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Siemens acquires Supplyframe, owners of Hackaday and Tindie
- kevinbowman 5y agoPress release at https://supplyframe.com/press-releases/siemens-accelerates-digital-marketplace-strategy-with-acquisition-of-supplyframe/ https://supplyframe.com/press-releases/siemens-accelerates-d...
- moolcool 5y agoI hope hackaday manages to stay around. They're the only blog I know which has maintained a high quality though all of these years and through many different owners.
- WanderPanda 5y agoWhich can be claimed for their content but not for their UI
- capableweb 5y agoWhat's wrong with their UI? Using https://hackaday.com/2021/05/22/irc-will-never-die/ https://hackaday.com/2021/05/22/irc-will-never-die/ as an example Seems the contrast is excellent and no obvious disturbing layout choices. Fairly traditional layout although I'm not a fan of the white on black as I sit in the sun a lot, but generally it seems quite good if you compare it with most random blogs out there.
- CamperBob2 5y agoThere's a reason why nothing, but nothing, of any importance or popularity uses white text on a black background.
- capableweb 5y agoOk, I'll bite. What's that reason? Because as long as the contrast is there, there is no obvious reason why using that color scheme would lead to less importance or popularity.
- CamperBob2 5y agoBecause objective studies have repeatedly shown it's harder to read white text on a black screen, compared to the dark-on-light text that 99.9% of everything else on the planet uses. It's a way of sending the message, "It's my site, not yours. I don't care if you don't find it legible. Everybody else is wrong, and I'm right."
- WanderPanda 5y agoOn an iPhone 11 there is about 1cm of vertical space for the content a recurrent reader wants to see: The latest article. Used to be better a couple years ago. Also “From the blog” is not emphasizing that these are actually the most recent articles from the blog and not some random selection
- ddingus 5y agoWhat do you mean? The UI is fine. The better part of it happens to be the fact that they haven't messed with it.
- gertlex 5y agoMaybe parent is still salty about the UI change... several years ago. I remember not being happy but that's no longer the case for me... but I also don't read it regularly. What I'd miss most is if the hackaday.io project site were to go away. Makes documenting my projects very easy.
- luke2m 5y agoI just use their RSS feed, but the UI looks fine to me.
- neolog 5y agoDon't mess with the UI please. It's simple like it should be.
- BeefWellington 5y agoYeah, it's a truly useful resource. They showcase so many cool projects it inspired me to get into hardware hacking.
- drewzero1 5y agoI hope so too! I've been a (semi-) regular reader for just over a decade now, and they are a wealth of information and inspiration. The only thing I might change would be the lack of edit/delete in the comments section (every time I read comments on there somebody seems to be asking mods to delete a duplicate comment, etc). I can't really complain, at least they didn't use some heavy, potentially data-sucking third party comment platform like FB or Disqus. I assume it's some kind of WordPress plugin, but I haven't looked into it.
- MegaDeKay 5y agoTheir podcast is quite good as well. Check it out if you haven't.
- causality0 5y agoHackaday definitely earned its spot on my daily reader list. It's especially good lately since they seem to have stopped running clickbait and "trendy" articles. The word "technoshamanism" still makes me gag.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- antattack 5y ago"for USD 0.7 billion. The transaction unlocks significant value for customers of Supplyframe and Siemens, providing seamless and quick access to both Siemens’ offerings and Supplyframe’s marketplace intelligence. [...]The acquisition also strengthens the Siemens portfolio through Software as a Service (SaaS) " Software as Service appears to be the ultimate goal.
- prennert 5y agoIt is not not uncommon for enterprise focused and traditionally hardware-strong businesses to try to pivot into SaaS as a way to bolster their revenue.
- dclaw 5y agoExtremely disappointing. Siemens has no business owning or purchasing these sites. Shame on Supplyframe.
- grammarprofess 5y agoIt actually makes alot of sense, Siemens and supplyframe will tremendously benefit from this!
- jsilence 5y agoCare to detail why and how? Genuinly interested.
- grammarprofess 5y agoSiemens gets to cater to makers and homebrew electronics diyers. Supplyframe gets all the talent, tech, capital and parts Siemens has!
- sabjut 5y agoWhat are your reasons to assume that Siemens would mismanage these sites?
- rjzzleep 5y agoIt's one of these typical German conglomerates that absolutely doesn't understand consumer and consumer products. I don't know if it will mismanage Hackaday. They literally only have to keep it as is. But if they don't(mismanage) I'll be positively surprised.
- jhallenworld 5y agoTheir twitter messages quoted in the Adafruit blog imply that they don't know what they bought :-) "Thank you for reaching out @adafruit. @Hackaday und @Tindie are websites of @Supplyframe, and thus also part of the acquisition. Hackaday in particular is a community exchange website for engineers and developers. " (no need to explain what Hackaday is to Adafruit.. probably they don't know who Adafruit is either.)
- baybal2 5y agoI wounder why? $0.7B for a blog, and a wordpress shop? Cheap money make "miracles" these days.
- progre 5y agoI think they are buying because of the audience.
- smarx007 5y agohttps://supplyframe.com/why-supplyframe/ https://supplyframe.com/why-supplyframe/ 70+ websites and a SaaS supply chain management intelligence software (Design-to-Source Intelligence as they call it) that nets $70M revenue annually...
- BoysenberryPi 5y agoHuge fan of Hackaday so I'm really not with this acquisition but if you offer me 700,000,000 for my blog I'd sell it too. I wish them the best of luck.
- Zenst 5y agoNot just the blog but Tindie as well all under the umbrella(Supplyframe) they brought for $0.7m. "The expected revenue of Supplyframe for the fiscal year 2021 is around $70 million with profit margins typical for the software business." sure does make for a different perspective upon the offer and on the basis of that, along with the growth in that area of hobby electronics. I figure for the buyer, it's a bargain and on the face of it, could of sold for more. [EDIT ADD} OK been pointed out I slipped few points on that value and it's $700m which with that turnover makes way more sense. But epic Doh moment and hands up on that laugh.
- elromulous 5y ago$0.7b*!
- Zenst 5y agoThank you - added an edit in time, epic brain fart upon my part that and certainly makes the price with the turnover balance out more as a much fairer deal.
- smcl 5y agoGood you were able to get the edit in before the 2hr window closed! For what it's worth, I appreciate when people are transparent about edits. However if you're just correcting a minor typo or fixing some grammar in a way that doesn't alter the original point I think you can safely just go ahead and edit in-place with maybe a "Edit: Oops, changing $foo to $bar. Well spotted, $user!" if you want to be super open about it. My comments often go through multiple revisions like this in the first ~5 minutes or so. If dang has any ability to see or query these edits I wouldn't be surprised if they discovered my "edits per word" is among the highest in HN :D
- robert_foss 5y agoThat's all very unfortunate. Having worked with German behemoth companies before I can't think of any positive outcomes.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoEh, no need to be that narrow: What fraction of all acquisitions end well for the acquired company? I'm sure it must happen, but (at the risk of availability bias) I can't actually think of any.
- somethingwitty1 5y agoDepends on what you mean by "well for the acquired company". But if you just mean where the product (or possibly even the brand) went on to be successful, a bunch jump to mind: Pixar, Marvel, Google Maps, Ring, Zappos, Android, Woot!, Gatorade.
- neolog 5y agoI'm impressed by this comment, and curious about what background allowed you to whip up that list.
- sbierwagen 5y agoApple buying NeXT worked out pretty well for NeXT. Youtube also seems to be doing well under Google.
- rasz 5y agoSiemens doesnt even know hackaday exists. Supplyframe will probably be fine, but RIP hackaday.
- sbierwagen 5y agoGP said "What fraction of all acquisitions end well for the acquired company?"
- satya71 5y agoDidn't realize Hackaday and Tindie were making $70m in revenue. Siemens seems to have good track record in other acquisitions in EE space. I guess they're trying to go up against Arrow, Avnet, etc
- jhallenworld 5y agoFunny things about Arrow and Avnet- they both started as hobbyist stores in Manhattan's "Radio Row" back when radio was the hot new technology: https://www.arrow.com/fiveyearsout/company-overview/history https://www.arrow.com/fiveyearsout/company-overview/history https://www.radiodiaries.org/new-podcast-radio-row/ https://www.radiodiaries.org/new-podcast-radio-row/
- drone 5y agoThey're not. SupplyFrame has traditionally been a software vendor for companies in the electronics manufacturing space. The blogs and Tindie are a very, very small part of their portfolio. For example, there's QuoteFX, DirectSource, DesignSense, FindChips, and a host of other solutions they sell.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mdoms 5y agoI have two questions which aren't answered in the article and seem like they should be, * What's Hackaday? * What's Tindie?
- croes 5y agoLet me help you https://www.hackaday.com https://www.hackaday.com https://www.tindie.com https://www.tindie.com
- jhallenworld 5y agoIt's odd that my side project is now being sold by Siemens. What will happen if I start selling motion controllers (or other things that compete with Siemens) on there? On the plus side, maybe they can expand the payment options beyond Paypal.
- croes 5y agoThe Siemens that has attracted attention in recent years mainly because of job cuts and bribe payments? Good night Hackaday.
- tpmx 5y agoWow. This is so doomed to fail. German bigcorp with a faked startup culture unit ingesting Hackaday/Tindie. Congrats to the sellers.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ldite 5y agoYeah. I worked for a tech company that was acquired by Siemens. It didn't go well.
- NockNock 5y agoCan I ask why? Or what company?
- rasz 5y agoIn 1993 Siemens acquired ELWRO, Polish computer manufacturer (RIAD - IBM 360/370 mainframe clones for Russian/Indian market) and ZWUT, Polish telecommunication equipment manufacturer. They paid $38mln. First thing they did was to fire everyone from ELWRO. They also send manufacturing lines and unused parts stock back to Germany, and on top of it demolished manufacturing plants and sold off bare land. Good old German efficiency, scorched earth policy. 7 years later Siemens finished this "investment" by selling remaining telecomm part of the company to US investor Telect who planned to manufacture fiberoptic switches in Poland. Rumor has it Telect came to some sort of a deal with Nortel and closed manufacturing in Eastern Europe as a result. And that was that, from Mainframe manufacturer to nothing in 7 years from Siemens acquisition.
- lloydatkinson 5y agoOh no
- ptorrone 5y agoi will be interviewing the team at siemens and maybe some of the folks at supplyframe / hackaday / tindie -- post up any questions you want me to ask (disclosure: i started hackaday 16 years ago or so, have nothing to do with this now).
- daniellarusso 5y agoYou and Limor, love you both!
- UncleOxidant 5y agoSiemens likely doesn't care at all about and may not even be aware of Hackaday. Wouldn't it be fairly easy to restart Hackaday elsewhere if Siemens chooses to defund it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- luma 5y agoAs a Tindie seller, I have hopes that this injection of cash will address several outstanding issues with the platform. I sell a DIY touchscreen home automation controller that I build by hand in my basement[1]. My product is targeted at DIY types interested in owning their own home automation environment. The project utilizes a 3D printed enclosure, a custom PCB, an ESP8266, Nextion LCD, and a few supporting components, fasteners, etc. All firmware, gerbers, STLs, etc are open source and available on GitHub[2]. I didn't really intend to sell these things, but several interested users who didn't have access to the required tools or skills talked me into listing on Tindie. It is a great platform for my use case - basically zero friction to get a simple store stood up and to start collecting orders. There is nearly no customization possible, you simply upload some markdown, setup your products, then add your PayPal info to collect payments. Over the years, users have been requesting (seemingly simple) features to be added to the platform. For example, the Tindi API is a read-only affair. You can collect your orders via the API, but once you've shipped them, you cannot use the API to mark the order shipped (or provide tracking info, etc). User requests for this functionality have been made going back to 2015, and nearly immediately, statements were made that an "API v2" was coming "soon". You can request beta API access, but in my case that request went unanswered and no others have suggested that their access was granted either. 6 years later, there is still no way to mark an order shipped without clicking around in the web UI. More concerning has been the lack of any ability to deal with taxes. US law now requires that I collect and pay state sales tax, but Tindie can't handle it and shows no sign of ever adding that feature. The list goes on, no way to handle UK VAT post-brexit, no ability to utilize payment providers besides PayPal, etc etc. Each request is met with "we're working on it", but in the 3 years that I've been selling on Tindie, I've never once noticed any new features added to the platform and no community announcements to that effect have ever been made. There is allegedly a development team behind this, but there is zero outward indication of any product development happening at all. Hopefully a cash injection might get Tindie up to modern standards for a web store. I love the ethos behind the product, but the product itself is severely lacking. Hopefully, $700M will help move this platform forward. [1] https://www.tindie.com/products/luma/ha-switchplate-hasp-single-wide-assembled/ https://www.tindie.com/products/luma/ha-switchplate-hasp-sin... [2] https://github.com/HASwitchPlate/HASPone https://github.com/HASwitchPlate/HASPone
- 5y ago
- PicassoCTs 5y agoMove seems to be part of that steam for (home/industrial)-automation plan? Probably doomed. German industry culture is toxic to software. Product perfectionism prevents shipping early and often, often doesen't ship at all, cause hype dies before product is done.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoThis is great news for Supplyframe. But there is a darker undercurrent here that really needs some introspection. The "makers market" of today doesn't work. Let's compare the market between say 1975 and 1985 with the market between 2010 and 2020. Money spent on the early market supported no less than 6 monthly printed magazines, several chains of electronics component stores (Radio Shack/Tandy/Dick Smiths/Marples(sp?)), a host of retail outlets, and several equipment manufacturers selling into the market. In the "modern" era, there are no profitable magazines or web sites or blogs or ANYTHING with respect to this hobby, there are NO brick and mortar retail components stores, and no equipment maker sells into this market. So why is this? I suspect that a large chunk of that is money. In particular, the "cost" of things has gone so far down that the money selling those things is a mere pittance of what it was before. But salaries of people to run these businesses, offices, etc hasn't changed. Nor has postage or warehouse space etc. But the interesting follow on effect is that it makes no sense to pay $8000 for an advertisement (the full page price of an ad in Modern Electronics in 1980) when you might generate an additional $4K in revenue. Similarly for blogs or podcasts where 70 to 90% of the ad revenue goes to the ad network (Google, Bing, Etc.) Open source is great, but without money people have to work other jobs and so their ability to contribute quality time to their hobbies, much less full time to them, is that much harder to do. I used to write free lance articles for Byte, Dr. Dobbs, and others and they would pay me $600 - $800 per article. A recent article suggests that the editors for Hackaday get paid but the places they link? They just get "exposure." (cue the Oatmeal comic on spending "exposure"). There are some standouts, like Adafruit, but even there the margins are tight and the operations are small. They are certainly not a "Radio Shack" level of enterprise. I don't know what the "fix" is, but there is some re-imagining, re-inventing that needs to go on here to pay these people who put in their time to make the "maker movement" work. Or it will continue to struggle.
- worldmerge 5y agoI miss going to my local Radio Shack and getting components. When they went under I could really only get components online. Sure, there is a commercial supplier near me but they are only open 9-5ish M-F and don't have a website. It would be great if they were able to digitize their inventory and ship orders. I wonder why some commercial focused companies make it so hard for non-commercial customers to access their business (I'm including companies that have websites but make it clear they only sell to contractors)?
- zwieback 5y agoIt's always interesting to me what kind of stuff Siemens gets into these days. My grandpa was a Siemens lifer building power plants and actually lived in Siemensstadt before and during WWII. Hard to imagine what the connection to hobby electronics is.
- kragen 5y agoSiemens makes an enormous range of electrical and electronic products. One of my favorite YouChube channels, Homo Faciens, used to have a lot of really great stuff about improvising electromechanical systems out of junk, but more recently it's been shilling Siemens products that replace the junk he used to use. So apparently if you're into that kind of thing, Siemens has a lot of products to sell you. It's a shame SupplyFrame wasn't profitable enough to remain independent, but as acquirers go, Siemens seems pretty reasonable.
- antattack 5y agoSiemens could expand HaD to be like Github for makers. Maybe even compete with Autodesk by making it easy to use their PCB and CAD software on the platform. And, compete with AWS IoT and other cloud services by offering Siemens' own, compatibile with Adafruit modules.
- sircastor 5y agoThere’s an idea I can get behind: a competitor to Autodesk.
- tomcooks 5y agoAm I the only one being surprised that what I perceived where the last bastions of pop DIY culture were in fact just farming for corporate acquisition? This is a bummer, time to forego http and switch to nicer realms. > This will help customers to reduce costs, increase agility and make highly informed decisions. Thanks for informing me about how to make decisions and somehow "increase agility" whatever the f that is supposed to mean. Piggusting corpowhorespeak.
- snapetom 5y agoI think shopping for an acquisition for many businesses, especially in tech, is to be expected. It's hard for owners to say no to the sort of money being thrown around not only for themselves, but for any employees with equity. If there's a platform created by someone who's already struck it rich once and truly doing it out of love, then maybe you've found a super rare unicorn.
- tomcooks 5y agoOf course, and it's well within their rights to look for sponsors and acquisitions. It's also very naive of me to think people would "keep it real", as if that ever brought anything of value. It's just surprising, somehow I thought those sites were grassroot, made for passionate amateurs by passionate amateurs. If you want to see the platforms you talk about I suggest taking a look at tilde servers, lots of passion and proper punk attitude
- teclordphrack2 5y agoSo what the heck does Supplyframe even do? Went to the website and can see all the glossy feel good front end bs but can't really see what they actually provide.
- rasz 5y agoSupply management and sourcing (middleman). findchips.com. Their competition is octopart.com and tens of Chinese part aggregators, websites you stumble upon when searching for datasheets and instead landing on a site listing vendors with "enter email for a quote" links. I imagine they had great quarter or two during recent chip shortage, everyone is scrambling for inventory.
- karlkloss 5y agoSiemens is a bank with an affiliated electrical department. Expect the usual banker bs.
- timwaagh 5y agoI don't really understand what Siemens wants with SaaS or indie hardware creation et cetera. I know they do both heavy industry and some consumer electronics. I don't really see the synergy here. Maybe they are just looking for ideas? But I'm sure Siemens could read these websites without an expensive acquisition. Anyone understand it a little better?
- hexagon5un 5y agoThere is a lot of FUD and speculation here. Hackaday isn't going anywhere. Ask me how I know: https://hackaday.io/hexagon5un https://hackaday.io/hexagon5un
- endymi0n 5y agoHoping for the best. Preparing for the usual: https://vooza.com/videos/the-truth-about-acquisitions/ https://vooza.com/videos/the-truth-about-acquisitions/
- rasz 5y agoIs that why hackaday havent bothered posting "great news"? And comments about it get deleted? :) Doesnt exactly inspire confidence.