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Don't integrate early-stage SaaS as critical to your business is the main lesson here. You get laid-off just like their employees when they rush toward a shitty

Don't integrate early-stage SaaS as critical to your business is the main lesson here. You get laid-off just like their employees when they rush toward a shitty acquisition.

macspoofing 3y ago
>Don't integrate early-stage SaaS as critical to your business is the main lesson here. Let's be honest, nobody had 'Airplane' as some critical part of their business.
- vbhakta 3y ago
  We use it for customer support
- sokoloff 3y ago
  You might be surprised how many shadow IT projects end up becoming load-bearing members in businesses. (I think this is mostly a good thing, because it works out a lot more often than it fails, but when it fails like this, it can be very disruptive.)
swyx 3y ago
if everyone was as blanket-critical of early stage SaaS as you we would get a lot less innovation (or at least challengers to keep incumbents honest). someone needs to be discerning of team/product quality, someone needs to take risks to solve pain for their stakeholders. there are good startups that are good partners, there are startups that give a good try and dont make it, and there are plain bad startups. don't throw everyone under the bus
- Johnny555 3y ago
  My company had a significant product based on an early stage startup's product -- before we signed a license with them, we negotiated a code escrow agreement with the company. And it was good that we did because about a year later they got acquired by a company that didn't want to continue selling the product we used, but we got the source code so were able to maintain the product. We picked up a couple of the developers that were working on that product too.
  - Redoubts 3y ago
    > we negotiated a code escrow agreement with the company. really curious of the terms of that
    - Johnny555 3y ago
      Me too, only a few people in the company knew the terms of the agreement, apparently it was the only code escrow agreement that company made and it was protected under NDA. I don't think we paid a premium for it, but signed a longer term licensing agreement.
  - swyx 3y ago
    woudl love to learn more - what startup was this? why could they not have gone out to market to compete with you instead of letting you whitelabel their product?
    - Johnny555 3y ago
      It was a pretty low level product near the bottom of our infrastructure tier and we built everything on top of it. It worked well for our specific use case, but apparently not a general enough need to succeed on its own. It's not like we took their product, added a new skin and sold it as our own.
  - senderista 3y ago
    How many businesses have the in-house expertise to maintain a defunct codebase? And for how many of those that do is it actually an optimal use of resources?
    - Rapzid 3y ago
      This is a story about successful CYA, not a recommendation to go balls deep on any hawt sAas that comes your way. But also, a lot of companies have engineers that can.. Engineer. Often it's more an availability issue than expertise.
    - 3y ago
senderista 3y ago
I don't understand how any tech startup gets any adoption from business users with critical use cases. The risk seems obviously disqualifying.
- acjohnson55 3y ago
  One typical strategy is by having all core functionality open source, so that people can self-host, if necessary.

Don't integrate early-stage SaaS as critical to your business is the main lesson here. You get laid-off just like their employees when they rush toward a shitty acquisition.

macspoofing 3y ago

>Don't integrate early-stage SaaS as critical to your business is the main lesson here. Let's be honest, nobody had 'Airplane' as some critical part of their business.

vbhakta 3y ago
We use it for customer support
sokoloff 3y ago
You might be surprised how many shadow IT projects end up becoming load-bearing members in businesses. (I think this is mostly a good thing, because it works out a lot more often than it fails, but when it fails like this, it can be very disruptive.)

swyx 3y ago

if everyone was as blanket-critical of early stage SaaS as you we would get a lot less innovation (or at least challengers to keep incumbents honest). someone needs to be discerning of team/product quality, someone needs to take risks to solve pain for their stakeholders. there are good startups that are good partners, there are startups that give a good try and dont make it, and there are plain bad startups. don't throw everyone under the bus

Johnny555 3y ago
My company had a significant product based on an early stage startup's product -- before we signed a license with them, we negotiated a code escrow agreement with the company. And it was good that we did because about a year later they got acquired by a company that didn't want to continue selling the product we used, but we got the source code so were able to maintain the product. We picked up a couple of the developers that were working on that product too.
- Redoubts 3y ago
  > we negotiated a code escrow agreement with the company. really curious of the terms of that
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    Me too, only a few people in the company knew the terms of the agreement, apparently it was the only code escrow agreement that company made and it was protected under NDA. I don't think we paid a premium for it, but signed a longer term licensing agreement.
- swyx 3y ago
  woudl love to learn more - what startup was this? why could they not have gone out to market to compete with you instead of letting you whitelabel their product?
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    It was a pretty low level product near the bottom of our infrastructure tier and we built everything on top of it. It worked well for our specific use case, but apparently not a general enough need to succeed on its own. It's not like we took their product, added a new skin and sold it as our own.
- senderista 3y ago
  How many businesses have the in-house expertise to maintain a defunct codebase? And for how many of those that do is it actually an optimal use of resources?
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    This is a story about successful CYA, not a recommendation to go balls deep on any hawt sAas that comes your way. But also, a lot of companies have engineers that can.. Engineer. Often it's more an availability issue than expertise.
  - 3y ago

senderista 3y ago

I don't understand how any tech startup gets any adoption from business users with critical use cases. The risk seems obviously disqualifying.

acjohnson55 3y ago
One typical strategy is by having all core functionality open source, so that people can self-host, if necessary.