4 ms·

It was incredibly odd. They paid a good about for our company, then just scuttled it. Didn’t use the source code, sold the hardware, neglected the remaining emp

It was incredibly odd. They paid a good about for our company, then just scuttled it. Didn’t use the source code, sold the hardware, neglected the remaining employees until we left one by one. They absorbed a few employees who are still there and are just as confused as none of the tech they spent so much money on ever got used. Maybe it was somehow a giant tax write off, or just buying out the competition?

jacquesm 7y ago
Or maybe they did one of the investors a favor. Follow the money.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
Maybe it was cheaper to buy the competition than to outspend them in customer acquisition?
taurath 7y ago
They were incompetent. Some VP had it in the pipeline then fell out of favor after the deal went thru. Lots of possibilities.
dillonmckay 7y ago
ScreenHero? Broadcast.com?
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  I thought ScreenHero was an acqui-hire and one of the guys was still working at Slack?
alexpetralia 7y ago
I wonder if this is a catch-and-kill. Was your company a growing competitor? I'd imagine, for example, Facebook would rather consume budding competitors (cheap) than renovate their entire business model (expensive).
lightbendover 7y ago
This same exact thing happened with my startup. I was surprisingly the second engineer to trickle out, which is only surprising since I didn’t expect someone to leave before me. The clash of cultures made it difficult to integrate; different geographies, age brackets, experience, practices, tech stacks, you name it. Overall, I agree with the theories proposed in response to your post — either incompetence of their leadership or favor to an investor. In our case, it was a bit of both and the latter part was clear beforehand. Their crudely constructed plan was to take our industry data to improve their models, but they were not privy to any of it so effectively all they bought was a bunch of tech they couldn’t manage to integrate since all of our tech leads left in the first two months. That’s what they get for not providing an incentive to stay at all, which again hints at both incompetence and a favor.
- bartread 7y ago
  > age brackets Careful: I don't imagine this was your intent, but we need to eradicate ageism from our industry, not promulgate it, even as a throwaway comment.
  - leesalminen 7y ago
    Haven’t you realized that people don’t like being told what they can and cannot say based on yet another -ism?
    - wavefunction 7y ago
      Are you asserting GP shouldn't be able to comment on ageism because people don't like being told what they can or can't say about ageism? Just some lovely irony this morning ;)

jacquesm 7y ago

Or maybe they did one of the investors a favor. Follow the money.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

Maybe it was cheaper to buy the competition than to outspend them in customer acquisition?

taurath 7y ago

They were incompetent. Some VP had it in the pipeline then fell out of favor after the deal went thru. Lots of possibilities.

dillonmckay 7y ago

ScreenHero? Broadcast.com?

selimthegrim 7y ago
I thought ScreenHero was an acqui-hire and one of the guys was still working at Slack?

alexpetralia 7y ago

I wonder if this is a catch-and-kill. Was your company a growing competitor? I'd imagine, for example, Facebook would rather consume budding competitors (cheap) than renovate their entire business model (expensive).

lightbendover 7y ago

This same exact thing happened with my startup. I was surprisingly the second engineer to trickle out, which is only surprising since I didn’t expect someone to leave before me. The clash of cultures made it difficult to integrate; different geographies, age brackets, experience, practices, tech stacks, you name it. Overall, I agree with the theories proposed in response to your post — either incompetence of their leadership or favor to an investor. In our case, it was a bit of both and the latter part was clear beforehand. Their crudely constructed plan was to take our industry data to improve their models, but they were not privy to any of it so effectively all they bought was a bunch of tech they couldn’t manage to integrate since all of our tech leads left in the first two months. That’s what they get for not providing an incentive to stay at all, which again hints at both incompetence and a favor.

bartread 7y ago
> age brackets Careful: I don't imagine this was your intent, but we need to eradicate ageism from our industry, not promulgate it, even as a throwaway comment.
- leesalminen 7y ago
  Haven’t you realized that people don’t like being told what they can and cannot say based on yet another -ism?
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    Are you asserting GP shouldn't be able to comment on ageism because people don't like being told what they can or can't say about ageism? Just some lovely irony this morning ;)