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LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

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Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#251

Post by apankrat »

degenerate wrote: post #142
_bxg1 wrote: post #132

LogMeIn Hamachi was a pretty great way of setting up a LAN over the internet for gaming. We used to play Minecraft on it all the time in college.

Hamachi was created by Alex Pankratov. Once LogMeIn purchased Hamachi, they ruined it with the following update ( either purposefully or accidentally ) by making it no longer work with a large handful of older games. That sanfu in combination with a more bloated UI, forced LogMeIn account, and a splattering of useless features made it obsolete within a few months. It was the fastest rise and fall of a piece of softwa…

Your recollection is off.

LMI bought Hamachi in 2006 and I was involved in the development until 2009. Through that time there were no known issues with older games. Nothing was broken. What was tunneled before was still tunneled the exact same way, including IPX, IP4 broadcasts and multicasts. We did rewrite the client, cleaning up all the cruft, separating the engine from the UI, adding compression support and what not. It still wasn't fully integrated with the LMI core and no LMI account was required. The UI was redesigned in-house, without my participation, and while I didn't like the result, the original look wasn't a pinnacle of design either :)

What happened after 2009 I have no idea. The devs I worked with were really good, so if things broke, most likely it wasn't accidental.

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#254

Post by thijsvandien »

Youden wrote: post #247
thijsvandien wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's still based on VNC, for sure it's much more efficient (and user-friendlier packaged) than any of the open source competition I've experienced over the years. So much that I think that still using the name VNC does them more harm than good.

I think perhaps you're unfamiliar with the open source competition. Most of the open source VNC servers support something like H.264 which while a little dated, is still quite efficient, especially for the low-latency streaming needed for remote desktop applications. The only novel-looking thing I see on RealVNC's website is adaptive bitrate, which I don't think I've seen in the open source servers.

You know, I might be. In that case, please enlighten me with a counterexample. Anyway, the point isn't to pick on the competition. I'm merely saying that RealVNC is a fine, fairly priced product with a rather bad name. Many people, myself included, have a dismissive initial reaction based on memories of old-fashioned (slow, hard to set up over the internet) VNC. At least with RealVNC, it's nothing like that anymore, whereas with TightVNC for one, it still pretty much is. I use the latter as well, but only for light usage on local networks—acceptable and better than it once used to be, yet a completely different experience.

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#255

Post by degenerate »

apankrat wrote: post #251
degenerate wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamachi was created by Alex Pankratov. Once LogMeIn purchased Hamachi, they ruined it with the following update ( either purposefully or accidentally ) by making it no longer work with a large handful of older games. That sanfu in combination with a more bloated UI, forced LogMeIn account, and a splattering of useless features made it obsolete within a few months. It was the fastest rise and fall of a piece of softwa…

Your recollection is off. LMI bought Hamachi in 2006 and I was involved in the development until 2009. Through that time there were no known issues with older games. Nothing was broken. What was tunneled before was still tunneled the exact same way, including IPX, IP4 broadcasts and multicasts. We did rewrite the client, cleaning up all the cruft, separating the engine from the UI, adding compression support and what…

I remember the UI change being around the time most things broke for me, and there were other users in the product forum with their various games also having issues. Maybe those type of posts were always numerous, and I never visited the forums before. For me the games that broke were Starcraft, Red Alert, and a handful of non-internet games. Perhaps the forum/customer-support tickets didn't make it down to you, but something had definitely broke around the time the UI changed.

It's likely the issues were quickly fixed and I am remembering the gradual post-2009 decline more vividly and blaming it on the time when the UI changed, which was emotionally upsetting ;)

But thanks for posting your remembrance of the events, and creating Hamachi in the first place!

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#256

Post by mbesto »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #56

Off-topic, but can anyone tell me of an instance whereby a software entity was acquired by a VC firm and things turned out great?

PE advisor here.

First, VC doesn't acquire businesses, PE does.

Second, I've seen NUMEROUS examples of entities acquired by financial sponsors (PE) that work out well.

If you look at Vista Equity, Thoma Bravo, Silverlake, TA Associates, Accel-KKR, etc. you'll find an incredible amount of wealth being generated.

PS - Depends on what you mean by "turned out great"...

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#257

Post by mbesto »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #239
jacquesm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Skrebbel already mentioned VC firms rarely acquire companies outright, but it is typical that in such transactions VCs are on the selling side and PE parties are on the buying side. So let's take it as read that you meant PE, in that case, it depends is the usual answer. There are quite a few examples of PE funds buying companies and letting them run as autonomous as possible with positive results and there are ex…

But I'm not talking about "headlines". I'm talking about declines or stagnation that I've seen firsthand. Qlik and ExtJS/Sencha (an Idera victim) all fall in the pattern of being acquired and falling from grace.

I've worked with 100+ software companies who have been acquired by PE and I honestly can't name many that have stagnated/declined.

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#258

Post by dangus »

oarsinsync wrote: post #118
_jal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I dropped 1Password when it became clear you're forcing folks to cloud storage. I was sort of hoping the carefully chosen weasel-words about that used at the time meant you'd reconsider if enough of us made noise, but later releases made it clear where you're headed. It bummed me out - I really like 1pw. And I still don't have my password situation back to the same level of ease-of-use yet, but I swit…

+1 for this. The only reason I ever got onto 1Password in the first place was because I didn't have to use any cloud storage, and could use wifi sync between my devices. I was extremely disappointed as that started to change. It was an absolute nightmare having to retrain all family members in the nuanced differences in how Bitwarden works compared to 1Password. I hope I don't end up having to eat that cost a second…

It seems really self-centered to retrain non-technical family on new software to satisfy your own philosophical needs that they may not share.

There is nothing about “being a cloud service” that makes 1Password unusable for your family other than your own objections. On the contrary, it probably protects your family against their own incompetence compared to messing with local files, or depending on you to run a server for them (what happens if you’re hit by a bus?)

Obviously that doesn’t mean that Bitwarden isn’t a superior solution, but that’s not why you switched them over.

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#259

Post by tomaszs »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #228
tomaszs wrote: post #147

The pricing for LogMeIn and Hamechi and TeamViewer is ridicolous. Paying tens of dollars for a TightVNC with a middle server is more luxurious than having WinRar licence

I don't know why anyone would pay for Hamachi when you could self-host ZeroTier for free or pay $30/mo for unlimited user of their hosted service.

Oh man 30 dollars... So the problem with SaaS is that if you dont earn money directly from using SaaS most of the time you are outside of the scope of the business. Because SaaS needs to remove the lowest pricing so that the direct earning users choose the higher one. I can not pay 10 dollars for occasional service because its bad for the SaaS business aimed to more heavy users. I dont like it in SaaS model and i cant see any solution for this. Its like pizzahut stopped selling margherita and capricosa. SaaS dont sell margherita and capricosa!

Re: LogMeIn Acquired by Private Equity

#260

Post by mbesto »

bduerst wrote: post #234
steveklabnik wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have pointed out the difference between VC and PE, but I think there's a crucial thing missing from your question: turned out great for whom ?

SOP for PE's is to come in, cut costs, and improve the bottom line without affecting revenue or service. Customers typically aren't affected but employees are.

> SOP for PE's is to come in, cut costs, and improve the bottom line without affecting revenue or service.

This is fundamentally untrue. Large CAP ($1B+ valuations) is notorious for this, but there's about 5k PE deals per year and those deals are the exception, not the norm, in terms of shear volume. They're great for headlines though! (hello Toys 'R Us)

Most of them are about adding value through various means, one of those might be cutting unnecessary costs.

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