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I’m not sure whether I find it more worrisome or fascinating that we live in a world where a company that, as far as I know, has never generated a single dollar
by thor-rodrigues 1y ago
I’m not sure whether I find it more worrisome or fascinating that we live in a world where a company that, as far as I know, has never generated a single dollar in revenue has managed to exist for over five years, employ more than 100 people, and still get acquired for this amount.
This isn’t criticism or sarcasm — I’m genuinely impressed, but also very curious about the rationale behind it.
- rvz 1y agoVCs are not allowed to lose.
- BoorishBears 1y agoAtlassian invested in their series A. Atlassian decided Atlassian isn't allowed to lose
- porridgeraisin 1y agoAtlassian essentially got a big fairly locked-in userbase that they will now squeeze using their existing proven mechanisms. Oh and they probably got a few free competent developers without needing to go through an expensive hiring process. All told, probably worth 610M.
- mritchie712 1y agoare they locked-in tho? People loved Arc, but they killed it. Doesn't seem the reviews of Dia are all that great.
- porridgeraisin 1y agoI haven't kept track for a while, but whoever I knew that used arc, they found it hard to go back to standard browsers after getting used to its various UI affordances. Even when they pulled the "you need an account" thing most people I knew just sucked it up and created an account. I am assuming a good portion of them will submit to whatever atlassian demands.
- andruby 1y agoI love Arc. I tried Dia. I wanted to like it but don't see how it's going to be valuable for me. The browser features are _much_ worse than Arc (no sidebar, bookmarks are a dropdown, ...) and most of the time the AI can't even "see" or "read" what's on the page I'm viewing, so it's just worse than using Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini. I'm still using Arc and will probably continue until there's another browser that copies its UI/UX improvements.
- gniting 1y agoBrowser users are not (by default) Atlassian ICPs so IMO there's zero lock-in. I am going to most likely change my browser very shortly because I don't see Atlassian building out Arc. TBC raised $50M, they and their investors got a good return in a short amount of time. This chapter is now closed.
- colelyman 1y agoAgreed, to make it even more interesting Browser Company discontinued Arc earlier this year. So not only did they do all of the things OP listed, but also didn't have a current product when acquired.
- ar_lan 1y agoThey have "Dia" - which is Chrome + AI chat? https://www.diabrowser.com/ https://www.diabrowser.com/
- dbbk 1y agoChrome + AI chat is... Chrome + Gemini though
- ActionHank 1y agoShhh... don't tell Atlassian.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoLest they attempt to buy Google instead.
- ActionHank 1y agoI think I would be ok with that, they can both be a mid, bureaucratic, mess together.
- jrflowers 1y agoWhen I saw that domain my first thought was it looks like they came up with the name by combining “diabetes” with “browser”
- emoII 1y agoWhere can I read about this? It still gets regular updates and is front and center on the browser company website
- darth_avocado 1y agoThere are some businesses that are simply not viable without losing money first. SpaceX cannot generate revenue until it first employs hundreds of people for a few years (maybe a decade) where they focus on building what will eventually bring revenue. Software has those problems too.
- pqtyw 1y agoAnd there are business which will never be highly profitable unless the competition implodes for no particular reason (like making your own browser).
- turnsout 1y agoI mean this with no snark: I would love to see the investor deck that explains how an AI-powered browser is going to make any multiple of $610M.
- jsk2600 1y agoI would guess by selling personal data and ads.
- immibis 1y agoMore charitably by selling the only browser that's actually usable in a few years. The AI will be used to cancel out the effect of other people's AI.
- turnsout 1y agoHa, that's a dark timeline! But sadly quite probable.
- Apocryphon 1y agoThere’s Orion, Zen, plenty of minor browser projects that aspire to better experiences than the majors’. Brave is likely much more widespread than Arc, though that one is monetized via the previous trend (crypto). Never even heard of a lot of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrxhVA5NVQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrxhVA5NVQ4
- dkyc 1y agoI would think of it that way: - no company generates revenue in its first second. Even if you start a lemonade stand tomorrow, you'll have to buy some lemons first. The time-to-revenue might be very short, but it's never zero. Therefore, making no revenue for 1 day or for 10 years is not a step change, but simply a point on a curve. - Capitalism is basically a long history of creating vehicles with increasing sophistication to bridge that gap: provide funding for ventures that have returns in the future. This is intrinsically difficult, and it's easy to waste money, but it can work immensely. This started with the Dutch inventing limited liability corporations to fund ship expeditions, and today's VC is essentially an extension of that. - It has worked well in the past to bet on companies that don't optimize for time-to-revenue, but something else – famous examples being e.g. Amazon, Google, Meta, who all lost lots of money initially. Hence there can be companies that make no money for quite a while. And it can even turn out that the vast majority of the companies that make no money for a while never make any money. Accepting this risk is a feature, not a bug.
- mrkramer 1y ago>- no company generates revenue in its first second. Even if you start a lemonade stand tomorrow, you'll have to buy some lemons first. The time-to-revenue might be very short, but it's never zero. Therefore, making no revenue for 1 day or for 10 years is not a step change, but simply a point on a curve. Yea, it's called investment. If you want to get rich overnight play lottery or start gambling.
- specialist 1y agoAtlassian has always baffled me. In that JBoss sort of way. Explaining why they're successful and I'm not.
- ruszki 1y agoLuck. It’s always just luck. Of course, you need to have other ingredients too, but hundreds of millions, if not even billions of people have those skills too. Who win more among them is pure luck. And in that, of course a ton of predetermined parameters, like where you born, who your parents are, what your skin color is, etc. I have a friend who is worse in almost every skills which matter in our work. Not much worse, he is still awesome in his job. But I’m better. Every single person who saw us work in comparable environments would tell you the same thing. His career is still better than mine. And the single reason is that he born in wealth. He had the opportunity to live without income for years, and kick off a startup, and try to start some others, and simply try out, and risk things which I couldn’t do. Nothing else. Pure luck.
- nickelcitymario 1y agoLuck was a necessary ingredient, 100%. But how many other people had similar luck and did nothing with it? Luck is another word for opportunity. Some people are really good at leveraging opportunity for all it's worth. Most of us (myself very much included) are not. Case in point: I'm the same age as Mark Zuckerberg. Many people say his age is why he was able to be at the right place at the right time to create Facebook. Much like they say about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and every other "self-made" billionaire. But he still had to choose to do all the right things that I chose not to do in order to be able to experience that kind of luck. At some point we gotta own up to our own role in guiding our lives.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- trhway 1y agoless than a $6M/head - it is a steal. Not even counting whatever IP they have.
- rafram 1y agoHow much do you think it costs to hire people?
- trhway 1y agoyou think Mark didn't know it when he hired that guy for $250 millions? Anyway, you probably mean an individual hiring cost. Which is a totally different case from hiring and building a multifunctional team of 100. Look around at aqui-hires to understand the price, especially when we're talking about people who has been working with AI products.
- rafram 1y ago$250 million was for a top researcher with more experience than almost anyone else in designing and training massive models. As far as I know, Dia just calls OpenAI’s API. I’m sure their employees know a lot about using AI at this point, but so does everyone else who’s built an OpenAI wrapper.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoThis is nothing new.