Congrats guys. Well deserved.
Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#32[ YC08 ] BackType has raised a total of $1.32m according to http://www.crunchbase.com/company/backtype No speculation as to the size of the acquisition, but I guess anything between $10-100m is possible, which would give YC a return of about 3% (6% adjusted down to 70% twice) of that, or somewhere between $300k and $3m? "YCombinator: turning $15k into $300k in 3 years" Not bad. Edit: This is based on the idea that Ba…
I've been told by people close to the company that it was in the $50-100 million range. Given how aggressive the Backtype guys are, this doesn't shock me at all. $100 mil split three ways is quite a prize.
I assumed it was sub 10M. If in fact they sold it for north of 30M, I would be really impressed. This is a team of 3, I believe. Nice work, BT.
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#33A) Congratulations to the BackType team! I wonder if they're the first Clojure-heavy startup to be acquired. It will be interesting to see what happens to their technology stack after a couple of years. B) Does this impact the open-sourcing of Storm?
Storm will be rewritten in scala
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#34Black shirt acquired! Congrats guys!
If you're referring to the "I made something people want," is it true? It sounds like they really want the engineers, which they didn't make (their parents did, I guess they deserve the shirt then?).
Yes, I'm joking. Congrats to the team! They should wear their shirts proudly!
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been told by people close to the company that it was in the $50-100 million range. Given how aggressive the Backtype guys are, this doesn't shock me at all. $100 mil split three ways is quite a prize.
I assumed it was sub 10M. If in fact they sold it for north of 30M, I would be really impressed. This is a team of 3, I believe. Nice work, BT.
it's 4 people: http://twitter.com/backtype/team/members
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#36I don't get it. Are startups now just a new resume? How are BackType users supposed to react to this? How are users supposed to trust other API startups if they can just get the rug pulled out from them like this? I'm happy for the team, but is there not any way they could have transitioned the project to other developers and still joined twitter fulltime?
Start-ups are businesses. They make money for their investors and founders. Handing off the code sounds like hippie poppycock to me. I suppose they can do it if they want to, but they don't have to.
Sure, but it reinforces the notion that you can't put too much faith in a startup sticking it out.
Normally that's because people think they might go bust and you'll lose that thing you got used to having. It also applies to when a startup gets acquired and the service is then shut down. Folks who've been stung by this once might think twice before using/buying stuff from a small company in future.
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start-ups are businesses. They make money for their investors and founders. Handing off the code sounds like hippie poppycock to me. I suppose they can do it if they want to, but they don't have to.
Sure, but it reinforces the notion that you can't put too much faith in a startup sticking it out. Normally that's because people think they might go bust and you'll lose that thing you got used to having. It also applies to when a startup gets acquired and the service is then shut down. Folks who've been stung by this once might think twice before using/buying stuff from a small company in future.
So far, I haven't heard a PEEP from anyone paying backtype. If what you say is true, where is all the press about how horrible this is for their customers?
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#38A) Congratulations to the BackType team! I wonder if they're the first Clojure-heavy startup to be acquired. It will be interesting to see what happens to their technology stack after a couple of years. B) Does this impact the open-sourcing of Storm?
Storm will be rewritten in scala
Do you really know that or are your just guessing?
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#39[ YC08 ] BackType has raised a total of $1.32m according to http://www.crunchbase.com/company/backtype No speculation as to the size of the acquisition, but I guess anything between $10-100m is possible, which would give YC a return of about 3% (6% adjusted down to 70% twice) of that, or somewhere between $300k and $3m? "YCombinator: turning $15k into $300k in 3 years" Not bad. Edit: This is based on the idea that Ba…
I've been told by people close to the company that it was in the $50-100 million range. Given how aggressive the Backtype guys are, this doesn't shock me at all. $100 mil split three ways is quite a prize.
It would be very hard to believe that there was much cash in the deal. The Wall Street Journal is reporting twitter is raising another round that will value them at $7 Billion (see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230480310457642... ) If you value twitter stock at $7B then perhaps they received $50M in stock,
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#40Looks like they shut their free api down around noon today. Not even a tweet. Boo.