What's the use of this? I would imagine Facebook's end of year review was a clone of Vizify's idea? Anyhow, how was this idea be profitable for this startup to stay alive? I have never heard of it to be honest. To me this looks like http://osrc.dfm.io/ and FB's end-of-year review
Vizify acquired by Yahoo
21–30 of 41 posts
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#22Sad. Another company failing and shutting down with its employees going to work at Yahoo. Sorry, I mean they got acqui-hired. EDIT: There are other comments saying that people are being unnecessarily negative. Maybe so. But this is a company with customers that is shutting down without a single apology to people that depend on their service. Overall, the post just feels like doublespeak, talking about "your transitio…
It is not sad at all. These guys are talented and have been working on a product that very few people are really going miss. Hopefully they are now going to be working on products and projects that people actually care about.
Sad is when Napster shutdown.
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#23There are only a handful of comments in this thread and they're already seething with vitriol. Can anyone give context? Or is this just general "Yahoo, blech," sentiment?
There's just general antipathy around acqui-hires. The team gets a nice payday, but existing customers get burned. I suspect that poisons the well for other startups as those customers become more cautious. I'm also generally uncomfortable with concentrating innovation within a small set of megacorps.
Also, your data ends up with a megacorp, who you've been carefully avoiding in the past.
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#24Our company is in the Portland Seed Fund portfolio also. We know Todd and his team and they are good people. They worked incredibly hard at building up Vizify.
While it may be a bummer for users, I hope this is a positive step for the team and congratulate them on their effort!
EDIT: It is worth mentioning that Vizify raised in the valley, but ran the company out of Portland. Only a few consumer internet companies have done this so far, but in each case it has brought a lot to the city by helping build out the startup ecosystem up there.
It is way different running a consumer internet startup in Portland from the valley. We couldn't do it--we moved down to CA.
More info and sentiment from Rick Turoczy, who is close to the Portland tribe: http://siliconflorist.com/2014/03/05/visualize-exit-portland...
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#25Sad. Another company failing and shutting down with its employees going to work at Yahoo. Sorry, I mean they got acqui-hired. EDIT: There are other comments saying that people are being unnecessarily negative. Maybe so. But this is a company with customers that is shutting down without a single apology to people that depend on their service. Overall, the post just feels like doublespeak, talking about "your transitio…
Are you a customer of Vizify?
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#26This is a great group of guys, congrats to the team. Startups a hard, very hard. They made a great product and worked on what they love, if they get to continue to work on what they love at Yahoo, more power to them. I just hope they are able to keep their scrappy and inquisitive style.
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#27There are only a handful of comments in this thread and they're already seething with vitriol. Can anyone give context? Or is this just general "Yahoo, blech," sentiment?
There's just general antipathy around acqui-hires. The team gets a nice payday, but existing customers get burned. I suspect that poisons the well for other startups as those customers become more cautious. I'm also generally uncomfortable with concentrating innovation within a small set of megacorps.
> The team gets a nice payday
Part of my naive negative reaction to acqui-hires is that the investors/founders get more of a payday (not VC-dream 100x but I assume more than 1x) than the team really does (maybe some retention bonuses, minor bonuses from vested stock, etc.).
This is basically not rewarding the investors for backing a great business idea, or the founders for great execution, but for being great recruiters.
E.g. "yay, I'm/the team are awesome at my/our jobs, so my founders/investors get a huge 'referral bonus'...and I get to go work at Yahoo..."
(Granted, if the acquirer only wants the founders anyway, and the rest of the engineering team is more of a tangential bonus, I guess it makes sense. Perhaps this is usually the case anyway? Not sure.)
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#28The negativity around acqui-hires is pretty ridiculous. Every single tech company pays for the ability to hire smart people, and the basis of the hiring process is centered around the quality of a candidate's resume. In this case, there is a group of smart people (Vizify) who have a very real accomplishment (Vizify), which trumps a fact-laden piece of paper any day.
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's just general antipathy around acqui-hires. The team gets a nice payday, but existing customers get burned. I suspect that poisons the well for other startups as those customers become more cautious. I'm also generally uncomfortable with concentrating innovation within a small set of megacorps.
> The team gets a nice payday Part of my naive negative reaction to acqui-hires is that the investors/founders get more of a payday (not VC-dream 100x but I assume more than 1x) than the team really does (maybe some retention bonuses, minor bonuses from vested stock, etc.). This is basically not rewarding the investors for backing a great business idea, or the founders for great execution, but for being great recruit…
My friend was recently ac qr - hired and he definitely did not see big payday. It was slightly better offer than what he would have got as a regular new hire but only slightly. Value of his options (after working for 3 years) was less than 10k.
Re: Vizify acquired by Yahoo
#30Fuck the haters. Congrats to the team!