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The thing is, I bet you they would find sympathy here if they launched, competed, and couldn't find a toehold. That would have been an honourable exit. But the
by yawaramin 9y ago
The thing is, I bet you they would find sympathy here if they launched, competed, and couldn't find a toehold. That would have been an honourable exit. But the way they went out here, after burning through $45m in investment funds and mismanaging a potential sale, then trying to imply blame on the would-be buyer--this doesn't look good at all.
Edit: example of HN crowd sympathetic to a postmortem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13421608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13421608
- austenallred 9y agoWhat shows us it was mismanaged? How do we know the acquiring company didn’t cold feet and bail after the founders had run out of options to hedge? You can’t raise a round with an acquisition pending, so you kind of have to put yourself in a precarious position. Perhaps they could have done something else, but hindsight is 20/20.
- yawaramin 9y agoA few things: - They didn't pay contractors for months of work - They gave no hints to anyone that they were running out of funds - They agreed to stop looking for acquisitions while in discussions, without requiring a bailout penalty clause in exchange - $45m for a lock? Where the heck did it all go? Elon Musk's initial investment in Tesla was $6m in 2004.
- greglindahl 9y agoI have been a founder at 2 startups that were acquired. In both cases there was a "noshop" with no bailout penalty. But the "noshop" didn't say we couldn't look for additional investors. I don't see anything in this writeup that implies that the noshop was unusual.