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Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
51–60 of 92 posts
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#52Seems like a last second deal. Doesn't inspire confidence. For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 And former CEO's post: https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
It's very possible it has been a deal long time in the making.
When you're in an acquisition process, the acquirer will often prey on your weaknesses to get a better deal. If Employer.com had already been in talks prior to the shutdown, then they already knew the financial condition, they may have surprised Bench with a dramatic decrease in the purchase price at the 11th hour in an effort to get a better deal knowing Bench's only other alternative would be to shut down. Maybe Bench called their bluff, called off the deal and shut down. (The only rational reason to do that would be if they think they could successfully sue the acquirer or get the original deal back on the table)
Pure speculation, but typically acquisitions take many months to come together. Even a firesale acquisition doesn't happen in a week.
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#53Seems like a last second deal. Doesn't inspire confidence. For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 And former CEO's post: https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
It's very possible it has been a deal long time in the making. When you're in an acquisition process, the acquirer will often prey on your weaknesses to get a better deal. If Employer.com had already been in talks prior to the shutdown, then they already knew the financial condition, they may have surprised Bench with a dramatic decrease in the purchase price at the 11th hour in an effort to get a better deal knowing…
This might not even be worthy of being called a firesale acquisition. It might just be selling the customer contracts locked in with Capchase.
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#54As someone who was affected by this, I opted to go ahead and try and get my money's worth (although I have another service doing this in parallel). Also they were supposed to file an S Corp election for me, so hopefully I'll be able to find out the latest status of that. This whole thing is such a mess.
A bit of research yields this guy as this owner of employer.com: https://x.com/JesseTinsley
At the end of his bio:
> Acquiring companies DM me
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#55Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."
They also left https://www.employer.com/terms showing the license for the template they bought.
"By accessing and placing an order with UXTheme, you confirm that you are in agreement with and bound by the terms and conditions contained in the Terms Of Use outlined below. "
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's not really an economic philosophy that can protect people from bad decisions. In the middle of year end accounting though, this was a train wreck.
There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".
Where does the money come from to pay for that? As an employee, would you want to work for 6mo, for no promotions, bonuses, stock?
Seems like they could have had huge layoffs, to try to maintain, but maybe they thought the sale would go through before the shutdown, meaning no one gets laid off.
But the buyer waited until after the shutdown to grab it
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#57Recent and related:
Bench accounting services shutting down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 - Dec 2024 (304 comments)
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#58(We changed the URL from https://www.bench.co/ to an article that gives more background.)
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's not really an economic philosophy that can protect people from bad decisions. In the middle of year end accounting though, this was a train wreck.
There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".
There was barely enough money to pay for the last week of wages, would you expect employees to volunteer to achieve that?
I'm not defending what they did, but doing the work even one more week was not an option afaik. At best they could have wrapped up earlier?
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#60What a comedy of errors. So they screw over their paying customers without any notice and now suddenly they are acquired ? I love capitalism but the way Bench handled this is a disaster and left so many customers unsure of what to do. Especially at year end when accounting becomes even more critical. Shameful.
In disrupting the staid, predictable world of accounting, one must move fast and break things.
I wish the trend of moving fast and breaking thing would go out of fashion already. I guess being kind and fixing things doesn't make any money so why would anyone want that /s