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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

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Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#241

Post by jsk2600 »

turnsout wrote: post #234
darth_avocado wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some businesses that are simply not viable without losing money first. SpaceX cannot generate revenue until it first employs hundreds of people for a few years (maybe a decade) where they focus on building what will eventually bring revenue. Software has those problems too.

I mean this with no snark: I would love to see the investor deck that explains how an AI-powered browser is going to make any multiple of $610M.

I would guess by selling personal data and ads.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#244

Post by immibis »

turnsout wrote: post #234
darth_avocado wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some businesses that are simply not viable without losing money first. SpaceX cannot generate revenue until it first employs hundreds of people for a few years (maybe a decade) where they focus on building what will eventually bring revenue. Software has those problems too.

I mean this with no snark: I would love to see the investor deck that explains how an AI-powered browser is going to make any multiple of $610M.

More charitably by selling the only browser that's actually usable in a few years. The AI will be used to cancel out the effect of other people's AI.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#245

Post by echelon »

darth_avocado wrote: post #232
thor-rodrigues wrote: post #211

I’m not sure whether I find it more worrisome or fascinating that we live in a world where a company that, as far as I know, has never generated a single dollar in revenue has managed to exist for over five years, employ more than 100 people, and still get acquired for this amount. This isn’t criticism or sarcasm — I’m genuinely impressed, but also very curious about the rationale behind it.

There are some businesses that are simply not viable without losing money first. SpaceX cannot generate revenue until it first employs hundreds of people for a few years (maybe a decade) where they focus on building what will eventually bring revenue. Software has those problems too.

I can't tell you how many designers I interviewed who told me they used the Arc browser. It was at least a dozen.

I'd never heard of the damned thing before.

I don't know why, but it appears to be popular with some creative demographics.

The browser is an essential pane of glass to platformization and taxing the web. Anyone who wins a browser with significant market share has a huge opportunity to capitalize on.

Not sure if Arc is that browser, but lots of teams are trying.

Chrome is shitty on purpose because it is designed to sell ads. Other browsers can sell AI or other things to fund their development.

It's a shame we don't have a good open source browser with decent leadership anymore. I'm sure they'd be killing it. I could swear Mozilla is led by a revolving door of paid off Google plants.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#247

Post by dkyc »

thor-rodrigues wrote: post #211

I’m not sure whether I find it more worrisome or fascinating that we live in a world where a company that, as far as I know, has never generated a single dollar in revenue has managed to exist for over five years, employ more than 100 people, and still get acquired for this amount. This isn’t criticism or sarcasm — I’m genuinely impressed, but also very curious about the rationale behind it.

I would think of it that way:

- no company generates revenue in its first second. Even if you start a lemonade stand tomorrow, you'll have to buy some lemons first. The time-to-revenue might be very short, but it's never zero. Therefore, making no revenue for 1 day or for 10 years is not a step change, but simply a point on a curve.

- Capitalism is basically a long history of creating vehicles with increasing sophistication to bridge that gap: provide funding for ventures that have returns in the future. This is intrinsically difficult, and it's easy to waste money, but it can work immensely. This started with the Dutch inventing limited liability corporations to fund ship expeditions, and today's VC is essentially an extension of that.

- It has worked well in the past to bet on companies that don't optimize for time-to-revenue, but something else – famous examples being e.g. Amazon, Google, Meta, who all lost lots of money initially.

Hence there can be companies that make no money for quite a while. And it can even turn out that the vast majority of the companies that make no money for a while never make any money. Accepting this risk is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#248

Post by turnsout »

immibis wrote: post #244
turnsout wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this with no snark: I would love to see the investor deck that explains how an AI-powered browser is going to make any multiple of $610M.

More charitably by selling the only browser that's actually usable in a few years. The AI will be used to cancel out the effect of other people's AI.

Ha, that's a dark timeline! But sadly quite probable.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#250

Post by MangoToupe »

crowcroft wrote: post #190
cryptozeus wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% on point, classic case of drinking ai cool aid and killing what users wanted

The thing is they make the correct diagnoses of Arc's issues [1], but then instead of addressing them and doing the hard work of building a great product, they took the easy way out and started another greenfield project. How often has that ever been a good decision? 1 - https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...

> How often has that ever been a good decision?

It got them acquired, so certainly it worked for them this time.

> doing the hard work of building a great product

How often has that ever been a good decision?

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