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>“There's no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upo

>“There's no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,” Rob Lord" Then why did you sell it for <$100MM? This is nothing against the software. In fact, I still use WinAMP on my PCs (no lie). But it annoys me when people pile on about what happens to their companies after they are acquired. If the legacy of your company is important to you (and no one says it has to be) why are you selling out? AOL isn't to blame for WinAMP going down hill, Nullsoft is for selling to them. I'd have taken the money too, but I wouldn't sit around and say "Look what they did to my company!" We seem to get that a lot around here. Big Tech Corp always takes the blame, never the entrepreneur. Well, big companies ruining acquisitions is practically a meme...what did you expect?

shalmanese 14y ago
For four kids in Arizona before the rise of internet communities giving advice about entrepreneurship, I think selling for 100M is a pretty reasonable decision.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  I would have taken the money in a heart beat. But to complain about how AOL, in hindsight, could have built iTunes out of it is mildly annoying. It's a mentality I see sometimes entrepreneurial culture. Taking it to the "next level" is hard, whatever that level happens to be. It's why you sell, rather than going it alone. If you think you can build iTunes (or Google, or Facebook, or Amazon or...) then build it. Don't sell to someone else and wonder why they didn't or couldn't.
earl 14y ago
To be fair, it's only the aol acquisition that gave them potential access to the time warner music library and the ability to go negotiate deals with the other content owners. I think it's unlikely 4 guys in arizona making $100k/mo with no connections could have made that happen.
- intended 14y ago
  There are several small teams with no connections who later went on to make things happen. Today if you had similar pedigree, you would be planning for early stage investors.
  - earl 14y ago
    I think it's unlikely in this case. Content producers ask for enormous up fronts, and you'd either hire very good in house attorneys or pay Fenwick & West or Wilson Sonsini a ton of money. Not to mention the RIAA had just lost in June '99 their lawsuit against Diamond, manufacturer of the Rio mp3 player, [1] essentially challenging the legitimacy of the idea of mp3 players period. In 2000 the RIAA was in the midst of suing napster [2]; Rhapsody, the first legal music service that I'm aware of, wasn't released until 2001, and they didn't get anything but indie music until mid 2002 (not quite sure about this date). [3] I think it's safe to say it took both contacts and a ton of money, neither of which nullsoft had outside aol. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_service) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_service)
    - intended 14y ago
      Is content sharing the only opportunity they had? Perhaps; thinking at that time was focused on making a content and tech juggernaut. I remember a Time cover (I think) talking about how AOL+Time Warner was a great deal. Still, given a chance to figure stuff out on their own, I can only assume that they would have figure something out and even had a chance to implement it when not curtailed by AOL.
rogerbinns 14y ago
I suspect that AOL made promises about how things would work and how they would be a multiplier for Nullsoft's efforts. In an acquisition I was involved in, the acquirer made us all sorts of promises about how the new world order would be wonderful. They even made sure everyone was involved in training on their company "way" and values etc. Things didn't go that way - several of our people left early because they preferred small companies over large ones, and there was a need for a considerable amount of planning and integration with the acquirer. This left less manpower available for our products and things ended up worse off than if we had not been acquired. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a year before leaving. The products were quietly shelved a few years later with the acquirer effectively having burnt $300 million. The irony is that at he beginning they said they had made mistakes with previous acquisitions, had learned from it and wouldn't do it this time.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Exactly - I've seen this before. EMC made a lot of promises when they bought the company I worked for - now it's all but dead.
  - rkudeshi 14y ago
    Mozy? I used to really like them, but when I recently tried restoring a folder after accidental deletion, I found files corrupted and misnamed. Nothing worse than a backup company that doesn't properly backup your files. Real shame, they used to be great.
  - GauntletWizard 14y ago
    I used to work for Isilon - Still well promoted, but more than half the team I worked with has left in disgust since the acquisition. I made out like a bandit with my stock, though :)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Sukotto 14y ago
I've been in acquired companies a couple of times, and have friends who's told me what happened to them. One common thing about every acquisition in our little sample is that first lie they told us was "nothing will change"
bradwestness 14y ago
Did Winamp ever have a built-in music store? I was under the impression that people basically stopped caring about Winamp mostly because the newer versions of Windows Media Player (7 and up) were "good enough" that mainstream users didn't see any need to go hunting down an alternative player. Nobody really likes iTunes as a player, it's only notable because of the store and the device lock-in.
- sjs382 14y ago
  I like it.
  - fromhet 14y ago
    Well, few do then. To be honest, iTunes a kind of bloated, it is a memory hog and it could be easier to use. But they have the store and the connection with the i-devices and are shipped with the macintoshes, and I believe that is their greatest feature.
    - batista 14y ago
      >Well, few do then. Few? It was the prevalent player on Mac even before the iPod and the store. And with hundreds of millions of people using it, I don't hear many complaints. Mainly stuff about how it "does too many things", as if I would want to juggle 4-5 different programs for my digital media library, store, etc...
    - sjs382 14y ago
      I don't use the store (except a few promotional tracks I downloaded for free) and I don't own an iDevice (though I used to). I use iTunes because it's easy to use and offers features that make listening to music more enjoyable (smart playlists, etc).
- aes256 14y ago
  > Nobody really likes iTunes as a player, it's only notable because of the store and the device lock-in. I've never bought music from the iTunes Store and, although I have an iPhone, rarely sync it with iTunes. I use iTunes because it has far and away the nicest interface of any music player on OS X. It also handles larger music collections effortlessly. These days I don't really care if it's using (at this point in time) ~200MB RAM.
runjake 14y ago
If I recall correctly AOL is to blame. They promised Frankel and co one thing but did another. Besides, it fell apart on their watch.
- zithtar 14y ago
  An acquisition is a massive legal and financial undertaking. If it's not in the contract, it's not a promise. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.
michaelt 14y ago
Well, when public companies plan acquisitions and mergers, it's essentially always claimed that they're going to make the company they acquire more valuable. You spend $100,000,000 of your investors' money on Nullsoft because you think with you on their side, they'll be worth more than $100,000,000. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when they become worth radically less due to mismanagement - not because mismanagement is unusual, but because mismanagement persists in spite of the large costs.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- taw 14y ago
  > You spend $100,000,000 of your investors' money on Nullsoft because you think with you on their side, they'll be worth more than $100,000,000. Or to eliminate potential competitor as with ridiculous money Facebook paid for Instagram.

shalmanese 14y ago

For four kids in Arizona before the rise of internet communities giving advice about entrepreneurship, I think selling for 100M is a pretty reasonable decision.

tatsuke95 14y ago
I would have taken the money in a heart beat. But to complain about how AOL, in hindsight, could have built iTunes out of it is mildly annoying. It's a mentality I see sometimes entrepreneurial culture. Taking it to the "next level" is hard, whatever that level happens to be. It's why you sell, rather than going it alone. If you think you can build iTunes (or Google, or Facebook, or Amazon or...) then build it. Don't sell to someone else and wonder why they didn't or couldn't.

earl 14y ago

To be fair, it's only the aol acquisition that gave them potential access to the time warner music library and the ability to go negotiate deals with the other content owners. I think it's unlikely 4 guys in arizona making $100k/mo with no connections could have made that happen.

intended 14y ago
There are several small teams with no connections who later went on to make things happen. Today if you had similar pedigree, you would be planning for early stage investors.
- earl 14y ago
  I think it's unlikely in this case. Content producers ask for enormous up fronts, and you'd either hire very good in house attorneys or pay Fenwick & West or Wilson Sonsini a ton of money. Not to mention the RIAA had just lost in June '99 their lawsuit against Diamond, manufacturer of the Rio mp3 player, [1] essentially challenging the legitimacy of the idea of mp3 players period. In 2000 the RIAA was in the midst of suing napster [2]; Rhapsody, the first legal music service that I'm aware of, wasn't released until 2001, and they didn't get anything but indie music until mid 2002 (not quite sure about this date). [3] I think it's safe to say it took both contacts and a ton of money, neither of which nullsoft had outside aol. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_service) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(online_music_service)
  - intended 14y ago
    Is content sharing the only opportunity they had? Perhaps; thinking at that time was focused on making a content and tech juggernaut. I remember a Time cover (I think) talking about how AOL+Time Warner was a great deal. Still, given a chance to figure stuff out on their own, I can only assume that they would have figure something out and even had a chance to implement it when not curtailed by AOL.

rogerbinns 14y ago

I suspect that AOL made promises about how things would work and how they would be a multiplier for Nullsoft's efforts. In an acquisition I was involved in, the acquirer made us all sorts of promises about how the new world order would be wonderful. They even made sure everyone was involved in training on their company "way" and values etc. Things didn't go that way - several of our people left early because they preferred small companies over large ones, and there was a need for a considerable amount of planning and integration with the acquirer. This left less manpower available for our products and things ended up worse off than if we had not been acquired. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a year before leaving. The products were quietly shelved a few years later with the acquirer effectively having burnt $300 million. The irony is that at he beginning they said they had made mistakes with previous acquisitions, had learned from it and wouldn't do it this time.

chris_wot 14y ago
Exactly - I've seen this before. EMC made a lot of promises when they bought the company I worked for - now it's all but dead.
- rkudeshi 14y ago
  Mozy? I used to really like them, but when I recently tried restoring a folder after accidental deletion, I found files corrupted and misnamed. Nothing worse than a backup company that doesn't properly backup your files. Real shame, they used to be great.
- GauntletWizard 14y ago
  I used to work for Isilon - Still well promoted, but more than half the team I worked with has left in disgust since the acquisition. I made out like a bandit with my stock, though :)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Sukotto 14y ago

I've been in acquired companies a couple of times, and have friends who's told me what happened to them. One common thing about every acquisition in our little sample is that first lie they told us was "nothing will change"

bradwestness 14y ago

Did Winamp ever have a built-in music store? I was under the impression that people basically stopped caring about Winamp mostly because the newer versions of Windows Media Player (7 and up) were "good enough" that mainstream users didn't see any need to go hunting down an alternative player. Nobody really likes iTunes as a player, it's only notable because of the store and the device lock-in.

sjs382 14y ago
I like it.
- fromhet 14y ago
  Well, few do then. To be honest, iTunes a kind of bloated, it is a memory hog and it could be easier to use. But they have the store and the connection with the i-devices and are shipped with the macintoshes, and I believe that is their greatest feature.
  - batista 14y ago
    >Well, few do then. Few? It was the prevalent player on Mac even before the iPod and the store. And with hundreds of millions of people using it, I don't hear many complaints. Mainly stuff about how it "does too many things", as if I would want to juggle 4-5 different programs for my digital media library, store, etc...
  - sjs382 14y ago
    I don't use the store (except a few promotional tracks I downloaded for free) and I don't own an iDevice (though I used to). I use iTunes because it's easy to use and offers features that make listening to music more enjoyable (smart playlists, etc).
aes256 14y ago
> Nobody really likes iTunes as a player, it's only notable because of the store and the device lock-in. I've never bought music from the iTunes Store and, although I have an iPhone, rarely sync it with iTunes. I use iTunes because it has far and away the nicest interface of any music player on OS X. It also handles larger music collections effortlessly. These days I don't really care if it's using (at this point in time) ~200MB RAM.

runjake 14y ago

If I recall correctly AOL is to blame. They promised Frankel and co one thing but did another. Besides, it fell apart on their watch.

zithtar 14y ago
An acquisition is a massive legal and financial undertaking. If it's not in the contract, it's not a promise. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

michaelt 14y ago

Well, when public companies plan acquisitions and mergers, it's essentially always claimed that they're going to make the company they acquire more valuable. You spend $100,000,000 of your investors' money on Nullsoft because you think with you on their side, they'll be worth more than $100,000,000. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when they become worth radically less due to mismanagement - not because mismanagement is unusual, but because mismanagement persists in spite of the large costs.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
taw 14y ago
> You spend $100,000,000 of your investors' money on Nullsoft because you think with you on their side, they'll be worth more than $100,000,000. Or to eliminate potential competitor as with ridiculous money Facebook paid for Instagram.