Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

wildbit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 68 posts

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#21

Post by troydavis »

jmacd wrote: post #18

Wildbit has sold the family business work-for-other-reasons-than-monetary-renumeration trope for a couple of decades. They've had some great products like Beanstalk and Deploybot and some total follies like Converyor. Employees had no ownership, products were often sold or put up for sale, and my understand is that compensation was middle of the road at best. It was 37Signals-lite. They seem like good people, but if…

> I wonder why there was no employee buyout. I suspect it wasn't the most attractive offer from the perspective of the current owners.

Even assuming that employees wanted to own this business… how do you envision that employees would have funded an offer?

I guess you could propose that they raise outside debt to be serviced by the business (like any other LBO), plus contribute their own funds as a 10-40% equity cushion, but that seems unlikely regardless of how such an offer would be evaluated.

Wanting to work for a business does not necessarily mean someone wants to own it, let alone wants to have their capital at risk for it. (Not specific to this business.)

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#22

Post by themanmaran »

mbStavola wrote: post #5

Extremely mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, it's awesome Wildbit was able to sell Postmark on their terms. To be able to build something, make money, and then walk away when you want is a huge accomplishment. Hats off to them. On the other hand, the reason I always chose Postmark over Sendgrid, MailChimp, et cetera, even though they were much smaller, is because they seriously cared about their customers. Supp…

I'm hopeful that the product remains the same. I chose Postmark because it was the most simple transactional email provider I could find.

ActiveCampaign on the other hand was always a nightmare for me at my prior company. Their API had a 5 request / second rate limit. Which made it almost impossible to use for 50,000+ customers (syncing up emails / tags / campaigns).

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#23

Post by StanAngeloff »

I've been through something very similar with Mailgun. Mailgun was acquired by Rackspace in 2012. «Rackspace will make Mailgun available to its Rackspace Hosting customers for integrating cloud-based email services into applications and websites» Up until the acquisition, Mailgun was a solid product with a core set of features, i.e., an «API for creating and managing online email inboxes for apps and websites». And then it grew, and grew and grew. In my own view it tried to do too much which inevitably meant pricing changes for its customers.

SendGrid started off similarly, very early on it was named smtpapi.com. The focus was on the API, developers, UX, etc. I keep getting reach out emails from Twilio these days trying to upsell me on all the amazing "new" SendGrid features they have in 2022 (of which I need exactly none).

I don't have high hopes for Postmark's acquisition. ActiveCampaign will start "integrating", then comes the raft of new features, products, solutions. Today's Postmark does very little of what the competition tries to offer. At some point I'm already preparing myself for the inevitable price change ^^.

All in all, good pay day for the founders after 12 years of bootstrapping, not much to celebrate as a customer.

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#25

Post by cool_dude85 »

troydavis wrote: post #21
jmacd wrote: post #18

Wildbit has sold the family business work-for-other-reasons-than-monetary-renumeration trope for a couple of decades. They've had some great products like Beanstalk and Deploybot and some total follies like Converyor. Employees had no ownership, products were often sold or put up for sale, and my understand is that compensation was middle of the road at best. It was 37Signals-lite. They seem like good people, but if…

> I wonder why there was no employee buyout. I suspect it wasn't the most attractive offer from the perspective of the current owners. Even assuming that employees wanted to own this business… how do you envision that employees would have funded an offer? I guess you could propose that they raise outside debt to be serviced by the business (like any other LBO), plus contribute their own funds as a 10-40% equity cushi…

Presumably the owners already have more money than they will need to live a comfortable life. Why not just give it to the employees?

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#26

Post by grenoire »

julienmarie wrote: post #24

Just when they announced it, their live statistics started to degrade noticeably on their dashboard. https://status.postmarkapp.com/ with a huge slow down of their emails.

This is absolutely crazy, almost an order of magnitude. What could've triggered this? All Postmark addresses suddenly under 'marketing content/spam' scrutiny?

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#27

Post by adhoc_slime »

plantain wrote: post #13

Of the SaaS services my own SaaS service depends on, Postmark has given me the least (zero) problems, and I'm genuinely concerned about what will happen now. Their deliverability has always been absolutely stellar.

speak of the devil: https://status.postmarkapp.com/

I wonder how/if this relates to the acquisition at all.

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#28

Post by xeromal »

pdimitar wrote: post #16
pascal07 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Rian here (Head of Product at Postmark). We definitely understand the "mixed feelings" response for an acquisition like this. A couple things I want to reiterate: * The entire Postmark team is joining ActiveCampaign, and we are going to continue to operate the way we have always operated for the foreseeable future. That includes the support team you love! * We definitely don't plan to change any of the thi…

> The entire Postmark team is joining ActiveCampaign, and we are going to continue to operate the way we have always operated for the foreseeable future. That includes the support team you love! While I appreciate you saying this, you have to have in mind that just some 6 months down the line it won't be you calling the shots. The business priorities will be determined by other people and they can and will command yo…

Yeah, I believe when some says this, they actually mean it. They just don't have the power to ensure it actually happens.

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#29

Post by traeregan »

pascal07 wrote: post #8
mbStavola wrote: post #5

Extremely mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, it's awesome Wildbit was able to sell Postmark on their terms. To be able to build something, make money, and then walk away when you want is a huge accomplishment. Hats off to them. On the other hand, the reason I always chose Postmark over Sendgrid, MailChimp, et cetera, even though they were much smaller, is because they seriously cared about their customers. Supp…

Hey there, Rian here (Head of Product at Postmark). We definitely understand the "mixed feelings" response for an acquisition like this. A couple things I want to reiterate: * The entire Postmark team is joining ActiveCampaign, and we are going to continue to operate the way we have always operated for the foreseeable future. That includes the support team you love! * We definitely don't plan to change any of the thi…

Congratulations to you and the rest of the team! Longtime satisfied customer here, managing more than 20 Postmark accounts for our clients.

Your no-frills, reliable service has been our go-to over the years. We dabbled in competing services when clients asked, but they paled in comparison.

Gosh, I hope what you've stated all holds up!

Re: Postmark has been acquired by ActiveCampaign

#30

Post by joekrill »

This sounds like great news for the founders and the team. Congratulations to them!

I met Natalie and Chris years ago when I interviewed for a position at Wildbit (one I really wasn't qualified for). I'm sure they don't remember me, but I was super impressed with them - their approach to business and respect they had for their employees. At a time when I was becoming disillusioned, they showed me that it was possible for a company to be successful without putting profits above all else, and actually showing compassion for their employees. They were one of the first companies I'd heard of who were actually experimenting with 4-day-work weeks.

I think this mindset is becoming a bit more common today, and will only become more common (maybe that's wishful thinking?) - but I think they were _way_ ahead of the curve.

Post reply on HN