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Tell HN: We (Causal) got acquired – thank you HN

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Re: Tell HN: We (Causal) got acquired – thank you HN

#25

Congrats! A related question, if you don't mind me asking: was acquisition your initial goal when you founded Causal, or did you just receive an offer you couldn't refuse?

Thanks!

We didn’t have an end goal in mind from the beginning — we had the idea for the product and wanted to see if it had legs as a business, and then grow it and see where we could take it.

From what I recall, I don’t think this kind of acquisition was on our radar in the early days — we expected the startup game to be much more binary (massive outcome or bust), and this was the standard narrative at the time.

We’re fortunate to have landed in a middle ground that more founders should be aware of earlier on (and I think awareness is increasing).

Not a massive outcome by VC standards, but still a win for us, our team, our customers, our product, and our early investors, and not the end of the journey yet!

Re: Tell HN: We (Causal) got acquired – thank you HN

#29
post #3

congrats taimur! please do a podcast with ali again, love you both. am also keen on your assessment of the other spreadsheet/forecasting startups

Thanks! We hope to get back on the pod :)

I think the spreadsheet space is honestly super challenging. There’s lots of possible use-cases for these tools, but also, Excel/Sheets are great products that everyone already knows how to use.

I think if these products nail some core use-case(s) that are valuable enough to build the core business around, then this can probably get you to “escape velocity” and you can start to become a truly horizontal tool as traction and awareness compound. (This is the path we were going for)

Lots of spreadsheet type products have tried to stay very horizontal from the beginning and end up trying to boil the ocean, or ended up focusing on a dead-end use-case that isn’t valuable enough to reach that escape velocity.

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