3 ms·

PE realises you can fire most of the team and stop R&D, jack up prices by 50-100% due to lock in, and have something low risk that returns like four times bonds

by dannyw 2y ago

PE realises you can fire most of the team and stop R&D, jack up prices by 50-100% due to lock in, and have something low risk that returns like four times bonds.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
What R&D was Squarespace doing over the last 10 years?
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  Their website builder and templates I imagine
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    What part of a website builder and template engine is fundamentally new and uncertain? Squarespace certainly does a lot of development, but "R&D" (especially when it comes to things that PE firms will cut) usually means completely new stuff with significant uncertainty in terms of revenue impact. If Squarespace, for example, had been a significant contributor to HTML standards to make website rendering easier, I would be unhappy about a loss of R&D.
- dartos 2y ago
  All software companies have R&D going on constantly. “How do I push this user metric” “How do we increase conversion” “How can we increase conversion for our customers” “Can square space be easier to use”
  - itsoktocry 2y ago
    >All software companies have R&D going on constantly. I think the question is more like, "what is Squarespace innovating on that we're afraid of losing under new ownership?"
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    Software people massively over-classify their work as "R&D" when most of it is basically the equivalent of tuning or plumbing. R&D involves at least a little bit of the "R" part, which usually means some risk that the work is worthless. If you are just doing the development part, which is what you are doing when you ask the question "how do I push this metric?", private equity is usually happy to fund that. I generally wouldn't classify those (except for maybe the last one if you are developing fundamentally new user interfaces) as actually being R&D. I also know that the IRS classifies software development as R&D, but we all know those are not the same thing in reality.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      > I also know that the IRS classifies software development as R&D, but we all know those are not the same thing in reality. I think you may have spent too much time writing software to notice how R&D it is. You can pick whatever citation you want [1] but writing software is a very risky endeavor (in terms of ROI). "Generic IT" or SRE is really not R&D. If your solution to a bug is to "reboot" the device; that's an operational fix. If your solution is instead to read a stacktrace and write some code; that's R&D. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=most+software+projects+fail https://www.google.com/search?q=most+software+projects+fail
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        Setting up shopify integrations, building a domain name registrar, and writing new web templates is not R&D. It carries no technical risk and the product is already known to be valuable. The only chance of failure is that you build it and nobody comes to buy because there's no reason to choose you over all the other people offering the same thing. I am sure that most software projects fail, but I am also sure that as a software developer, almost all of your work ends up in production. Sure, you will have minor technical setbacks, but not on the scale of actual R&D projects. In contrast, people doing R&D in pharma or other similar fields will spend months or years working on a single project that doesn't go anywhere because it is too hard. The same goes for civil engineers building bridges, for example: the work is highly technical, but it is not R&D. I very much disagree with you that pushing a 10-line bugfix is anywhere near R&D. There's no uncertainty, and there is no research. By the way, the act of thinking or problem solving does not make your work R&D. If it did, retail workers and construction workers would be doing a lot of R&D, too.
- the_sleaze_ 2y ago
  https://www.squarespace.com/refresh https://www.squarespace.com/refresh It's not like they've been sitting on their hands
makestuff 2y ago
Yeah slash equity grants for engineers by 20%, and then move into maintenance mode.
- throwaway12301 2y ago
  They'll recap the company, at the expense of IC grants.
  - makestuff 2y ago
    Does that mean dilute the cap table and then suddenly the PE shares are equivalent to like 4 employee shares or something? Or the PE shares have some special dividend that the employee ones do not?
    - throwaway12301 2y ago
      PE will "buy" you out of some of your unvested shares. And they offer new ones, possibly way out of the money to try and keep people around. When it happened to me, I lost like 60% of my unvested shares, which would have been worth way more long-term, than the short-term gain they forced.

by dannyw 2y ago

PE realises you can fire most of the team and stop R&D, jack up prices by 50-100% due to lock in, and have something low risk that returns like four times bonds.

pclmulqdq 2y ago

What R&D was Squarespace doing over the last 10 years?

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
Their website builder and templates I imagine
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  What part of a website builder and template engine is fundamentally new and uncertain? Squarespace certainly does a lot of development, but "R&D" (especially when it comes to things that PE firms will cut) usually means completely new stuff with significant uncertainty in terms of revenue impact. If Squarespace, for example, had been a significant contributor to HTML standards to make website rendering easier, I would be unhappy about a loss of R&D.
dartos 2y ago
All software companies have R&D going on constantly. “How do I push this user metric” “How do we increase conversion” “How can we increase conversion for our customers” “Can square space be easier to use”
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >All software companies have R&D going on constantly. I think the question is more like, "what is Squarespace innovating on that we're afraid of losing under new ownership?"
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Software people massively over-classify their work as "R&D" when most of it is basically the equivalent of tuning or plumbing. R&D involves at least a little bit of the "R" part, which usually means some risk that the work is worthless. If you are just doing the development part, which is what you are doing when you ask the question "how do I push this metric?", private equity is usually happy to fund that. I generally wouldn't classify those (except for maybe the last one if you are developing fundamentally new user interfaces) as actually being R&D. I also know that the IRS classifies software development as R&D, but we all know those are not the same thing in reality.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    > I also know that the IRS classifies software development as R&D, but we all know those are not the same thing in reality. I think you may have spent too much time writing software to notice how R&D it is. You can pick whatever citation you want [1] but writing software is a very risky endeavor (in terms of ROI). "Generic IT" or SRE is really not R&D. If your solution to a bug is to "reboot" the device; that's an operational fix. If your solution is instead to read a stacktrace and write some code; that's R&D. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=most+software+projects+fail https://www.google.com/search?q=most+software+projects+fail
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      Setting up shopify integrations, building a domain name registrar, and writing new web templates is not R&D. It carries no technical risk and the product is already known to be valuable. The only chance of failure is that you build it and nobody comes to buy because there's no reason to choose you over all the other people offering the same thing. I am sure that most software projects fail, but I am also sure that as a software developer, almost all of your work ends up in production. Sure, you will have minor technical setbacks, but not on the scale of actual R&D projects. In contrast, people doing R&D in pharma or other similar fields will spend months or years working on a single project that doesn't go anywhere because it is too hard. The same goes for civil engineers building bridges, for example: the work is highly technical, but it is not R&D. I very much disagree with you that pushing a 10-line bugfix is anywhere near R&D. There's no uncertainty, and there is no research. By the way, the act of thinking or problem solving does not make your work R&D. If it did, retail workers and construction workers would be doing a lot of R&D, too.
the_sleaze_ 2y ago
https://www.squarespace.com/refresh https://www.squarespace.com/refresh It's not like they've been sitting on their hands

makestuff 2y ago

Yeah slash equity grants for engineers by 20%, and then move into maintenance mode.

throwaway12301 2y ago
They'll recap the company, at the expense of IC grants.
- makestuff 2y ago
  Does that mean dilute the cap table and then suddenly the PE shares are equivalent to like 4 employee shares or something? Or the PE shares have some special dividend that the employee ones do not?
  - throwaway12301 2y ago
    PE will "buy" you out of some of your unvested shares. And they offer new ones, possibly way out of the money to try and keep people around. When it happened to me, I lost like 60% of my unvested shares, which would have been worth way more long-term, than the short-term gain they forced.