4 ms·

I'm also interested in the Quixey story -- how can a company raise >$100mm without ever releasing a product? What happened there?

sulam 5y ago
Hey, at least the founder is fluent in "Hebew".
- this2shallPass 5y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean here?
  - sulam 5y ago
    His LinkedIn page has "Hebew" as a language he's fluent in. Given his background/interests, he obviously means Hebrew, but this lack of attention to detail is at least a yellow flag for me. I also am surprised that LinkedIn allows free text with no corrections in that field! :)
    - this2shallPass 5y ago
      Thanks for clarifying! This wasn't obvious, but it's clear now. Someone downvoted my comment. Stay classy, HN.
nikanj 5y ago
Ask Magic Leap.
ddp26 5y ago
I'm curious too, as there were some early LessWrong folks working there, IIRC. I used to walk by their office in Mountain View. This article discusses what went wrong with their finances, but doesn't discuss what happened with the product (app search, app deep-linking): https://www.axios.com/behind-the-fall-of-quixey-1513301224-05bad4bc-bae3-464a-b192-7dd9417b252b.html https://www.axios.com/behind-the-fall-of-quixey-1513301224-0...
rweichler 5y ago
You gotta remember, this was over 10 years ago. The VC/tech game was a lot different back then. The "search engine for apps" pitch kinda made sense back in those days. A "search engine for apps" sounds stupid nowadays because it's impossible on iOS. But back then, jailbreaking was quite popular. Many Quixey employees (and many people in silicon valley) had jailbroken iPhones. iOS 3 was pretty limited and limera1n worked on every iPhone. Piracy was still mainstream. Spotify sounded stupid back then because Grooveshark was so much better. It was inevitable that Apple would cave in and open up its platform any day. And if Apple didn't do that, Android would eat their lunch. Then Steve Jobs died, and Tim Cook released the iPhone 4S, the first iPhone you couldn't jailbreak easily. The rest is history. Mobile was a new landscape, and it was a tough problem to solve. Plus they were going up against Google so there was a sense of FOMO if you weren't in on it. The thinking was, maybe there's a 1% chance it pays off and Quixey beats Google.
- anonquixey 5y ago
  Another former employee. I'll add that once search engine for apps clearly wouldn't work there was an attempt to pivot to something like Google cards but directly linked to the app (so yelp reviews for restaurants instead of Google reviews). This wasn't a bad idea but they raised the money for a large scale product (1000s of apps) and so invested in scale before proving the market fit. Combine that with Alibaba money splitting focus again and there never was a useful product launched. (Google employee now: views are my own)

sulam 5y ago

Hey, at least the founder is fluent in "Hebew".

this2shallPass 5y ago
Can you clarify what you mean here?
- sulam 5y ago
  His LinkedIn page has "Hebew" as a language he's fluent in. Given his background/interests, he obviously means Hebrew, but this lack of attention to detail is at least a yellow flag for me. I also am surprised that LinkedIn allows free text with no corrections in that field! :)
  - this2shallPass 5y ago
    Thanks for clarifying! This wasn't obvious, but it's clear now. Someone downvoted my comment. Stay classy, HN.

nikanj 5y ago

Ask Magic Leap.

ddp26 5y ago

I'm curious too, as there were some early LessWrong folks working there, IIRC. I used to walk by their office in Mountain View. This article discusses what went wrong with their finances, but doesn't discuss what happened with the product (app search, app deep-linking): https://www.axios.com/behind-the-fall-of-quixey-1513301224-05bad4bc-bae3-464a-b192-7dd9417b252b.html https://www.axios.com/behind-the-fall-of-quixey-1513301224-0...

rweichler 5y ago

You gotta remember, this was over 10 years ago. The VC/tech game was a lot different back then. The "search engine for apps" pitch kinda made sense back in those days. A "search engine for apps" sounds stupid nowadays because it's impossible on iOS. But back then, jailbreaking was quite popular. Many Quixey employees (and many people in silicon valley) had jailbroken iPhones. iOS 3 was pretty limited and limera1n worked on every iPhone. Piracy was still mainstream. Spotify sounded stupid back then because Grooveshark was so much better. It was inevitable that Apple would cave in and open up its platform any day. And if Apple didn't do that, Android would eat their lunch. Then Steve Jobs died, and Tim Cook released the iPhone 4S, the first iPhone you couldn't jailbreak easily. The rest is history. Mobile was a new landscape, and it was a tough problem to solve. Plus they were going up against Google so there was a sense of FOMO if you weren't in on it. The thinking was, maybe there's a 1% chance it pays off and Quixey beats Google.

anonquixey 5y ago
Another former employee. I'll add that once search engine for apps clearly wouldn't work there was an attempt to pivot to something like Google cards but directly linked to the app (so yelp reviews for restaurants instead of Google reviews). This wasn't a bad idea but they raised the money for a large scale product (1000s of apps) and so invested in scale before proving the market fit. Combine that with Alibaba money splitting focus again and there never was a useful product launched. (Google employee now: views are my own)