Cover is joining Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#41

Post by tomkarlo » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:13 PM UTC

DrJokepu wrote: post #24

unreal37 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't the original investors usually get their investment back from these things? So Twitter pays the investors $1.7M and pays the founders $200K per year as a dev team. How does that usually work?

Someone has explained it here a couple of years ago that VCs generally view them as failures as they have investment pools with lifetimes of 7-10 years and each pool is expected to yield something like a 10x profit at the end of the period. There's not much difference between losing their original investment and getting it back as they will have similar effects on the performance figures of the pool at the end of the…

Depending on whether a fund is still in its reinvestment period, they may also not be able to put that money to work - it may automatically go back to the LPs, who aren't generally very happy to just get their money back when they're expecting 25% or higher IRRs.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#42

Post by mscarborough » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:14 PM UTC

caiob wrote: post #39

I fail to understand why people congratulate the founders for selling out their startups.

Because it's kinda the point?

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#43

Post by mcescalante » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:14 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #5

"For now, Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here." tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.

Likely, and maybe they're going to work on something like "Twitter Home," a new lock screen & experience for the Twitter app only on Android. If done correctly (and not invasively) I can possibly see people using it. Then they'll announce the Cover app is no longer available.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#44

Post by mscarborough » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:18 PM UTC

Colter wrote: post #40

I really don't connect with the "build a business to sell out" mentality. Cheapens the whole idea of entrepreneurship and self made independence. Maybe it's just me.

It's all the same thing in my mind. Build a business with the idea of selling out to some big corp, or to sell to as many customers as you can. Either way, you're going to be beholden to someone else. I don't begrudge these folks whatsoever.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#45

Post by danielsiders » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:21 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #20

GuiA wrote: post #5

"For now, Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here." tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.

Would be great to see code open sourced in situations such as this. Alas.

Is anyone aware of a standard promise or "contract" startups can sign with their users that says if we close or get bought and the product is shut down we promise we'll open source it within X days under Y license?

This happens so often it would be great to have a standard and clear expectations.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#46

Post by ihsw » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:22 PM UTC

caiob wrote: post #39

I fail to understand why people congratulate the founders for selling out their startups.

They're not selling out, they're buying in. Big difference.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#47

Post by why-el » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:44 PM UTC

caiob wrote: post #39

I fail to understand why people congratulate the founders for selling out their startups.

Drop the "out" and it becomes a much better sentence. :)

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#48

Post by amirmc » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

pvnick wrote: post #30

I see a lot of undeserved negativity here for what I'm sure is an exciting time for the Cover guys. Let's not piss on their parade. I say congratulations, I hope you guys made a bit of cash, had a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy working on interesting projects at Twitter!

It's not undeserved if a product you really liked is effectively deadpooled. It's possible to be both happy for the team that made it but also lament the thing you lost. That people are commenting more on the latter, tells me that this product must have been pretty good.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#49

Post by sosborn » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

caiob wrote: post #39

I fail to understand why people congratulate the founders for selling out their startups.

I fail to understand why people judge others for decisions like this.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#50

Post by sinofer » Mon, Apr 07, 2014, 7:48 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #7

Damn. This was one of the few apps that made me prefer Android over iOS. It's highly likely it's now going to die (the only thing Twitter gains from this is the team, the app has no relevance to them). It also probably means my one major annoyance with the app won't be fixed. It changes to work settings based on location but I work from home. Was hoping they would add a setting to set it to work between certain hours…

maybe give a try to Start lockscreen app.