The two co-founders attended Furman University and were fraternity brothers who met in a coding clsss. Square probably doesn't need more brogrammers.
HN probably doesn't need more culture war-baiting.
Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
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Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#22Yik Yak destroyed itself by ignoring their users and making changes that undermined the reason people used their app in the first place. They're only "struggling" because of a series of self-inflicted wounds.
They faced legal trouble for the anonymity.
That doesn't mean users wanted something else; I used it originally because it was a "localized 4chan". When they started adding usernames and whatnot, I uninstalled.
That was the thing users wanted, take it away and why use the app? There are hundreds of social communities I can join, so what is YikYak's MVP? From that perspective, you have to choose what battle you want to fight - maintain anonymity and deal with the ramifications or lose your userbase by becoming just another social app?
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#23> The payments processor paid less than $3 million for between five and ten of Yik Yak’s engineers I feel like they could have saved money and created happy engineers by offering each employee a hefty sign on bonus.
Going one by one would present decision fear to any number of said engineers. "Am I going to be offered this deal as well, or will I be left out?"
By going at it collectively, it reduces perceives downside risk. Also, it reduces Square side's risk that one or more key people it wants would balk at the individual offer. By offering a group deal, it pressures everyone to join, since human nature is to not want to sabotage the communal good for your own benefit, especially when you've worked together for years.
It may also permit a more holistic retention package for the next 4 years for this team and keep VCs happy.
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#24> The payments processor paid less than $3 million for between five and ten of Yik Yak’s engineers I feel like they could have saved money and created happy engineers by offering each employee a hefty sign on bonus.
It would be interesting if there were a transfer market in programmers like there is in footballers, but I don't see it happening any time soon. (Partly this is because the rules of the game prevent replacing Lionel Messi with 1,000 cheap non-Western consultants hired through three layers of outsourcing)
What successful company has been built by "1,000 cheap non-Western consultants hired through three layers of outsourcing"? We don't need a rule against a losing strategy
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#25The two co-founders attended Furman University and were fraternity brothers who met in a coding clsss. Square probably doesn't need more brogrammers.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14187223 and marked it off-topic.
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#26> The company’s reputation suffered from cases of cyber-harassment, hate speech, and threats that appeared on Yik Yak’s platform.
Angry young white men strike again. It's one thing to be threatened by anonymous mobs on Twitter or Reddit but when you know the attackers are phisically within a mile or two things can get seriously scary.
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I've heard that the Atlanta tech scene is dominated by business types... In ATL, can confirm. That's not to say there aren't good engineers here.
Can you speak more on the ATL tech scene? I've always been interested.
Not OP but I'm a software engineer working for a startup in ATL. I'm not sure how we have a reputation for being "dominated by business types", but we do have a relatively high contingent of fintech and b2b companies here (our only unicorn, Kabbage, plus several others like Square, Salesloft, Salesforce). I think though that our pool of engineering talent is relatively high - I'd guess it's the most likely landing spot for good engineers from the southeast.
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#28I think the key problem was the hype train and the lack of product-oriented/technical leadership. remembered them doing very well on campus last two years of college. They had on campus reps to hand out "schwag"; probably not very fun to scale. The obvious bullying was the problem. If they had found some way to solve that and snuck their way back into high schools... then again, kids can be so cruel.
The issue was their entire app.
The exact same reason bullying could happen was the exact reason people loved it (anonymity).
Group A (parents, schools, etc) wanted complete de-masking + real-world identity while Group B (the users) wanted some anonymity with no real-world identity.
Yik-Yak could've never won as far as I can see.
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#29I'm missing something. Were these engineers under a transferable contract? What, specifically, did Square buy with their "less than $3 million", and from whom?
Re: Square Said to Acquire Team from Struggling Social App Yik Yak
#30I'm missing something. Were these engineers under a transferable contract? What, specifically, did Square buy with their "less than $3 million", and from whom?
What this likely means is that the engineers at Square get some kind of vesting stock options (i.e. golden handcuffs) that are valued in aggregate at less than $3 million. It also means the engineers get to have a well-recognized brand on their resume, and not a gap of a few weeks to months that then needs to be explained (not to mention the hit their bank accounts would take). This is generally what's called an "acquihire."