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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

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Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#141

Post by andrewla »

On announcing that they'll support git [1]:

> > > You guys should be taking my money

> > One way to pay, if you want to help ensure their success & longevity, is to evangelize for them, and get other people hooked on their product. Getting other people hooked on it like you are and seeing the potential and get over the adoption humps... that's valuable! They're not taking money because it raises the barrier to entry, and growth is most important. Pay them by helping them grow.

> It's valuable, but not in the capital sense. Each person you get hooked on their product increases their burn rate, and both makes them more attractive as an acquisition (which is scary for users) and more desperate for cash (which makes acquiescing to acquisition more tempting).

> Without a road to profitability (or at least a road to revenue) even attracting equity is difficult; investors who enter with that knowledge will be looking to exit through acquisition, since that's basically the only way to exit, other than just getting more capital.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15403772

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#142

Post by lmm »

frogpelt wrote: post #102
ithkuil wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not look at the problem the other way around? I don't have much respect for zoom's security practices, while I do have much respect for the keybase team. Perhaps this is Zoom's way of admitting that there is no way they can just solve the problem internally by keeping doing what they're doing and they need to get some fresh blood and build upon good practices designed outside their current culture.

It seems that we live in an era where if you made bad decisions in the past, you can never be trusted to make good decisions ever again. Even if you own your bad decisions and show lots of improvement. Nope. Once a pariah, always a pariah.

Zoom's decisions did not feel like mistakes so much as an expression of their values. The company repeatedly prioritised ease of use while doing the absolute minimum on the security front. Are there any grounds to believe that that calculus has changed?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#143

Post by Legogris »

I recently posted this comment during a recent Keybase/Keys.pub thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22996981

Looking forward, none of that seems to matter due to this acquisition/acquihire - it seems clear that we'll not be able to count on Keybase in any meaningful way from now on.

This is the most disillusioning acquisition to date for me.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#144

Post by coldpie »

RL_Quine wrote: post #125
pot8n wrote: post #114

Keybase went from ranking 30,000 to 65,000 in 3 months. What happened here? It seems like Keybase has been falling in traffic already for the past 3 months and it's reputations has been tarnished in HN for months now. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/keybase.io

The product is simply not good in its current form. It's a strange mix of instant messaging, web of trust, and cryptocurrency scam. It doesn't strongly give any particular goal. The tools are shiny, pleasant enough to look at any use, but isn't going in any direction. A lot of push recently has been into making it a "team chat" platform, which is great except that all of the participants are public, and tied to their…

God, that cryptocurrency scam. If ever there was a clear message screaming "we have no idea how to turn this into something profitable/sustainable," that was it.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#145

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

ValentineC wrote: post #94
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a new type of company that can never be acquired.

Ghost (blogging software) chose to incorporate as a Company Limited by Guarantee [1], which doesn't have shares and can't be acquired that way: https://ghost.org/changelog/moving-to-singapore/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_company_limited_by_gua...

Sweet, i kind of knew it already existed, but this type of structure is just so damn rare.

I guess most founders are really just motivated by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow :/

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#146

Post by ValentineC »

RL_Quine wrote: post #125
pot8n wrote: post #114

Keybase went from ranking 30,000 to 65,000 in 3 months. What happened here? It seems like Keybase has been falling in traffic already for the past 3 months and it's reputations has been tarnished in HN for months now. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/keybase.io

The product is simply not good in its current form. It's a strange mix of instant messaging, web of trust, and cryptocurrency scam. It doesn't strongly give any particular goal. The tools are shiny, pleasant enough to look at any use, but isn't going in any direction. A lot of push recently has been into making it a "team chat" platform, which is great except that all of the participants are public, and tied to their…

> It's a strange mix of instant messaging, web of trust, and cryptocurrency scam.

They ended their Stellar airdrop early, but I guess it didn't help that bots were joining the platform, and affecting the other parts of the Keybase community, just to get a share of it.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#147

Post by ativzzz »

AgloeDreams wrote: post #135
momokoko wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t. They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for. The post is actually refreshingly honest that keybase is now abandoned and will probably die at some point. The idea that companies were stupid enough to place their internal identity on some random 3rd party is so incredibly stupid that it’s hard to feel too bad for anyone. Congrats Keybase!

> They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for. I miss the days when businesses existed not just to serve investors but also their employees and the common good. It's like a 1%-er meta profit model where the actual business is in buying and selling the business and the core business is really just a temporary front that is designed to never make a profit, just create fancy looking charts and…

> I miss the days when businesses existed not just to serve investors but also their employees and the common good

Uh when was this? For-profit businesses have always been created for the primary purpose of making money. Any side effect like employee well being happened to coincide with what maximized profits at the time or due to regulation.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#148

Post by [deleted] »

olah_1 wrote: post #82
kgraves wrote: post #28

I'm seeing a certain pattern here, aren't we all just fooling ourselves? Isn't this just all inevitable? Aren't all these startups just lining up all in the hopes just to get acquired? I guess when we see VC Funded™ on any startup what it _really means_ is that: "We are prioritising a return for our investors even if it means violating our mission statement".

I think it is inevitable, yeah. But, this wouldn't have been a problem if the product itself was decentralized. For example, if it was optional to connect to the Keybase network to begin with. Imagine a keybase-type app that is built on web of trust rather than centralized servers.

[deleted]

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#149

Post by [deleted] »

AgloeDreams wrote: post #135
momokoko wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t. They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for. The post is actually refreshingly honest that keybase is now abandoned and will probably die at some point. The idea that companies were stupid enough to place their internal identity on some random 3rd party is so incredibly stupid that it’s hard to feel too bad for anyone. Congrats Keybase!

> They are making a lot of money which is what the business was made for. I miss the days when businesses existed not just to serve investors but also their employees and the common good. It's like a 1%-er meta profit model where the actual business is in buying and selling the business and the core business is really just a temporary front that is designed to never make a profit, just create fancy looking charts and…

[deleted]
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