Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver • Hacker News Board

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#151

Post by seanoliver » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

dsiroker wrote: post #142

redshirtrob wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the op's post and your reply, I can only come up with two possible conclusions: 1. The op is lying about his experience. He states he answered NO to question 2, which is what you claim to be looking for. Unless his answer to question 1 was "Work for Optimizely" (which, I guess, someone might say, maybe) then I don't see how you get a contradiction. By your logic, he would have been a hire. 2. The recruiter li…

Not sure exactly what happened but I did personally interview the first hundred employees so that means I probably interviewed him or her and would have done so regardless of how the other interviewers felt about the candidate. My interview feedback was treated like the rest and I rarely if ever vetoed a hire if everyone else was unanimously in support. And you are right, I did hire people regardless of their answers…

Of all the questions I've been asked in interviews over the course of my career, this is the only one I can actually still remember to this day. Partially because it's extremely unique. And partially because I was fairly certain at the time, judging by the look on your face, that I'd completely bombed it. (Also reading your explanation above, I now KNOW that I bombed it.)

Anyway, I'll attest to the fact that Dan at least didn't veto all candidates purely on the basis of their response to this question (unless I was the result of a massive clerical error).

Outcomes aside, I'm very thankful for my experience at Optimizely. My time there was a major inflection point for me both personally and professionally. I wouldn't be as effective in the workplace as I am today—nor would I have some of my most meaningful friendships—had I not cut my teeth at 631 Howard — thanks Dan (and Pete, if you're reading this too).

EDIT: Also considering the timeline and the role described in the OP's message, there's a nonzero chance we were interviewing for the same role. Small world!

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#152

Post by mrnobody_67 » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

poof131 wrote: post #59

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 joined in 2015 and left after 2 months. I had left a fast growing late-stage startup, AppDynamics, where revenue was doubling every 12 months, from $75M to about $150M when I left. The director of engineering at Optimizely who hired me said their revenue was doubling too, from $40M to $80M. At the next all hands a few weeks later, the CEO said revenue had been declining slightly for 2 straight quarters. At lunch, a…

The pricing consultant they brought in was Simon Kutcher...

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#153

Post by mrnobody_67 » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

richardFINEman wrote: post #115

tptacek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I worked at Optimizely for 4 years and can tell you that pivoting to Enterprise has been one of the best company decisions. One of the important distinctions between Optimizely and most developer-first platforms is that experimentation is a hard practice to pick up. Most companies have difficulties getting their programs off the ground and keeping them funded, let alone grow or scale them. Small digital businesses st…

The big missed opportunity was to build a bounty-based marketplace to serve the SMBs... charge for results vs. the product.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#154

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

redshirtrob wrote: post #139

triceratops wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was involved in an acquisition as a shareholder. I was nigh impossible to get anything out of the executives. It was an acquihire so maybe things were different.

[deleted]

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#155

Post by mike_d » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

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…

Never dump your prosumer/developer/enthusiast base, no matter what any business expert tells you. Keep them going in parallel.

CROs and VP of Sales types don't like the idea because they can't control the messaging and manage the sales funnel. But if you have people who genuinely love your product and will champion it internally, ignore these fools. Just keep delivering a quality product with value and if there is a market, the revenue will follow.

GitHub, Twilio, and OpenDNS all built their businesses off people taking tools to work.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#156

Post by ng12 » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

gkop wrote: post #79

redshirtrob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the op spent $100k to exercise the options. It's likely this deal will wipe out all common shareholders and only the VCs will get anything. That's a $100k loss. The op will be spending the next decade writing this loss off against capital gains and earned income. I've been there.

Can you write off just the exercise price or the fair market value at time of exercise?

Yes, capped at $3,000/year.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#157

Post by adventured » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #145

tptacek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's possible to do both. At Twilio we started as a self-service, developer-focused company. Today we have many large enterprise customers (and spend a lot of effort to court those kinds of customers), but we still have a huge number of small developers, and one-person hobby shops can and do still easily set themselves up to use our platform. We have added some enterprise-only features, which I sometimes have mixed f…

> It's possible to do both.

I think the more interesting question is: can you always do both?

I agree in a general sense, as there are a lot of excellent examples in the wild at this point (of companies consciously maintaining their developer base), such as Cloudflare, Fastly, Stripe, DigitalOcean, Twilio, GitHub and so on.

It may be a case where it's much easier for some types of services than for others.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#158

Post by annexrichmond » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

dsiroker wrote: post #123

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…

Either way, pretty stupid questions to ask

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#159

Post by patio11 » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

gkop wrote: post #79

redshirtrob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the op spent $100k to exercise the options. It's likely this deal will wipe out all common shareholders and only the VCs will get anything. That's a $100k loss. The op will be spending the next decade writing this loss off against capital gains and earned income. I've been there.

Can you write off just the exercise price or the fair market value at time of exercise?

Confirm this with your tax advisor, but FMV at exercise is your basis in later years (generally because the difference in FMV and strike will have caused you a taxable event).

c.f. https://www.untracht.com/news-insights/vantagepoint-newslett...

Edit: Consider the case where this were not treated as true. You're clearly not going to pay $2 strike, exercise at $5 ($3 of employment income due to the bargain element), sell at $10 in a later year and pay on $8 of capital gains, right?

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#160

Post by austinkhale » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

pc wrote: post #65

twunde wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe may expand "up market" at some point, but at the moment they're pretty enterprise unfriendly and don't seem interested in becoming enterprise friendly. You can't pay for phone support, their PCI compliance can cause some enterprise customers to blink and even if you're funneling millions through them they won't negotiate on price like other payment gateways. Also many of their more advanced features, just aren…

Appreciate the feedback. You can pay for phone support (indeed, you get it for free, though you can pay extra for a premium support package if you like). We think that our PCI compliance functionality is best-in-class. And we do negotiate price for larger accounts, as indicated on stripe.com/pricing. More broadly, Stripe now works with a long list of businesses that are processing more than $1B/year or more, and that…

As someone who recently oversaw the transition from Zuora + Authorize.net to Stripe for a business in the eight figure a year range, can confirm.

Stripe worked with us on pricing discounts (over $150k per year in savings by switching from our previous set up) & the enterprise support is absolutely top notch. I literally could not be happier with the service.