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So you were building a service that competes with a service Facebook was working on, they offered to buy you out, you declined, and you're angry about this? I'm
by notJim 14y ago
So you were building a service that competes with a service Facebook was working on, they offered to buy you out, you declined, and you're angry about this? I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Most companies would not have even thought about steamrolling you, forget about offering a check. Did you expect them to just decide not to pursue their App Store offering because ol' Dalton Caldwell wouldn't like it? That's fucking ridiculous.
It sucks that you were naïve about this, but that's hardly Facebook's fault.
- natep 14y agoHe's upset that what he thought was a demo meeting was actually their way of luring him into an acquisition meeting. And he doesn't seem to have a problem with FB having their own app store, he's going to compete with them regardless. Actually, he phrases it better here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325566 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325566
- ryanmerket 14y agoThis. Business is business. It's not the Dev Relations team that decides if an app on the platform is competitive. Just because they told him to it was 'cool' doesn't mean the execs think it's too competitive... Moral: Make sure you're talking to the right people.
- dalton 14y agoUm, yeah pretty sure I was talking to the right people. Marc Andreessen is on my board.
- ryanmerket 14y agoWhat does that have to do with anything? In your letter to Mark you said, "I had been reassured by Facebook dev-relations employees" -- as an ex-Facebook Dev Relations employee I can assure you that you were not talking to the right people.
- airnomad 14y agoYou wrote this post 40+ days after the meeting took place. That imply your timing is chosen for reasons you didn't disclose in the blog post. Hence you try to manipulate public while pursuing hidden agenda.
- dalton 14y ago-> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325762 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325762
- ryanmerket 14y agoYea? So what? You just happen to post it right after your post about creating an open feed platform -- right as the PR momentum behind it started dying.
- iamwil 14y agoDon't feed the trolls. Ryan is trolling here.
- notJim 14y agoI don't think that's the moral at all. The moral is that when you build on someone else's platform, they may decide to extinguish you at any moment. That doesn't mean never build on someone else's platform, it just means to be aware of the risk and include it in your planning.