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Twice
- aubreyjohnson 14y agoThe title of this is a little misleading as I don't really discuss anything about Apple acquiring Color. I just link to the rumor articles.
- jtoeman 14y agothanks for adding that - i read through it three times trying to find a link to page 2 or something. :)
- speeder 14y agoI do not understood the tale :( Why it was genius?
- draz 14y agoThose employees were given options at Apple ($80M worth) that were probably lost once they left the company to work at Color. Then Apple ended up getting them back on the cheap. So instead of $160M, Apple ended up paying $80M + $7M.
- danielpal 14y agoAlso remember the Stock has gone more than tripled. SO $80 in cash and $80 in stock that would be really worth about 200M today. Now they bought the same team again with 7M of todays priced.
- lost_name 14y agoDoesn't the notion of this being genius imply that Apple "let them get away" the first time because they knew they'd be able to acquire their next company for less? Or am I missing something?
- indy 14y agoIts a very sycophantic article that gives Apple far too much credit. No "genius" strategy was involved it was just fortunate (for Apple) that they could acquire the remnants of Color for such a low price.
- kami8845 14y agoI don't understand. They bought Lala. The sought-after employees left even after being offered a $80M golden leash. They were bought again with Color. What stops these employees from leaving again, with a much less lucrative golden leash this time around?
- draz 14y agoagreed. I don't believe those who left were unhappy, rather they thought that they had more upside by going to Color. Obviously, it didn't pan out. "Genius?" No, just luck for Apple, less so for the employees.
- brown9-2 14y agoWhat remains to be seen though is if what any of those employees produce for Apple is worth anything near either price.
- GBond 14y agoI guess it's a matter of perspective. One could also say that it was an employee retention disaster. Apple could not keep their key engineers happy even after offering millions to stay. After realizing the full extent of the engineers' value after the fact, Apple had to buy a company that had no viable product just to get the engineers back.
- lazerwalker 14y agoThe other way to look at it was that Apple saved $73M+ ($160M-87M) at the cost of losing 20+ good employees for a few years.
- smackfu 14y agoWhat did Apple even end up paying for though?
- freyr 14y agoThe engineers behind the technological marvel that was Color?
- sidcool 14y agoWhy is this top link?
- simonw 14y agoBecause 70 people voted it up.
- rdl 14y agoThe genius here was Bill Nguyen turning a failing company and a pittance $11mm offer from one failing company (Nokia) into an $80-160mm buyout from a real company (Apple), essentially though hustle alone. But it's zero-sum genius. I can respect him for being good at playing a specific game, but it's not a game I want to play myself.
- jyou 14y agoAnd he almost did it again - if he "exited" at the peak of Color.
- Timothee 14y agoWhen was Color's peak exactly? When they raised money? Because after that, it was mostly failures after failures.
- FireBeyond 14y agoAnd before that, too. I'm still struggling to see what, if anything, Color did to enhance anybody's life.
- threedaymonk 14y agoOh, I don't know. I recall a good half an hour of gleeful Schadenfreude in the office when we all tried out Color for the first (and last) time. I'm not saying that a fleeting moment of entertainment in the lives of a few jaded technology folk was a good return on that investment, mind!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- lmm 14y agoI struggle to even respect it. He ripped them off; the world would be better off without his "hustle".
- guptaneil 14y agoThe point of this post is to talk about Bill's hustling when selling Lala, which is a very interesting story. The author should have left the last word out to make a much more powerful story about Lala rather than changing the focus of the article to Apple's "genius," especially since there was no genius involved on Apple's part. Just good luck for Apple, and horrible luck for the Color team.
- jusben1369 14y agoI disagree. I thought the last paragraph was great. Life is never a single event. Round 1 to Lala and their engineers. Round 2 to Apple. There'll be Round 3's!
- guptaneil 14y agoI agree, the last paragraph is great. My issue is with the last word. A better ending might've been something along the lines of "Paying twice cost less than paying once," and left out characterizing this fortuitous win as a "genius" strategy.
- johnchristopher 14y agoEnglish isn't my first language and I really have a hard time grasping the meaning, the subtelty, of the end of the article. Does the author say: "Apple bought some employes for a high price ($80M). Later, those employees left Apple for another venture. But when leaving, those employees also left some kind of shares/bonus or something very valuable they obtained by being acquired earlier. They were acquired again later (color) for a much lesser price so in the end they "lost" some money/shares/opportunity". Have I got that right ?
- OafTobark 14y agoThe Lala acquisition was worth a total of $160M. $80M up front, and $80M as an earn out (over time). When they left Apple early to do Color, they lost a huge chunk of that $80M (earn out money) because they left early before receiving it (vesting) which in the end was worth a lot more due to increase in stock value. Apple bought Color (and those same engineers returned to work at Apple) for a lot less than what they would have paid in the earn out had the engineers stayed and not leave for Color in the first place.
- capkutay 14y agoHe was relieved of day to day activities by the board about a month or more before the Apple acquisition...was that acquisition really his doing?
- capkutay 14y agoHe was relieved of day to day activities by the board about a month or more before the Apple acquisition...was that acquisition really his doing?
- RandallBrown 14y agoI miss Lala, at least the final streaming iteration. It had iTunes Match for FREE years ago. You would upload your library to Lala, they would decide what they already had and just let you stream that, then anything they didn't have would get uploaded. It was iTunes in the cloud. Their webapp was phenomenal, especially by 2009 standards. I had big expectations for Lala after Apple bought them. I thought they might actually get a true iTunes in the cloud built.
- ceworthington 14y ago+1 to this. I am on Rdio now for $10/mo, and I easily would have paid Lala the same monthly fee for their service. I assume they were in bad shape because they had to pay every time someone streamed a song, and not enough of their users wound up paying them for streaming access. Too many loss leaders.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoWhat I liked about LaLa is that you didn't have a monthly fee, and browser-only purchases were dirt cheap, $0.10 for most songs if I remember correctly. I don't listen to enough music to make Radio or Spotify worth it for me, but I could buy a couple of albums to listen in the browser for 2 or 3 dollars every now and then.
- acdha 14y agoThis is what MP3.com offered in 1999. The only difference was the legal agreements so the record companies wouldn't sue on dubious grounds.
- gatsby 14y agoFascinating story. Fast Company did a piece on Bill Nguyen about 18 months ago: (http://www.fastcompany.com/1784823/bill-nguyen-boy-bubble http://www.fastcompany.com/1784823/bill-nguyen-boy-bubble) and included an infographic on his track record: http://infographics.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/bill-nguyen-track-record.html http://infographics.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/bill-nguyen... For a bunch of companies that have widely been considered failures in terms of product and number of users, he has had some unbelievable exits and financial successes.
- bane 14y agoHow are those acquisitions doing now?
- rokhayakebe 14y agoKeep in mind most acquisitions for product integration kinda fail, well at least most of the acquisitions I hear off. The company I work for is small printing co, they made a small acquisition (sub $2M or $3M)a few years back, I doubt they got more than $500k in revenue from it.
- alpb 14y agoNo mention of the Color in the article, I guess but that was a great story.
- zaidf 14y agoGoogle was worried, they moved fast. This is what I'm unsure about: how much of google's worries was a result of Lala being a worthwhile company and how much of it was a result of Bill's propping it up? Let's remove Bill for a minute. Let's say Mr. No-name-CEO reaches out to his contact at Google and presents the deal for Lala. My gut would be that Google guy would likely simply pass on the deal because he doesn't perceive Lala to be much of a competitive threat or a great product, not to mention the little traction they may have had was a result of Google's partnership(which I'm assuming they could easily opt out of). What am I missing? What made google worried, lala inc. or lala inc. with a salesman CEO with an acquisition offer?
- jaggederest 14y agoMr. Nguyen appears to be a hotshot startup salesman. Much like the proverbial car salesman, he can pump up something, sell it to a sucker, and pocket the commission.
- lnanek2 14y agoThis is how the Finance people in NYC interview for a job. Give them a number and they'll shop it around and start a competition. :)
- huytoan_pc 14y agoFascinating story but how is Apple genius here? Was it Apple's all along to acquire Lala, let Lala's engineers go before they exercised their options, somehow made Color a failure, then bought the all the engineers back on the cheap? The real genius (or at least real good biz person) in this story is Bill Nguyen, Apple just did what makes sense for them, it just happens that two of their acquisitions are Bill's companies.
- ValentineC 14y agoLooks like the post has disappeared from Aubrey's blog. Google Cache of his original post: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.aubrey.me/twice http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.au... Gizmodo also has his post mirrored: http://gizmodo.com/5977076/the-amazing-story-of-how-bill-nguyen-sold-two-companies-youve-probably-never-heard-of-to-apple http://gizmodo.com/5977076/the-amazing-story-of-how-bill-ngu...
- brackin 14y agoThe piece was removed for some reason?