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Clockwise acquired by Salesforce
- pmdr 7mo ago> it has been our mission to help the world make time for what matters. We've built a business to be proud of There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.
- dmitrygr 7mo agoThey have families to feed. This might forever protect their families from any financial misfortune. Any sane person would do the same. I would.
- Bnjoroge 7mo agoSure but they dont have to act all insufferable about it lmao. Just say it was the best outcome not a bunch of bullshit
- bombcar 7mo agoPeople who talk straight like that don't become founders or PR.
- josephg 7mo agoThen don't lie! Maybe instead they could say: > it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first. There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.
- nullorempty 7mo agoWell, that might have never happened. And don't we all do it for our families primarily.
- soopypoos 7mo agoI do it for my bookie
- skeeter2020 7mo agohave you never seen an "our incredible journey" post before? that's NOT how they work!
- sailingparrot 7mo agoWarms my heart to learn their families will finally be able to afford nutritious meals, put clothes on their backs and maybe even afford a bike to go to school rather than walking 2h everyday. We need more uplifting stories like this one. Thank you salesforce. Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.
- darth_avocado 7mo agoA valuable skill as entrepreneurs, is to know when to stop and move on. Recognizing what you built may not be viable financially long term or is no longer a fit for the market and then making adjustments is what good entrepreneurs do. Sometimes it means shutting shop, while other times it means getting acquired and refocusing on the path forward.
- skeeter2020 7mo agoThis is one of those things that sounds so good with a quick read, but for every example you give me of a smart entrepreneur who knew when to pull the plug I can gave you a gritty, determined one who stayed focus on the vision and built something successful. In this case did they ever have market fit or financial viablilty?
- jrjeksjd8d 7mo agoI've been inside a couple of these and the founders always do just fine. Rest and vest at the acquiring company for a couple years, earn millions in stock, found another company or go work for OpenAI as an exec. Rank and file employees who got sub-standard pay for years at Startup get the same comp they would have got coming in the front door at BigCo. It's better than being fired I guess, but it's not some humble, charitable act by the founders. They can always wait a couple years and ride the ride again if they want.
- darth_avocado 7mo agoBeing proud and being acquired aren’t mutually exclusive things. You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially. They are proud of what they built and are also moving to a place where they can continue building more. Continuing to struggle for money isn’t a requirement for building cool stuff.
- kgwgk 7mo ago> You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially. Projects may not be financially viable but it seems the minimum for a business.
- gip 7mo ago> There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck. They probably don't have much choice and Salesfore needs people who have built and launched products (I don't have any info, just a guess).
- CoastalCoder 7mo ago> There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck. Worst. Isekai. Idea. Ever.
- neuronexmachina 7mo agoI had stepped out of the high-rise office into the blinding San Francisco sun, a freshly minted millionaire wrestling with the crushing guilt of sunsetting my own creation. We built a business to be proud of, I tried to tell myself, clutching the signed term sheet. There must be a lot of pride and meaning in this. That’s when I heard the roar of the engine.
- Animats 7mo agoSalesforce seems to be doing a shutdown of many of their "pre-AI" products.[1] [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/controlled-demolition-salesforce-your-spring-26-survival-neil-sarkar-zlkbc/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/controlled-demolition-salesfo...
- bombcar 7mo agoInteresting tool, but it seems to be more of a feature than a product.
- throwaway0q5347 7mo agoNow a feature of Salesforce :)
- shakna 7mo ago> Any Smart Hold events created by Clockwise (such as Focus Time, Travel Time, Meeting Breaks, and Personal Calendar synced events) will be removed from your calendar. Flexible Meetings will stop moving and the green Clockwise sparkle will be removed. Doesn't really sound like it.
- plasticsoprano 7mo agospeaking of, Dropbox bought a similar product a couple of years ago https://reclaim.ai/ https://reclaim.ai/
- fsckboy 7mo agospeaking of, Reclaim is the company TFA recommends Clockwise customers migrate to
- baggachipz 7mo agoGod, remember when Dropbox was just a folder that syncs[1]? [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other...
- bombcar 7mo agoEvery "office" tool expands to be Microsoft Office. Box, Dropbox, Zoom, all are heading down that path.
- john_strinlai 7mo agoseems like a rather short time frame considering they are just deleting the data, links, calendar events, past invoices, etc.? hopefully no one paying for their service decided to take a 1 week vacation starting tomorrow.
- samothrace 7mo agoI think this is the first time I've seen a cookies pop-up that only offered an "Allow All" option and nothing else. Accept our cookies or go away, I guess.
- dinamic 7mo agoWhy would a company acquire the other one just to shut it down?
- pjc50 7mo agoOther than directly cancelling a competing product, it's usually to acquire the staff. Bit like the football transfer market, but you can buy Marcus Rashford separately without having to buy the whole of Man U.
- dozerly 7mo agoYea, until they leave as soon as they can because working at Salesforce is nothing like a startup These acquihires seem so ineffective to me unless the acquiring company is truly attractive to the acquirees talent.
- apparent 7mo agoThat's what the vesting period is for, to ensure the team sticks around for long enough that the acquirer can figure out who is most valuable and make it attractive for them to stay.
- skeeter2020 7mo agooptimist's view: if you have faith in SF longer term it's a great time to get your options priced!
- apparent 7mo agoI've definitely heard stories of people who wanted to sell their stock after being acquired, couldn't because of vesting/lockup, and were glad because it went up a lot in the meantime.
- tuananh 7mo ago> buy Marcus Rashford that would strengthen Man Utd :D
- paxys 7mo agoSalesforce has lost half its market cap in the last ~year. Spending time and money to acquire a calendar scheduler shows just how badly they have lost the plot. I know this is an HN meme but can someone look at https://www.getclockwise.com/overview https://www.getclockwise.com/overview and explain why an internal team couldn't build this in a couple of weeks? And it's not like Salesforce is lacking engineers - they employ 83,000 (!!) people globally.
- moomoo11 7mo agoClockwise has thousands of companies using it already. Buying the company gives them those customers. They shut it down presumably so they can do something with those customers they bought. Making software is easy. Don’t kid yourself. If you’re a swe you’re an expense line item. Getting distribution is hard.
- QuesnayJr 7mo agoJust shutting it down seems like the worst way to keep the customers. They'd be better off rebranding it as Salesforce Clockwise and then slowly transitioning them. I suspect it's more of an acquihire.
- paxys 7mo agoHow does shutting the product down get them any customers? "Hey you've been paying for this calendar thing for a while, but won't be able to any longer. Go use one of their competitors instead. BTW have you tried our CRM?"
- mushufasa 7mo agoTo be fair, Salesforce IS a CRM and can offer people project/time/calendar/team collaboration features, even if it's not a DIRECT competitor to a modern wave of time management startups.
- skeeter2020 7mo ago
- singron 7mo agoI used to work at Clockwise and am (was?) a common shareholder. I'm happy that many employees got to get a job at Salesforce. I'm sure it was tough to swallow some pride and recommend Reclaim, who was our strongest competitor in the space (or at least the one we talked about the most). Reclaim was acquired by Dropbox a while ago, although Dropbox wanted them to continue to run and develop the product there. I also applaud them for not selling the data (as promised in the ToS). There was always a strong commitment to that from day 1, but I'm glad to see that wasn't an option when times got harder. Calendar data sometimes has really sensitive stuff in it, and it would have been a massive betrayal to do anything but delete it after a shutdown. If you are interested in a more detailed piece about a company struggling in this space, I recommend Rise's shutdown announcement last year. We read this at Clockwise and unfortunately felt it in our bones. There is an ironic Clockwise callout in the piece if you can spot it. https://www.risecalendar.com/blog/sunsetting-rise https://www.risecalendar.com/blog/sunsetting-rise I'm obviously not part of the decision, but I'm sorry the shutoff for users is so soon. Also, please don't revoke your Clockwise app authorization before the shutoff, since that will prevent Clockwise from cleaning up your calendar. If you want to cleanly turn off Clockwise before the shutoff, you can go through the normal deactivation process at https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall. It's a huge bummer for me too to have worked on something for years and then to have it suddenly vanish one day. If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. If any die-hard users want to make a self-hosted tool, I'm happy to give some tips from my experience. I know at least one large company has an internal tool like Clockwise's autopilot/flexible meetings.
- oystersareyum 7mo ago> If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. Why is it so rough etc.?
- edoceo 7mo agoStarting a company, that can get PMF, raise funds and grow is like 2% success rate. Then exiting for upside is like 2% of that previous 2%. The number of problems, the type of problems, the scale of the problems. Oof.
- anthonySs 7mo agoi wish i had insights into the minds of the MBAs that make decisions like this
- keeganpoppen 7mo agosorry in advance to their employees as they go up against the value buzzsaw that is Salesforce as an acquirer. i have years of firsthand experience, and there was not a single win in my entire tenure there.
- bombcar 7mo agoLooking back was it better or worse than being laid off instead?
- pmarreck 7mo agoHope they enjoy working on Java code... Forever... With 3 month release cycles, no CD... LOL
- AiStockAgent62 7mo ago[dead]
- caseyf7 7mo agoI’m only interested in this because it is the first company I’ve seen try to completely wipe itself off the face of the earth in a little over a week. You won’t even be able to access your billing history after March 27 and there will be no support available after that date.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoA huge fuck you to their customer base. Talk about burning bridges to the ground.
- bombcar 7mo agoThey must really be out of money entirely if they can't even keep things running for a bit, or Salesforce really doesn't like what they have. Or they're burning it to the ground out of spite so Salesforce doesn't get any of it. Even the Rise calendar link above still is hosted so you can read their incredible journey.
- bix6 7mo agoHas anyone used reclaim? I’ve been meaning to try it.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- chasd00 7mo agoSalesforce integration with calendaring (o365 etc) has been a sore point, i think it's changed multiple times. I was never a huge fan of what Salesforce calls "Activities" which include calendar events. They don't work the same way the rest of Salesforce does. I think all of Activities was from a prior acquisition at some point too. Maybe this acquisition will help with those integrations in a few years.