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Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st
- normloman 13y agoWhy does yahoo keep buying companies simply to acquire talent? Isn't it just easier to just post a job ad? I don't think there's a shortage of talented programmers working in social media. Someone please explain.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoOne thing could be that buying a team is worth more than buying a bunch of people to make a team. Not sure if that is always true.
- zalew 13y agohow does buying a team actually work - when the company gets bought from the shareholders, can't the employees tell yahoo to piss off and not sign new contracts? how does the process look like?
- ironchef 13y agoTypically the purchasing company will have an idea of who are must keeps, etc. They'll then put financial incentives in place that would typically exceed free market (golden handcuffs...in a manner similar to startup vesting (X amount of shares or X in cashola vesting / released over Y amount of time))
- EarthLaunch 13y agoIf you're going to joke around about handcuffs, you can't misuse "free market" at the same time. The offer doesn't exceed "free market", it simply exceeds market.
- ironchef 13y agoAhh..true. My bad.
- hga 13y agoFrom the OP of this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140982, which mentions that "In each instance [of acquisition], Yahoo has locked up engineers with two- to four-year contracts...", it sounds like the employees are given a 2-4 year contract to sign, or they can leave ... which would be a voluntary separation without unemployment etc.
- droithomme 13y agoIt's an interesting point. Onerous contracts signed under duress are not valid in many jurisdictions. Threat of dismissal, the "sign this or else" ultimatum is considered duress. Also, in some countries this scenario would certainly be considered constructive dismissal. As it is though their jobs at the old company don't exist nor does that company and they have not consented to work for the new company, so this is absolutely not voluntary separation, it is dismissal, and they are absolutely entitled to unemployment.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoBut is that really a "sign this or be dismissed" threat? It seems more like a "Company X is dismissing you. We (Company Y) are offering you a job. Would you like to accept?" type of situation. Which is a lot better than a "Company X is dismissing you. We (Company Y) are not interested in you either. Good day." type of situation.
- hga 13y agoRIght; in fact, in my last job, it happened in exactly that way. A 2nd or 3rd rate Beltway Bandit got bought by a big foreign company, and because of the latter any units working in national security had to be acquired by a US company, and before the acquisition. My unit was one of those, and we got a document with a bunch of demands, like the last N years worth of non-competes you'd signed, and then in theory they'd hire you. If you didn't sign it, you'd be laid off (in this case there was a successor organization, that wouldn't be true in these aquihires).
- smackfu 13y ago
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoSure, anyone is free to not be acquired. And there is not usually any guarantee that everyone will be acquired. There is usually going to be some sort of retention bonus offered to people to stick around a few months beyond the acquisition period. But if a team is working well together (regardless if the actual product was a success or not, or the circumstances around their acquisition) and people enjoy having a job and the buyer is not a complete train wreck, many people will go with it (if nothing more than to have a job while you start looking). A good team that is used to working together can have a slight edge over a new team built from scratch.
- product50 13y agoTo be honest, they are buying failed teams as most of the acqui-hires they've done are of companies which are struggling to raise their next round.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoA team that built a failed product is not the same as a failed team.
- product50 13y agoAgreed - it is not always true. But I would rather have a team building successful products rather than the other way round.
- hga 13y agoThe OP to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140982 mentions that Yahoo is going to some effort to keep them from being "rejected by the host" as previous mobile efforts and their employees have been. See the end of page 2 and beginning of page 3.
- hga 13y agoAccording to the article that this comment of mine discusses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6141238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6141238 that's the only way they've found to acquire mobile talent after treating it very badly in times past. Sounds like no matter how energetic the recruiting, people in this field aren't going to jump to them unless they have little or no choice. Key sentence fragment: "In each instance, Yahoo has locked up engineers with two- to four-year contracts...."
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoBut you always have a choice. Nobody can force you to be acquired... that would be slavery. The seller can require as part of the deal the buyer offer to keep a certain amount of people at a certain pay. Buyer can accept that deal or negotiate. But at the end of the day, every employee has a choice to sign the new contract or not. So anyone who got "locked up" in a 2-4 year contract did so because they felt it was a good move for them (or at least better than not having a job).
- hga 13y agoIndeed. But I'm pretty sure they got a "sign this soon or leave" offer than many chose not to refuse.
- mikeash 13y agoEven then, they can leave Yahoo at any time if they change their minds. They'll just lose out on their big payday.
- hga 13y agoOutside of California they might be ... hindered by non-competes. I was once in this position: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6148918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6148918 and one of the many reasons I didn't accept the offer was that non-competes were enforceable in my state, the contact had a nasty one, and the acquiring company did business with so many of the area's organizations that I would have been seriously disadvantaged when it came time to separate.
- johnrob 13y ago60-70 Million for talent? Wow. I suppose Yahoo is trying a novel approach to recruiting: target startup founders/employees, give generous equity offers (via acquisition price) as well as a 'win' on the resume (successful exit). I have to say, it's a pretty compelling offer...
- hkmurakami 13y agoNot sure what level of talent is left at Rockmelt other than their founders. It hadn't been doing well for a long time so I imagine the cream of the crop had already left. (I know one such person who had already left for Google)
- AznHisoka 13y agoThey can easily get talent for much much less.. just by posting an ad in the "Who's Hiring?" thread. There are many talented people who want to join Yahoo, but feel HR/gatekeepers are too much of an obstacle to even apply.
- rmc 13y agoNovel means new. This isn't new. This is an acqui-hire.
- orky56 13y agoFor those keeping score, this gives another win for Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, a16z, and First Round. Here's the tally for those who invested in companies that have been acquired by Y! since Mayer took over: CrunchFund - 3 (Stamped, GoPollGo, Tumblr) True Ventures - 3 (OnTheAir, Snip.It, Lexity) Khosla Venture - 3 (Snip.It, Xobni, Rockmelt) SV Angel - 3 (Snip,It, Xobni, Rockmelt) Google Ventures - 2 (Astrid & Stamped) Spark Capital - 2 (Tumblr & Lexity) Jack Herrick - 2 (Qwiki & Astrid) Greylock - 2 (Tumblr & Qwiki) First Round Capital - 2 (Xobni & Rockmelt) Also to note, Lexity & Jybe were founded by former Y! employees.
- badclient 13y agoOther than Tumblr, it seems like all the other acquisitions were of companies that were on their way down. Edit: Also add Lexity to the list with Tumblr.
- fraserharris 13y agoLexity was a rumoured $30 - 40m (AllThindsD) on $6m in funding with the business remaining active.
- lotso 13y agoLexity also had a business model and were solving a legitimate problem.
- orky56 13y agoThat doesn't seem totally fair. To say they were on their way down is pretty negative. Sure maybe some of their explosive growth was slowing down but I know more than a few still had some tricks up their sleeves. Outside of Tumblr and Lexity, Astrid and Summly were poised to continue to innovate since the founders/team have products that continue to surprise. At the end of the day, some of the startups are by founders who are pretty early in their careers (e.g. Summly) and would like to have a win under their belt. Yahoo's shopping spree seems to validate a lot of successful products not just in terms of popularity but also talent and product innovation.
- minimaxir 13y ago
- ForrestN 13y agoDoes anyone have any real insight into the strategy behind all of these acquisitions? Apart from blasé speculation about acqui-hiring (for what products?) and supposition that Yahoo executives are merely stupid, I'd be interested to understand the broader pattern. It's a real news story, and something is going on. There is a strategy. What is it?
- chimeracoder 13y agoRockmelt has (had) a very strong leadership team (founders were very successful in the 90s), and a number of strong engineers. It seems clear that this is an acquisition for talent, since they're shutting the product down with less than 30 days' notice. For <$70MM, that could be a relatively cheap acquisition of talent that has proven their ability to make things (if not necessarily proven their ability to make a product that people want to buy - which is where Yahoo's responsibility and vision come into play).
- badclient 13y agoFor <$70MM (and for a company that raised $40MM), that could be a relatively cheap acquisition How much money Rockmelt raised says little about how good of a deal Yahoo received. The reverse may be true: Yahoo may have had to pay way more than the real value simply to ensure a return to the investors, not because it valued the company at the price paid.
- badclient 13y agoIf Marissa gave $70M to HN for acquisitions for Yahoo, who all would you guys acquire and why?
- nilved 13y agoIsn't it an immense amount of negative PR to buy an app and shut it down? Why does this keep happening?
- unknownian 13y agoYou think people actually cared about Rockmelt, the "social web browser"?
- MartinMcGirk 13y agoI did for quite a while actually. I loved the social browser concept, but the fact that I couldn't get extensions like lastpass to work in Rockmelt killed it for me and drove me back to vanilla Chrome. I still wished them well though, their product was good and their customer support was great. I'm sad to see the brand go away, but I'm pleased for them that they got acquired. Hopefully they go on to do well at Yahoo!
- nilved 13y agoI don't use Rockmelt, but I did use Flickr and delicious. Yahoo is the touch of death for web applications and I've grown to resent their tendency to buy and ruin services I use. This case with Rockmelt is more of the same: I don't use it myself, but the people who do are now less likely to like Yahoo.
- smegel 13y agoYahoo better be planning something big after all these purchases.
- parsabg 13y agoThat's the most expensive set of Chromium extensions.
- eldavido 13y agoI think a lot of this is a side-effect of it being socially unacceptable to have 10x (or more) pay differences between good and bad employees at tech companies. That sort of thing is tolerated on Wall Street, but not SV. Prediction: SV business leaders will find a way to meaningfully tie pay to performance more than they currently can, and offer the best 3-5x what the average earn. The current system is just too roundabout.