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Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

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Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#121

Post by redshirtrob »

richardFINEman wrote: post #116
deedub wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda curious about your >$100k loss on your stock. Your strike price from pre series A options was more than the gains on a near $600 million sale price? Maybe I am misunderstanding, but how is that possible?

If the OP is telling the truth, there is no way he lost money on the stock he bought. The early shares are all up.

For the record, I think op is probably speculating a bit. That said, I'm not sure how you can be so sure op's not losing money unless you have intimate knowledge of the cap table and the deal.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#122

Post by triceratops »

richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

Wow. I interviewed there in 2015 and got turned down. Wasn't a great interview experience either. Bullet dodged, I supposed.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#123

Post by dsiroker »

worldsoup wrote: post #80

I interviewed for a marketing role at Optimizely back in 2013...I passed all the interviews with the team and then had a final, short interview with the CEO. He asked me a few basic questions and then asked 'if you only had 3 years to live, would you work at Optimizely?'. I responded honestly and said no. Said that I'd love to work here to help and grow the business, learn, and further my own career but if I had only…

Over the years I A/B tested each of my interview questions in order to better measure what I was looking for. It sounds like you might have been asked an early version of one of the questions I used to ask so sorry you didn't get the "optimized" version. (there was a big difference in responses between only 3 years and 10 years to live)

Also, to clarify, I used to end my interviews with TWO questions: (1) if you had 10 years to live, what would you do? [wait for answer] (2) if you had 10 years to live, would you take this job?

The things I was assessing in these questions were candor, intellectual honesty, and passion. Sure, it would be great if people authentically were passionate about taking the job if they had ten years to live. That was a tiny minority of responses.

The only "wrong" answer to these question was when someone would answer YES to the second question after clearly answering something completely different to the first one. For example, if someone would say travel the world to #1 and yes to #2.

The reason why this measured candor was because if someone could tell me to my face during an interview they wouldn't take this job, then I knew they would tell me to my face when something was broken in the company after I hired them. I was looking for the exact opposite of what this thread implies I was looking for. I didn't want ass kissers. I wanted truth tellers.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#124

Post by dsiroker »

askafriend wrote: post #105
dsiroker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, certainly no drama and no one forced us or even asked us to step down. I wrote a blog post about it: https://link.medium.com/mHgtiQ3bu9

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24368516 If you don't mind answering, what's the strategy behind a hiring tactic like the one in the link above? It seems cartoonish and not grounded in reality....

Sure, I just responded because you asked so nicely. :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24369766

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#125

Post by triceratops »

smallgovt wrote: post #90
richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

> The Episerver acquisition is indeed a bad exit, and I think I will lose >$100k in stock I exercised Based on what information? So far, all that's been publicly confirmed is that the sale price was below $600M, which presumably leaves opportunity for your shares to be worth something.

GP probably got information about the share price offered from current employees and did the math. Once the acquisition is finalized, they'll receive more details since they are a shareholder.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#126

Post by Reema_ »

jmacd wrote: post #32
richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

Speaking as a customer, it feels like this is exactly what is happening to Mode Analytics right now.

Please try https://www.webtrends-optimize.com/ We are known for our good customer services

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#127

Post by mattkevan »

Silhouette wrote: post #71
dataminded wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the phrase I was looking for. Their sales process is impossible.

They appear to have become a great example of why the small businesses I run typically just walk away from any service we were potentially interested in using if we see a pricing page containing the word "call" but no actual pricing. If you're going to aim for high-touch enterprise sales, that's your choice, it's your business. However, the chances that you will then provide either acceptable quality of service or go…

When I used to work for one of the UK’s largest social networks, I spent a long time researching optimisation platforms. I’d used Optimizely before and liked it, but when I saw the pricing table had been replaced by the dreaded ‘Call’ CTA I knew we were in for a bad time.

When I finally negotiated the rigmarole of callbacks and salespeople, the quote we received was so ludicrously high that there was not a chance that it was ever going to be worthwhile. Especially considering their old self-serve model was pretty good value and the horde of functionally identical and much cheaper competitors.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#128

Post by triceratops »

redshirtrob wrote: post #121
richardFINEman wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the OP is telling the truth, there is no way he lost money on the stock he bought. The early shares are all up.

For the record, I think op is probably speculating a bit. That said, I'm not sure how you can be so sure op's not losing money unless you have intimate knowledge of the cap table and the deal.

The acquisition share price is usually told to employees. They probably got the information from current employees. Since they are a shareholder, they'll eventually find out anyway.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#130

Post by lmeyerov »

tptacek wrote: post #60
richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

I have a sort of general question about this narrative, which seems to apply to lots of startups that begin as self-service, developer-focused projects and end in enterprise hell. Is it not the case that these startups begin developer-facing, get market traction, are lavishly funded, and then discover that the self-service offering they've built simply can't satisfy the projections they've made to justify their valua…

SMB and grow into enterprise is the easiest path bc can iterate and grow revenue. In theory, similar effort for more revenue initially and more revenue as seats grow.

Problems are often:

-- Beyond just VC, it becomes an issue ongoing to having full-time dedicated sales: quota, qualified leads, etc, it's a beast. Internal culture and priority shift to start/maintain/grow.

-- if not naturally pulled here and no obvious tier separatation, above can easily destroy the SMB side, instead of using as part of your moat + growth. The marketing+sales org will kill it, unless you split those as well or otherwise solve

-- VC money just means artificially faster deadlines and expectations for all of the above, so even harder to do 2 things, even if long term natural and better to habdle

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