Facebook Acquires Drop.io
blog.drop.io
Facebook Acquires Drop.io
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#2That's too bad, I always recommended the service for easy collaboration and sharing, was one of my favourites.
But well, Facebook will hopefully make good use of the technology and the many channels drop.io had already incorporated to extend it's group collaboration options.
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#3seems like just a talent acquisition to me
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#4Obviously not for their ability to build scalable blogging services (dropio blog site currently down) ;)
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#5seems like just a talent acquisition to me
Zuckerberg has said that all of the acquisitions FB has made are essentially for the talent, not the product.
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#6seems like just a talent acquisition to me
Facebook only does talent acquisitions.
Though, I always wondered why drop.io got any attention. Upload thing. Get URL. Share URL? Optional paywall behind URL. Did they have other features?
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#7seems like just a talent acquisition to me
It's sad that founders do this kind of thing to their users. Why not sell the company to Facebook (with attendant personnel agreements), but sell the assets (users, technical infrastructure) to a competitor at a steep discount, maybe in exchange for shares?
That way their users have a fighting chance at a smooth transition, and the technical contribution you made can continue.
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#8Facebook's recent talent acquisitions sort of make sense to me from Facebook's standpoint (good, entrepreneurial talent is hard to find), but I wonder how the founders, employees, users, and investors feel about these relatively odd buyouts.
This drop.io deal sounds a lot like the Hot Potato acquisition from a few months ago: in both cases the startups were well-funded, but didn't have much traction, and then Facebook paid 8 figures to essentially buy the main founder (Sam Lessin at drop.io, Justin Schaffer at Hot Potato), and essentially let everything else die (the sites were shut down, the technology scrapped, other employees weren't hired by facebook, etc.)
A few questions for HN:
- Is Facebook paying too much for these founders? (They're basically shelling out a $10 MM signing bonus that lets these entrepreneurs placate their investors, and then come to Facebook. (Accept the founders only get a fraction of the money, obviously). Is it worth it? What are other new Facebook executives paid in signing bonuses?)
- What do the investors think about this? (Are the investors in Hot Potato and Drop.io happy to get a modest return instead of nothing (because these companies hadn't taken off yet), or are they frustrated that these companies ended somewhat abruptly?)
- How do the employees feel? (Does it feel like success for them when the whole point of the acquisition is really just to buy their boss? Obviously they get money for their equity, so maybe that trumps any other feelings.) [Full disclosure: I actually work with one of the co-founders of Hot Potato (who didn't go to Facebook), so I know his opinions on this issue, but I'm still curious to hear others' thoughts].
- How do users feel? (Are these buyouts fair to them?)
- And lastly, Isn't there a slight paradox with the fact that these founders are being plucked at such high premiums because they're brilliant leaders, and yet, in both the cases of Hot Potato and Drop.io, these startups weren't runaway successes? In other words, doesn't the lack of clear success of these startups undermine the basic premise that the founders deserve $10 MM "signing bonuses"?
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#9seems like just a talent acquisition to me
Facebook only does talent acquisitions. Though, I always wondered why drop.io got any attention. Upload thing. Get URL. Share URL? Optional paywall behind URL. Did they have other features?
A nice interface. Making it extremely easy to do something simple (but something that the average person can't do without some kind of service) is often all you need.
Don't complain about others' successes. Learn from this that a nice interface for something simple is often enough, and go find a market where you can do the same thing, and get rich :)
(Note that I've used it to a very limited extent. But even if they have other features, my understanding was that the main value proposition was its simple, pleasant interface.)
Re: Facebook Acquires Drop.io
#10A replacement for Drop.io is already in the works, I imagine. (And Dropbox won't cut it for a lot of people; it's not as straightforward to do a simple fileshare, and there are other cool features [e.g. RSS] that Dropbox doesn't do.)