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Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

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Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#171

Post by samratjp »

notahacker wrote: post #38
hopeless wrote: post #28

This sounds like stellar news for Heroku employees and investors. I'm not sure how it's going to be good for Heroku customers (like me) in the long-term. There will be the inevitable brain drain over the course of 1-2years when key staff move away as their contract clauses run out and then we'll be left with Heroku being run by SalesForce :(

Gotta agree with this assessment. I've found deployment to Heroku whilst tinkering with side projects fantastic, whilst Salesforce is the bane of my life in the day job. And whilst they have the in-house infrastructure to actually reduce Heroku prices, the Salesforce focus on the enterprise market hints that they're more likely to raise them. Congratulations to the Heroku team though. Is it DropBox's turn next?

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox became the first YC company to hit IPO.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#172

Post by rmc »

Jgrubb wrote: post #73
rmc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google App Engine is similar, but not identical to normal Django.

They give you free-ness up to a rather large number of pageviews/users/whatever, right? Could the process be smoothed to make the workflow as smooth as Heroku makes it, or do the differences in Google's infrastructure make that too much of a pain to automate?

Nag, its not that easy to move from normal django to gae. A better way to do heroku-for-django would be do do heroku for django, instead of a complicated gae translation. Using gae you are limited and reliant on Google

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#173

Post by puredemo »

Nrsolis wrote: post #89
puredemo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cult of enterprise solutions.

It wasn't that. The office in the area I was looking at was SMALL. That wasn't so much an issue but the vibe of the place was almost like a library.

I actually might enjoy that. I don't particularly dig companies who try to force everything to be "social" inside the office.

There is a time for that, sure, but getting peace and quiet to get in the hacking mindset is more important to me.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#174

Post by mikeryan »

samratjp wrote: post #171
notahacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta agree with this assessment. I've found deployment to Heroku whilst tinkering with side projects fantastic, whilst Salesforce is the bane of my life in the day job. And whilst they have the in-house infrastructure to actually reduce Heroku prices, the Salesforce focus on the enterprise market hints that they're more likely to raise them. Congratulations to the Heroku team though. Is it DropBox's turn next?

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox became the first YC company to hit IPO.

I actually would be surprised if Dropbox exited via IPO. I think their offering fits in with a lot of large companies profiles. Dropbox could easily fit into a portfolio of Google, Microsoft, even Cisco.

explaining Cisco - Cisco seems to be trying to break into the "Digital Home" market with things like FlipVideo and some other video services. Dropbox would make a great cloud storage play for media services.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#175

Post by justinchen »

axod wrote: post #127
hristov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can make a pretty good case that Heroku and the like is where all web development is headed pretty soon. One thing that can be gleaned from the history of languages and computing platforms is that once computing performance started skyrocketing, it has been the easiest languages and platforms that have been winning. And RoR is very easy and Heroku is a very easy way to deploy and host RoR. If Heroku becomes the p…

Whilst Amazon cloud, Heroku etc may be hot for startups who don't really mind about throwing money away, I don't think that will last. Both are significantly, prohibitively expensive for companies interested in turning a profit or having a business model. It's more like "VC funded companies throw money at hosting at the moment".

We use Amazon EC2 via EngineYard and we're a profitable bootstrapped company that's been around for 5 years.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#176

Post by petercooper »

papertiger wrote: post #96

I've honestly never understood why startups want to be acquired (besides the monetary gain for individual employees). Doesn't acquisition often destroy or dilute the very successes they've worked so hard to build? (I worked for an acquisitive company that worsened nearly every product/company it acquired.) Why not just focus on making your business better? Heroku will now be subject to all kinds of pressures and asin…

I've honestly never understood why startups want to be acquired (besides the monetary gain for individual employees).

That's like saying one doesn't understand why people play the lottery (besides the monetary gain from winning).

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#177

Post by nl »

yesno wrote: post #145
notyourwork wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google? I do not recall them being "acquired".

Google is 1 in a [insert the number of startups from 1998 to 2010] 1:xyz

Bullshit.

Salesforce.com (you know? That company that just bought Heroku?) was founded in 1999, went public in 2004 and is currently worth ~$20B.

VMWare were founded in 1998, and is worth ~$37B now.

http://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPOHome/Press/IPOIndustry.... shows there have been 37 tech IPOs in 2010, worth ~$5B

http://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPOHome/Press/IPOPricings.... shows IPOs/year. Obviously not all are tech, but a large number are.

Additionally, we all know that there are many companies which are very successful but are deliberately not going public.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#178

Post by stephth »

I'm not entirely surprised. Heroku's manual-scale model has shown a strong focus to sell to the enterprises. The App Engine's auto-scale model (no expenses if no traffic, but always ready to face peaks) is largely friendlier to individuals on a budget.

I hope these news will help boost projects like appengine-jruby.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#179

Post by yesno »

nl wrote: post #177
yesno wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is 1 in a [insert the number of startups from 1998 to 2010] 1:xyz

Bullshit. Salesforce.com (you know? That company that just bought Heroku?) was founded in 1999, went public in 2004 and is currently worth ~$20B. VMWare were founded in 1998, and is worth ~$37B now. http://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPOHome/Press/IPOIndustry.... shows there have been 37 tech IPOs in 2010, worth ~$5B http://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPOHome/Press/IPOPricings.... shows IPOs/year. Obviously not all are…

Cool stats bro. Chill out, here's a glass of wine.

Re: Salesforce Buys Heroku (YC W08) For $212 Million In Cash

#180

Post by samratjp »

mikeryan wrote: post #174
samratjp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox became the first YC company to hit IPO.

I actually would be surprised if Dropbox exited via IPO. I think their offering fits in with a lot of large companies profiles. Dropbox could easily fit into a portfolio of Google, Microsoft, even Cisco . explaining Cisco - Cisco seems to be trying to break into the "Digital Home" market with things like FlipVideo and some other video services. Dropbox would make a great cloud storage play for media services.

They are obviously swinging for the fences, especially with Sequoia involved. It's fair to expect that they would aim for a 9 figure exit. IPO or not.

Interesting case about Cisco. I would've also thrown in Apple because of their huge war chest and select big acquisitions. Dropbox could easily outdo MobileMe. Then again, I'm sure Google wouldn't mind getting a GDrive finally.

But then, there's facebook!(Sure, they got Drop.io, but facebook loves grabbing startups away before Google get to them)

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