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Sold just got acquired by Dropbox and closed their company
- DigitalJack 13y agoI used it once and liked it. But they came across as dorky snobs in there marketing.
- tonydev 13y agoGlad you enjoyed using Sold. We are definitely dorks, hopefully not snobs, and had a ton of fun making our marketing in house :)
- alexeichemenda 13y agoCongrats on the acquisition ! Can we know a little more about who (if not all) of the team will be joining Dropbox ? How many people were working at Sold ?
- berberous 13y agoCongrats on joining Dropbox! As someone who has a ton of stuff that I'm too lazy to sell, I'm curious if you could speak at all about why the business was not working. Do you think Shyp [http://www.shyp.com/ http://www.shyp.com/] is a better business model?
- sjtgraham 13y ago> I used it once and liked it. But they came across as dorky snobs in there marketing. *their Congrats to the team and to Dropbox!
- cmbaus 13y agoI think the marketing is creative and well done. Although why would you sell those Alden longwings? Those are awesome shoes! :)
- reustle 13y agoI get a google products vibe from these sorts of acquisitions. Don't get too comfortable with that little startup! It could disappear tomorrow...
- alexeichemenda 13y agoI'm sorry, but I do not fully understand your comment. "It could disappear tomorrow" ? Sold has written on their blog that they are shutting down their company..
- chadwickthebold 13y agoI think they meant that they are uncomfortable with the idea of trying to use a lot of the apps and startups that are popping up nowadays, as they could leave their customers / userbase as soon as the acquisition is finalized. How much value can I really get out of a product if they are only in it for the exit? I wonder if startups are starting to see a reluctance in users to fully buy in to trying new products. This reminds me of one S13 YC startup that got bought by Pinterest a few weeks ago..
- hkmurakami 13y agoAs in, reading about ever increasing numbers of these sorts of acquisitions makes us weary of using products from these small starups since they can get acquired and shut down their service suddenly, much like how we need to be wary of using Google products and APIs these days since they could be shut down suddenly.
- outworlder 13y agoThat was always true, even before the startup craze. This is specially true for small companies, but sometimes, they are the ones who can provide the most value. Also, it's not like if Microsoft was shutting down. You'll be deprived of a couple of products, at most.
- lsc 13y ago>Don't get too comfortable with that little startup! It could disappear tomorrow... But that is true of all services. This is why savvy businesses try to stick with services that have competition; that way they have somewhere to go if their provider of choice goes under for whatever reason.
- itafroma 13y agoAs someone unfamiliar with Sold, I really appreciated the "What was Sold?" section: I rarely, if ever, see that on shutdown/acquisition placeholder pages and always wished more companies would do that.
- rio517 13y agoI get a bad gateway error.
- RafiqM 13y agoAlso unfamiliar with it till now, just watched the video and wow... it looked like an awesome service. I wouldn't have been able to use it, as I'm in Ireland, but if selling was that simple it could really disrupt the likes of Craigslist. I guess as its an acquihire maybe the vision couldn't become a reality though :(
- minor_nitwit 13y agoit's an opportunity for someone to start their own, a big hole just opened up.
- Jsarokin 13y agoshameless plug, but check out our startup http://sellsimple.com http://sellsimple.com - we're tackling the same problem.
- RafiqM 13y agoI looked through the site and watched the video - I think you don't handle the logistics of it? One of the things that most appealed about Sold is that they send you a box, you put the thing in it, and that's it. For me, that's the biggest pain point. Is that something you're looking to do?
- Jsarokin 13y ago
- zedpm 13y agoCan anyone comment on the motivation for Dropbox to acquire a company that apparently helped people sell things? Is Dropbox interested in working in that domain or are they just picking up devs for their own product?
- yefim 13y agoI think they jump on anything to do with boxes /s
- kiwibulldog 13y agoMildly correct.
- greenlakejake 13y agoPicking up devs.
- paultannenbaum 13y agoI think they are trying to ramp up their mobile efforts. My friends company was recently acquired by them, and it was for this reason.
- rahul286 13y agoI am also wondering. Sold and dropbox don't look related to each other at all!
- t0 13y agoSo they were acquihired?
- chrisacky 13y agoThe opening line follows the boilerplate trend of acquisition posts. Being acqui-hired is not something that you should be celebrating with your users... PERIOD. (On a side note, I'm genuinely happy for you all. Getting paid isn't a negative. It's a huge opportunity, but don't patronise your users). "Yey us. :D We're super excited to announce we got acquired. High-five... too slow... Now go f* yourselves." It's incredibly condescending to assume that any of your users share your happiness and are apart of this experience... "We’re really excited..." You use "we" so many times as if your users are apart of your acqui-hire, yet only mention "you" (your users who made this possible) in the closing statement. Be honest and graceful, but asking your users for a high five on the way out isn't the way to do it. PS. I hate posting negative comments. I'm a Brit, and like to be polite all the time.... EDIT: Call me out on this if you think I'm wrong. Other people who have read it think I'm just reading into it way too much. I tend to agree that I'm particular, and it could easily be chalked down to me being overly zealous to criticize another successful acqui-hire. :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- paultannenbaum 13y agoI received an email from them with the same content before I opened hacker news, and had the same thoughts as you. So no, I dont think your reading into it too much.
- dolphenstein 13y agoI had the same feeling when reading this post. It's one thing to spin a positive when acquired for the product and not the people. When you're about to shutdown a service, this kind of self-congratulation is more like a middle finger to the users. A humbly apologetic post would've been a better goodwill gesture. High five each other in private.
- jcampbell1 13y agoThey don't have "users" in the same way a free blog site has users. I see no reason to be negative in this case. If your favorite taco stand owner sells out to taco bell, the owner should be free to celebrate. You won't be able to get his tacos in the future, but it is not like he broke some implicit promise to always sell you tacos, nor are the tacos he sold you in the past somehow tainted now. Shutdowns are only a problem when users make an investment in the platform.
- jackhulsom 13y agoCongrats !
- lukenyc 13y agoHey Sold team... do you have any lessons learned to share with the community?
- AsymetricCom 13y agoI don't work for Sold, but I think the #1 thing you should consider is how you brand your company to make it attractive for acquisition. A good name can go a long way.
- gtallen1187 13y agoi'm really interested to see what dropbox plans on doing by acquiring a service like this. Any ideas?
- joemaller1 13y agoI'm starting to wish we'd see anything Dropbox was doing with all the acquisitions. Dropbox has hired some really smart people (and shuttered some great services) over the past year or two, but I haven't yet seen that intellectual capitol reflected in their services.
- Kenan 13y agoHere's the submission (and accompanying discussion) that introduced Sold to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801340
- zimbatm 13y agoThis is how this letter reads to me: Woohoo, we got acquired. Thanks a lot for bringing our valuation up buy trusting us. We started $service to solve a problem that matters to you. Because of that we're joining $totally_unrelated_product. Thanks for all the fish.
- hga 13y agoLet me add: "Because of that we're joining $totally_unrelated_product. And damaging the ecosystem that allowed us to get to this point." It bears repeating that every time one of the acquire shutdowns occurs it makes users that much less willing to take a chance on a small startup. Even a shutdown like this that isn't screwing over existing users reminds everyone of the pattern. Hmmm, maybe I should start ending this, or every message, with "Sarbox delenda est". (Sarbox must be destroyed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est) ; more specifically, this last nail and quite a few others need to be removed for the casket that the normal IPO was interred into.)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 13y agoLet me fix the previous sentence: We started $service pretending to care about solving problem that matters to you so that we could extract from you as much money as possible quickly. I don't believe what startups say anymore. They don't want to solve anything. They want to make something that looks like a solution for long enough that they get piles of money. Maybe it's understandable, but I'd like they'd be more up-front about this.
- hga 13y ago"They don't want to solve anything. They want to make something that looks like a solution for long enough that they get piles of money." But if they don't offer value to their customers, how are they going to "get piles of money" in the first place?
- muratmutlu 13y agoSounds like another one for http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
- pinaceae 13y agofunny, in the old school economy this would be a failure. oh crap, i couldn't run my company, the business i have built. i have failed my employees, my vision, my customers. all for naught, i got swallowed and now i am an employee. but in web/tech bubble? hooray, i flipped this shit for cash. so long suckas.
- hga 13y agoOne caveat to this is with the closing of the IPO exit, one either has to be very successful or get acquired to exit. And your investors could be demanding some sort of exit, they're generally not in the game for your employees, vision or customers. Arranging and exit for investors or founders can be extremely hard; I watched my father do that several times in the period when IPOs were still possible.
- ivanca 13y agoThis is a failure; is a net negative for their users, those were numerically more than the engineers. But the HN is crowed with the later plus short-term big profits are pompously celebrated by the vapid american culture (and media).
- outworlder 13y agoCan I add this as a quote to my email signature? :)
- 7Figures2Commas 13y agoI guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a company named "Sold" sold itself when it got the chance. Maybe more startups should choose M&A-friendly names. Acquired.io, which is available for registration, is a sure winner.
- renownedmedia 13y agoI guess you could say they were... (puts on sunglasses) Sold?
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoBuild popular service, attract loyal user base, sell popular service to bigger company so they can gut it and screw your users; business as usual in the startup world, judging by 5 years of HN and Slashdot. Every time I suggest this might not be a cool thing, people tell me I just don't understand the business model, or something. Same thing yesterday when Microsoft announced they were ripping out Skype's API. It's weird.
- vdaniuk 13y agoFirst post I've read on HN today and here are the summarized talking points of commenters: 1. Oh noes, they are celebrating their acquisition with users. That jerks! 2. Small startups are like Google products -- prone to be discontinued or acquired and closed. Beware! 3. They failed their users and their business model is a failure. Failue! 4. "What is sold?", "meh", "puns". I love HN technical discussions but startup or business threads? So much negativity... Thats enogh HN for me for today. Congratulations to Sold team!
- jordanthoms 13y agoThis is a bit of a shame, Sold seemed like a good idea - I have some stuff I'd like to get rid of, but don't want to spend much time setting up the listing etc. I didn't actually use them because they hadn't branched out into the product category (PC Hardware) that I would have used them for.
- kehers 13y agoSold sold. Nice pun :)
- callum85 13y agoSold sold Sold.
- Technologix 13y agoI really don't get why Dropbox has acquired during the past two years Snapjoy, Mailbox, Endorse and Sold. Their product didn't change at all...
- ivanca 13y agoI think there is a space for an disruptive _accelerator_ that completely prohibits this kind of behavior (a.k.a. acquihires), like a make-it-a-big-or-sink-with-it kind of thing, so users (and potential users) would trust more their start-ups knowing that this luxury-garage-sales-of-engineers is not the goal.