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Google Acquires Omnisio (YC Winter 08)
- bbgm 18y agoNow that's a good acquisition. Omnisio was very cool. Could slideshare be next?
- wave 18y agoWow, this is really good news. Omnisio, how long did it take you from the inception of the idea to selling it? Why did Google/Youtube spend $15mil acquiring the company instead of creating a similar service? I think more than the technology itself, Google would like to hire the Omnisio team.
- aneesh 18y agoThis is about 10 months from when they started. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169052
- jmtame 18y agoStartups consist of much more than just "number of lines of code written." It's not that black and white. When you make an acquisition, you inherit not just code, but you inherit the massive amounts of iterations the product went through. That's part of the problem these days: everyone looks at a product and they forget the painstaking amount of time and dedication that went into getting it that far. It took a lot of sleepless nights and coffee. Not to mention, you're inheriting the users (which also have an acquisition cost, even to Omnisio, it may have been going around and talking to people individually about feature requests and bugs, etc). In addition, you're acquiring the talent behind the startup. These are people who not just understand how to code, but they develop products with the user in mind. They have the determination and persistence to get updates done and out the door. If you sit these guys in front of a board, or in front of investors, they have already proven that they will not flake out or give up. This is something that sounds trivial, but a lot of people lack the self-motivation to direct a project like this into completion and market adoption. I'm missing a lot of other things, but that gives you an idea that the startup you look at is far more than just pages that show stuff. Also, major props to the really strong UI work at Omnisio. UI is becoming one of the most overlooked aspects of technology. People focus a lot on the engineering or code or architecture or scaling, but forget that the usability is really what makes it enjoyable to use the product in the first place.
- matt1 18y agoCongrats! Just for my education: say that TechCrunch is correct and they did sell for $15 million and that YC took 6% equity in the company. Does that mean that that YC gets a $900,000 payday too? Or is it more complicated than that?
- jsmcgd 18y agoThis one liquidity event must go a long way to cover all the investments of ycombinator.
- mpc 18y agoThey've had quite a few now. I could imagine YC becoming profitable soon if they are not already.
- helveticaman 18y agoUnless Omnisio got other sources of funding. That also takes taxes out of the picture.
- markbao 18y agoOmnisio only had funding from YC, no other funding rounds.
- aston 18y agoIf Techcrunch is right, Chris Sacca was part of a seed round. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/omnisio http://www.crunchbase.com/company/omnisio
- markbao 18y agoYou're right. Also used CrunchBase as a source, didn't see that it was a dual party round. That's interesting though. Sacca is an Omnisio advisor, and also was the Director of Special Initiatives at Google.
- kyro 18y agoA thousand congratulations to you guys.
- markbao 18y agoMuch congratulations Omnisio! First found out about Omnisio from the synced DHH talk at Startup School, and thought it was brilliant. Awesome that Google thinks it is too :)
- spencerfry 18y agoCongratulations!
- thomasswift 18y agoHuge! Congrats Gentleman.
- staunch 18y agoCongratulations. Omnisio was extremely well done. I hope YouTube will be as good for presentations soon.
- ovi256 18y agoBravo! Well done lads!
- fallentimes 18y agoCongrats Ryan and team!
- ashu 18y agoDyamn! Congratulations, folks!
- ajju 18y agoWell done! Knew this would happen the first time I saw how awesome it was. Proof - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169159 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169159
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- jasonlbaptiste 18y agomany many kudos
- auston 18y agoWow! That is awesome... they're like what 14 months old? So awesome.
- auston 18y agoedit: 4 months?
- blader 18y agowow! congratulations omnisio team!
- rokhayakebe 18y agoAs I read this I happen to be listening to a selection of songs I put together using Omnisio. Great Guys.
- beaudeal 18y agoseriously, a huge congratulations to these guys... i remember hearing about them when they first came out, but only got around to using (and loving) the service recently when i watched the startup school presentations on their site...congrats again!
- ian 18y agocongratulations!
- aschobel 18y agoCongrats guys! Well done!
- Baltropreneur 18y agoCongrats..cool tech!
- adrianwaj 18y agoOmnisio - used it once and was impressed - viewed videos of speeches and could skip to various pre-determined points, with accompanying slides at left for viewing, and underneath for navigating. http://omnisio.com/startupschool08 http://omnisio.com/startupschool08 But, if one sells out, the startup never goes on to acquire other companies as seen at Sun, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google etc. Perhaps only early players in any industry or application type can obtain such growth to stave off the gorillas and sharks, and resist the temptation to be acquired in order to vye for a shot at the IPO brass ring.
- siculars 18y agomazal tov!
- mhartl 18y agoI just saw the Omnisios last night, and there wasn't a hint in their manner that this huge news was about to break. Great poker faces guys, and congratulations!
- ivankirigin 18y agoThey were really smart about not talking about it.
- ryan 18y agoBelieve me it was really hard to not tell you guys what was going on... but we were/are bound by some pretty strong NDAs
- mhartl 18y agoNo worries, mate!
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- lyime 18y agoCongrats! Great news!
- mchristoff 18y agoparty time!!!!
- babul 18y agoIs this the fastest liquidity event for a YC company? Well done all at Omnisio!
- babul 18y agoOr was Zenter faster?
- ashish1 18y agowow!! i'm now digging in omnisio to find the recipe for such hot cooked deal!!!!
- andrewf 18y agoYou made the front page of news.com.au as well. Congratulations :)
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- 7489 17y agogoogle
- 7489 17y agogoogle