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Twice

blog.aubrey.me

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Re: Twice

#31

Post by zaidf »

Google was worried, they moved fast.

This is what I'm unsure about: how much of google's worries was a result of Lala being a worthwhile company and how much of it was a result of Bill's propping it up? Let's remove Bill for a minute. Let's say Mr. No-name-CEO reaches out to his contact at Google and presents the deal for Lala. My gut would be that Google guy would likely simply pass on the deal because he doesn't perceive Lala to be much of a competitive threat or a great product, not to mention the little traction they may have had was a result of Google's partnership(which I'm assuming they could easily opt out of). What am I missing? What made google worried, lala inc. or lala inc. with a salesman CEO with an acquisition offer?

Re: Twice

#32

Post by MatthewPhillips »

ceworthington wrote: post #27
RandallBrown wrote: post #25

I miss Lala, at least the final streaming iteration. It had iTunes Match for FREE years ago. You would upload your library to Lala, they would decide what they already had and just let you stream that, then anything they didn't have would get uploaded. It was iTunes in the cloud. Their webapp was phenomenal, especially by 2009 standards. I had big expectations for Lala after Apple bought them. I thought they might ac…

+1 to this. I am on Rdio now for $10/mo, and I easily would have paid Lala the same monthly fee for their service. I assume they were in bad shape because they had to pay every time someone streamed a song, and not enough of their users wound up paying them for streaming access. Too many loss leaders.

What I liked about LaLa is that you didn't have a monthly fee, and browser-only purchases were dirt cheap, $0.10 for most songs if I remember correctly. I don't listen to enough music to make Radio or Spotify worth it for me, but I could buy a couple of albums to listen in the browser for 2 or 3 dollars every now and then.

Re: Twice

#33

Post by lazerwalker »

draz wrote: post #4
speeder wrote: post #3

I do not understood the tale :( Why it was genius?

Those employees were given options at Apple ($80M worth) that were probably lost once they left the company to work at Color. Then Apple ended up getting them back on the cheap. So instead of $160M, Apple ended up paying $80M + $7M.

The other way to look at it was that Apple saved $73M+ ($160M-87M) at the cost of losing 20+ good employees for a few years.

Re: Twice

#34

Post by acdha »

RandallBrown wrote: post #25

I miss Lala, at least the final streaming iteration. It had iTunes Match for FREE years ago. You would upload your library to Lala, they would decide what they already had and just let you stream that, then anything they didn't have would get uploaded. It was iTunes in the cloud. Their webapp was phenomenal, especially by 2009 standards. I had big expectations for Lala after Apple bought them. I thought they might ac…

This is what MP3.com offered in 1999. The only difference was the legal agreements so the record companies wouldn't sue on dubious grounds.

Re: Twice

#35

Post by johnchristopher »

guptaneil wrote: post #29
jusben1369 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I thought the last paragraph was great. Life is never a single event. Round 1 to Lala and their engineers. Round 2 to Apple. There'll be Round 3's!

I agree, the last paragraph is great. My issue is with the last word. A better ending might've been something along the lines of "Paying twice cost less than paying once," and left out characterizing this fortuitous win as a "genius" strategy.

English isn't my first language and I really have a hard time grasping the meaning, the subtelty, of the end of the article.

Does the author say: "Apple bought some employes for a high price ($80M). Later, those employees left Apple for another venture. But when leaving, those employees also left some kind of shares/bonus or something very valuable they obtained by being acquired earlier. They were acquired again later (color) for a much lesser price so in the end they "lost" some money/shares/opportunity".

Have I got that right ?

Re: Twice

#36

Post by gfodor »

lmm wrote: post #20
rdl wrote: post #9

The genius here was Bill Nguyen turning a failing company and a pittance $11mm offer from one failing company (Nokia) into an $80-160mm buyout from a real company (Apple), essentially though hustle alone. But it's zero-sum genius. I can respect him for being good at playing a specific game, but it's not a game I want to play myself.

I struggle to even respect it. He ripped them off; the world would be better off without his "hustle".

Lala was the best music streaming service at the time and I am pretty sure whoever bought it was going to benefit immensely. (I'm pretty sure it's the source for the iTunes match technology.)

Re: Twice

#37

Post by jacoblyles »

rdl wrote: post #9

The genius here was Bill Nguyen turning a failing company and a pittance $11mm offer from one failing company (Nokia) into an $80-160mm buyout from a real company (Apple), essentially though hustle alone. But it's zero-sum genius. I can respect him for being good at playing a specific game, but it's not a game I want to play myself.

This is how business people get paid the big bucks.

All your startup's engineering work = $11 million

A month of CEO hustling = $149 million

Re: Twice

#38

Post by aubreyjohnson »

gfodor wrote: post #36
lmm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to even respect it. He ripped them off; the world would be better off without his "hustle".

Lala was the best music streaming service at the time and I am pretty sure whoever bought it was going to benefit immensely. (I'm pretty sure it's the source for the iTunes match technology.)

I don't know for sure personally, but I don't doubt that.

Re: Twice

#39

Post by OafTobark »

johnchristopher wrote: post #35
guptaneil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the last paragraph is great. My issue is with the last word. A better ending might've been something along the lines of "Paying twice cost less than paying once," and left out characterizing this fortuitous win as a "genius" strategy.

English isn't my first language and I really have a hard time grasping the meaning, the subtelty, of the end of the article. Does the author say: "Apple bought some employes for a high price ($80M). Later, those employees left Apple for another venture. But when leaving, those employees also left some kind of shares/bonus or something very valuable they obtained by being acquired earlier. They were acquired again lat…

The Lala acquisition was worth a total of $160M. $80M up front, and $80M as an earn out (over time). When they left Apple early to do Color, they lost a huge chunk of that $80M (earn out money) because they left early before receiving it (vesting) which in the end was worth a lot more due to increase in stock value. Apple bought Color (and those same engineers returned to work at Apple) for a lot less than what they would have paid in the earn out had the engineers stayed and not leave for Color in the first place.

Re: Twice

#40

Post by Timothee »

jyou wrote: post #13
rdl wrote: post #9

The genius here was Bill Nguyen turning a failing company and a pittance $11mm offer from one failing company (Nokia) into an $80-160mm buyout from a real company (Apple), essentially though hustle alone. But it's zero-sum genius. I can respect him for being good at playing a specific game, but it's not a game I want to play myself.

And he almost did it again - if he "exited" at the peak of Color.

When was Color's peak exactly? When they raised money? Because after that, it was mostly failures after failures.
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