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Well to that extent, most other SaaS products which are affordable for SMBs are not a safe investment either, it's not that non-google companies/startup never s

Well to that extent, most other SaaS products which are affordable for SMBs are not a safe investment either, it's not that non-google companies/startup never shut down. Actually most SaaS startups fail.

n42 7y ago
I agree but I think it's a false dichotomy. At least with a startup you can count on them to, well, try.
- kayoone 7y ago
  but most lack the financial stability of google and could disappear rather quickly because of that.
  - eitland 7y ago
    Look for companies like Basecamp, companies that arent looking to be aquired or get unicorn status but to stay soundly profitable year-after-year. This was one of the reasons I loved WhatsApp so much early on when that seemed to be the way it was going: a healthy >1B USD company with no dependency except on users. As the WhatsApp story and many other tells us this isn't always safe, but it should be a safer bet than anyone clearly going the "unicorn or nothing" way from the start.
    - smcl 7y ago
      Was WhatsApp healthy or profitable before it was bought by Facebook? I'm not sure if there's any way we can know for sure, but it all played out like a pretty standard Silicon Valley "unicorn" - couple of rounds of investment by a big VC followed by a mega-acquisition by a FAANG.
      - danielscrubs 7y ago
        Do we even know they are profitable now without Facebook selling user data? But WhatsApp is an insane success story on its own. Back then, around 20 engineers handling billions of messages per day, with their own servers and spending zero dollars in advertisement and using a non-standard language (Erlang).
      - eitland 7y ago
        They had 400 million monthly active users in December 2013. At the same time they had 50 employees I think as well as modest server expenses. They had signalled quite early that they where going to charge money, they had started charging money from at least a subset of users and they were still growing like crazy, 200 million monthly active users since april that year it seems based on the statistics I found. To me that sounds profitable.
  - kyshoc 7y ago
    Financial stability doesn't mean much to the end-user if the product ends up getting killed off regardless.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Profits that don't register for Google can make a sensible business for a smaller company.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Do you think Bebop would have survived if Google never tried to buy it? Or if Google poached the key staff but didn't buy the company?
croon 7y ago
> While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio This is not a decision any startup would make. So there's at least some difference, in Googles disfavor.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  It literally was a decision a startup made. Bebop was a startup that sold itself.
  - croon 7y ago
    Selling a startup is not even close to the same as shutting down while admitting your product is successful.
wil421 7y ago
SaaS Market is pretty mature. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Tableu, and Mulesoft are a few I have personally worked on that are not really in startup mode anymore.

n42 7y ago

I agree but I think it's a false dichotomy. At least with a startup you can count on them to, well, try.

kayoone 7y ago
but most lack the financial stability of google and could disappear rather quickly because of that.
- eitland 7y ago
  Look for companies like Basecamp, companies that arent looking to be aquired or get unicorn status but to stay soundly profitable year-after-year. This was one of the reasons I loved WhatsApp so much early on when that seemed to be the way it was going: a healthy >1B USD company with no dependency except on users. As the WhatsApp story and many other tells us this isn't always safe, but it should be a safer bet than anyone clearly going the "unicorn or nothing" way from the start.
  - smcl 7y ago
    Was WhatsApp healthy or profitable before it was bought by Facebook? I'm not sure if there's any way we can know for sure, but it all played out like a pretty standard Silicon Valley "unicorn" - couple of rounds of investment by a big VC followed by a mega-acquisition by a FAANG.
    - danielscrubs 7y ago
      Do we even know they are profitable now without Facebook selling user data? But WhatsApp is an insane success story on its own. Back then, around 20 engineers handling billions of messages per day, with their own servers and spending zero dollars in advertisement and using a non-standard language (Erlang).
    - eitland 7y ago
      They had 400 million monthly active users in December 2013. At the same time they had 50 employees I think as well as modest server expenses. They had signalled quite early that they where going to charge money, they had started charging money from at least a subset of users and they were still growing like crazy, 200 million monthly active users since april that year it seems based on the statistics I found. To me that sounds profitable.
- kyshoc 7y ago
  Financial stability doesn't mean much to the end-user if the product ends up getting killed off regardless.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

Profits that don't register for Google can make a sensible business for a smaller company.

lonelappde 7y ago
Do you think Bebop would have survived if Google never tried to buy it? Or if Google poached the key staff but didn't buy the company?

croon 7y ago

> While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio This is not a decision any startup would make. So there's at least some difference, in Googles disfavor.

lonelappde 7y ago
It literally was a decision a startup made. Bebop was a startup that sold itself.
- croon 7y ago
  Selling a startup is not even close to the same as shutting down while admitting your product is successful.

wil421 7y ago

SaaS Market is pretty mature. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Tableu, and Mulesoft are a few I have personally worked on that are not really in startup mode anymore.