’t have time to get hangovers or stoned because I am a blogger.

So Opentable and Johnny boy, you guys are both examples of mediocrity…which I mock…and others should too. I love your service OpenTable, but I can’t respect you as a company until you start making profits….think adding international desitnations will help? Hmmm, not so sure, but I guess you gotta try…I just can’t understand how the hell am I making more $$$ than you when you have 1/3 the restaurants in America?!?!?! Maybe create some instructional DVDs?

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  • Joe
    "Google" is a once in a lifetime company. A company that offered a free service/product and made a lot of money in the process by selling/leasing their technology to businesses, and then went public. -
    Todays "free" businesses/websites seem to want to skip the "make money" part and head straight the the IPO line. I've said this a million times, " its cute to offer your services to the public for free ... but if you cant turn a profit in less than 18 months, what good are you". For an online business that have secured a steady stream of users (which is the hard part), should now turn those "clicks" into cash. Its not cheap running those online companys, servers and internet cost a lot, per user. For all the free sites like OpenTable, Twitter, Digg, Friendster, etc ... should take a note or two from sites that are free to the public but have multiple profit/revenue stream such as, Facebook, Basecamp, YouTube, etc
  • tomtobe, if thats true, thats great, i dont have time/nor do i care to read the whole report...i was just going by the nytimes article, take your beef up with them
  • timtobe
    "Numbers that show exactly how crappy a company OpenTable is–especially after 10 years in the game and such market penetration….it’s pathetic!"

    Too bad the company makes $12m from continuing operations last year in CASH... Tim stop trying to ANALyse things you don't know and stick to pumping those stocks!
  • General_Porkulus
    Shut up Jose Reyes.
  • Jose
    Guys,
    If you have any negative feedback for Tim then just email him. It is annoying to come to this blog, read an article, and want to discuss it with intelligent people but end up reading hate propaganda.
  • dseo80
    I've been following Tim's trades for a few weeks now. What he's doing is trying to profit off boiler room trades (and similar), and helping his subscribers also profit by doing that. His method obviously works (so far). He tell us to get in and out quickly, ofcourse he will profit more if his trades are successful, but what would the alternative be? He tells us to buy and doesn't buy it himself (giving him no incentive to pick good stocks) or He tells us to buy then buys after us (until Tim puts his money where his mouth is i doubt many subscribers are willing to jump in). Also, he lets you know which stocks he is considering before he buys for the day (he choses 1 or so out of a list of 2-3 recommendations). And his method isnt rocket science you don't have to be a genius to figure out what Tim is going to do, so you can end up buying before him, IF you have done your own research.

    What I have noticed is, alot of the subscribers who do better than the others are the ones who don't blindly follow Tim but do additional research on their own by applying Tim's own methods, and following their own instincts (sorry Tim, your methods are good, and your advantage is cutting losses, but smelling blood and going for the kill arn't your strong points as you have honestly mentioned before. )
  • mike, if i'm such a frontrunner, why have my trades not been working out lately even as my subscriber base has grown? why did both CRYP and SFLY run today without me? its the patterns u dummy!
  • mike
    Dont be fooled by tims 229% performance. You fools that have purchased his timalerts helped him achieve that by your dollar. Tim is a front runner.

    Do you novices understand what a front runner is??? Its illegal. Tim is a modern day thief. He buys or shorts stocks a few minutes before you naive subscribers get your alert on a very thinly traded stock. He says its a buy or a sell. Then you dumbass subscribers that pay him almost $300 a year to give you advice follow his trade. In the meantime he is already in that position and the fact that no one else besides tim subscribers give a shit about the stock because it trades usually 10 shares a trade you get his alert and create moment in the direction he alerts and then he sells or closes his short after everyone piles in.

    Do you understand this. This is why he has made 229% because of you jackasses. You ever watch boiler room you dumb shits. This is what he is doing to you.

    It is really sad. but the reality of having a blog and sending out alerts had given him this ability...... You need to understand Tim is running a boiler room.
  • Jose
    Seems like they need a better management to start thinking up of how to be more efficient with its software/hardware or w/e it uses to run the business. They don't generate there revenue from ads Mark.
  • with digg I'm thinking maybe their users are to picky and smart to click on ads and pay for anything on the other end. It's one thing i think to get clicks its another to get conversions.
  • exactly jose, its pathetic, like digg not being able to monetize 22 million monthly uniques...u give me that many and i'll make billions
  • livestock next week, allthingsd article was just a waste of my time, i tell it like it is
  • dave allen
    Not sure what your beef with AllThingsD is, Tim. The language quoted in that post is NOT boilerplate prospectus talk at all. It's very specific to OpenTable. I mean, "We believe that the total number of reservations, including reservations by phone, seated by our restaurant customers has decreased approximately 10% to 15% for the fourth quarter of 2008 from the same period in 2007" isn't the kind of thing you're going to find in say, the Medidata Solutions prospectus, which that NYT post also mentioned.

    Looks to me like you're just trying to make a name for yourself by throwing pebbles at established writers. Honestly, I found Paczkowski's post far more worthwhile than yours.

    "Who Is Timothy Sykes And Why Should I Care?"

    Answer: I don't know and I shouldn't.
  • Jose
    Tim,
    I saw an OpenTable IPO article on Seeking Alpha and thought it was interesting. I've used OpenTable many times and there business model is great. Like you said, I don't understand how a company with 1/3 the restaurants in the US can't generate a profit? Especially since the overhead should be as expensive since it seems as if everything is online.
  • bob
    when will u do another livestock its been 2 months
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