121–130 of 146 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I can't spell very well.
I kind of like rest-bite. Phonetically similar, kind of means the same thing :)
You have a set of people working for the startup and the outside investors in the startup, and you have an outside company trying to purchase them. The outside company offers $X for the company in an acquihire. Let's say all the outside investors own fraction Y of the company. Why can't the outside company offer a total of X * (1-.5Y) in signing bonuses to the people in the startup, leaving both them and the employees strictly better off? Are founders and early employees just walled off with non-competes to make this not realistic?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which brings up a great digression: the app store gold rush has left us in a situation where it's no longer feasible to sell high-maintenance, low-market software directly to consumers. Consumers will buy games and media in high volume, so you can sell those at a discount. But email clients? Photo apps? Nope. The only way to make that stuff is to sell it as some kind of "cloud" service where you make your money on ey…
I love a good pricing discussing so I wish I knew what you were saying when you say: The only way to make that stuff is to sell it as some kind of "cloud" service where you make your money on eyeballs elsewhere. And No one will buy this stuff at the $50/seat the developers would have to charge to avoid the Google and Facebook buyouts. Can you please re-state? For some reason I can't follow.
1. The minimum price to sustain development as standalone software is $50/seat.
2. Consumers will not pay $50/seat for this software.
3. Some businesses have been successful with cloud-based monetization.
4. Therefore, the best chance for success is to sell a cloud service, rather than standalone software.
Well, congrats to Marco for having a successful and sustainable business where he has the option and leverage to decide what he wants to do when these offers come knocking. Most startup/bootstrapped companies are not in that position. Most end up failing and winding up with nothing, but there are some that will end up with these talent acquisition situations. Remember, both sides (the acquirers and the acquirees) hav…
Those numbers are sustainable if you have a small team (1-3 people), but I'm not sure how big Sparrow's team was. Either way, I would say that they were in a very similar position to Instapaper, except the only difference being they had raised some VC funding (with all that implies regarding needing an exit in the future).
[1] http://www.appannie.com/app/mac/sparrow/ranking/history/#vie...
[2] http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/492573565/ranking/history/#v...
I'm the author of the popular Mac Instagram Client "InstaDesk" ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) and I can only confirm this. The reason why I started this whole thing was because I was fed up with working in corporations and not being able to control my life. Now I can enjoy the sun during the day, outside, sitting at a lake, and work late into the evening - or vice versa work at the lake. Even if a huge corporation…
> Money doesn't make me happy, freedom does. Guess what money buys? The only problem (in this context) is that it has to be a fairly large amount of money, and all in one chunk. Seriously, if Facebook offered you $10MM for instadesk, under the condition that you'd have to work for them for one year, you'd turn that down? No way. You'd be silly not to take it, because you could put in your one year and then be free fo…
Was the intent ever not to get talent acquired? I'm very confused by all of the anger at Google and Facebook for acquiring these companies. The companies look like they were designed to get talent acquired in the first place! They both have very small teams (2--5), Sparrow at least appears to have taken very small amounts of funding (just seed a year or two ago), and I can't name a consumer desktop application (espec…
Not just that. Previously when you released a paid desktop app, you weren't expected to give out free upgrades to the user. With the App store model, if a user purchases your app at V1, and five years down the line you're making a V4, the user will probably still feel entitled to getting the "update" (note, I said update, not upgrade) for free.
I'm the author of the popular Mac Instagram Client "InstaDesk" ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) and I can only confirm this. The reason why I started this whole thing was because I was fed up with working in corporations and not being able to control my life. Now I can enjoy the sun during the day, outside, sitting at a lake, and work late into the evening - or vice versa work at the lake. Even if a huge corporation…
> Money doesn't make me happy, freedom does. Guess what money buys? The only problem (in this context) is that it has to be a fairly large amount of money, and all in one chunk. Seriously, if Facebook offered you $10MM for instadesk, under the condition that you'd have to work for them for one year, you'd turn that down? No way. You'd be silly not to take it, because you could put in your one year and then be free fo…
So getting a modest amount of money annually, and increasing the freedom at which I can do my other things is also attractive. I think a lot of people really just want to be comfortable.
Was the intent ever not to get talent acquired? I'm very confused by all of the anger at Google and Facebook for acquiring these companies. The companies look like they were designed to get talent acquired in the first place! They both have very small teams (2--5), Sparrow at least appears to have taken very small amounts of funding (just seed a year or two ago), and I can't name a consumer desktop application (espec…
... and I can't name a consumer desktop application (especially a really generic one like mail with tons of free competitors) that has become a major $1bn+ (or even $100m+) business in the last several years. Exactly. An "exit" can mean a lot of different things depending on the company, situation, financials etc.