
Slack Acquires Astro - sidhanthp
https://slackhq.com/slack-acquires-astro-to-help-email-and-channels-work-together
======
TeMPOraL
I used to be very bitter about acquihires, and startups planning for exits
from day one. But maybe - maybe just to retain sanity - it's time to look at
things differently. Maybe SaaS startups should not be treated as actual
products, but just as mere _temporary experiments_. If the company fails, the
product dies. If the company succeeds, the products gets killed. But, however
briefly, we get to see some concept implemented in software, adding to the
list of things that could be done (but usually aren't).

~~~
deegles
It's really like the big company is outsourcing their R&D. The alternative
would be to run dozens of experiments internally. Since most companies don't
have the people power to do that, it's cheaper to just wait until a startup
appears that solves their problem, or wait until they're successful enough to
validate a market.

~~~
rescripting
I've seen the head of a business unit in my large organization not so subtly
hint to a Director that Problem X is something that we need to solve in the
next 18-24 months, but we don't have the budget properly allocated to do it
ourselves.

Lo and behold the Director shortly leaves the company to found a startup aimed
at solving Problem X. Eighteen months later we buy them, aquihiring back the
director and some engineers who left with him to start the startup.

The head of the business unit knew he couldn't get the approval from the board
to solve Problem X, so he basically outsourced the risk and in the end the
director and his engineers ended up with a nice chunk of change and their old
jobs back.

~~~
boldslogan
I don't suppose with broad stroaks what niche they filled? Just curious.

------
chimeracoder
A two-week shutdown notice is _unbelievably_ short. And given the way the
Screenhero acquisition went, I wouldn't be too optimistic if I were an Astro
user.

Screenhero was acquired by Slack, and while it wasn't shut down immediately,
new signups were disabled. They eventually shut it down entirely when they
released support for screensharing within Slack, but the experience of that is
nothing like what it was with Screenhero. Even aside from forcing people to
pay for a Slack instance just to screenshare[0], the actual video sharing
experience just... doesn't work anywhere near as well. So the pattern seems to
be:

\- acquire product \- shut standalone product down \- replace product with
inferior version of product, integrated into Slack \- charge more

[0] if you don't already share a Slack instance with the person you want to
call, this is a _really_ awkward workflow just to screenshare

~~~
SkyPuncher
For me, this is a knock against basically anything Slack related. Slack 100%
has the power to ensure that Astro is around long enough for all parties to
make a proper transition to appropriate solutions.

I get they want to keep Astro's clients around, but it's a big FU to companies
that rely on Astro to have two weeks notice about changes potentially
affecting their entire users base.

~~~
jlawer
I agree. I've been nervously watching slack as a current Hipchat user, working
out what our next move is (pretty much Slack or Microsoft Teams seemed the
saner choices), and this makes me want to have nothing to do with them.

It reeks of arrogance. Sure I understand it was a acquihire, but that means
you acquired the company and take on their obligations including moral. An it
is poor form to dump customers / users out when they likely could have kept
the services up for at least 3 months.

If slack doesn't care about that, then I am not sure this is a business I
really want to have a dependency on.

------
corobo
It's almost at a point where we could do with a cloud-to-butt-esque plugin
that replaces "acquires" with "shuts down"

> The past few years have been a remarkable journey at Astro

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

------
Ensorceled
> For more details about what’s next for Astro customers, read Astro’s
> announcement on their website.

What's next? Scrambling to find a replacement email workflow in t minus 15
days and counting ...

There is NO "what's next". The product they are using is disappearing forever.
Why are these product shutterings always phrased as a "bold new adventure" for
former customers?

> We’d like to thank you, our users, for whom we built this company, and for
> whom we look forward to serving further as part of Slack.

I realize it is exciting news for the Astro VCs (maybe?) and, again, maybe
Astro's employees, but this isn't how you thank someone for being a loyal
customer. Apologize for screwing them at least.

~~~
bluebluetimes
Agree absolutely ridiculous how do we get slack to stop the shutdown

------
mattkevan
Seems like the standard end for any half-way decent mail app: acquihire and
shut down.

Still sore about Google shuttering Sparrow a few years ago - it was by far the
best email client on both iOS and Mac at the time.

~~~
Alex3917
> Seems like the standard end for any half-way decent mail app: acquihire and
> shut down.

For context, it takes a day or two to build an app that can display an SMS
message correctly, and maybe 25 person years to build an app that can display
an email thread correctly. This means that no matter how much money you raise,
by the time you have a semi-working product it will be pretty much time for
your VCs to start returning money to their LPs before you can get traction.

If you want an email client that's not going to get shut down, try Missive...
They are funding their email client from a side business selling t-shirts
rather than taking VC, so it's much less likely to go anywhere.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _maybe 25 person years to build an app that can display an email thread
> correctly_

How so? E-mails are not _that_ complicated. Unless your threading involves
some speculative ML algorithms.

~~~
Alex3917
Because the specs just for parsing out the headers, body, attachments, etc.
are fiendishly complicated. Think all sorts of indefinitely nested recursive
data structures that have no fixed order.

But that's the easy part. The hard part is that there is no spec at all that
governs what actually goes inside the body of a message. The easiest way to
explain is by way of analogy:

Imagine that you've never left your village and know nothing of the outside
world, but are tasked with building a car capable of circumnavigating the
globe.

So you start out by building the first version of your car that can drive on
your village's streets successfully. So far, so good, you think you've solved
the problem and assume it will just keep working. But as soon as you get
outside your village you see that the roads are no longer paved, so the car
quickly breaks down. So you go back and build a new car that can also drive on
gravel roads, and set out again. And this works well enough until there stops
being roads at all. So now you go back and build a third car that can handle
paved roads, dirt roads, and off roading. And this works for a while until you
encounter sand... And water... And -100 degree cold... And 10,000 degree
heat... And zero oxygen... And people start shooting at you. Etc.

And of course if you're not very careful then the time required to build each
new version of the car will increase exponentially, since you need to make
sure it still works equally well on all of the previous terrain you solved
for.

This is basically email parsing in a nutshell. It's also why you keep seeing
these companies get bought out for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars
without many users, and sometimes without having even launched anything.
Because email is by for the world's largest source of human knowledge so it's
a very valuable domain to be able to work with, but only a handful of people
really have the expertise.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I get it. Hell, my first job involved parsing headers, body and attachments
out of e-mails for further analysis. I just don't feel this is a 25 person-
year job, unless you're including other people than developers working
directly on the task.

------
scotchio
With Google Inbox getting shut down, a lot of people jumped ship to astro.

Just kind of funny.

I'm sure a fair amount of people are pulling their hair out

~~~
TeMPOraL
Wait what? Did Google Inbox get shut down?!

~~~
O_H_E
You missed the outrage last week's outrage :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17971516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17971516)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996144)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah. It happened in the middle of my week-long break from HN, and the
Internet in general.

~~~
O_H_E
try: [https://www.hackernewsletter.com/](https://www.hackernewsletter.com/)

------
X-Istence
I just went to Astro's site to see what they do and why this makes a
difference for me... but all I can see is their acquisition announcement and I
am not any closer to understanding what it is they do for Email :/

~~~
notatoad
Seeing as they're shutting down Astro, it doesn't make much sense to be
advertising their now-discontinued product that you can't use.

~~~
X-Istence
Sure... but "Slack buys Astro" means absolutely nothing to me. What does Astro
do? How will this affect how I use Slack? What new features am I likely to get
as a Slack user?

~~~
notatoad
Well, you can read the announcement. It doesn't mention any specifics about
integrating astro's existing product into slack, so there probably aren't any
new features to be expected in the near term.

It's just a talent acquisition. If "slack buys astro" means nothing to you,
maybe this article isn't meant for you. Not all news is relevant to all
people.

------
sergiotapia
>On Wednesday October 10, we’ll shut down our Astro apps for Mac, iOS,
Android, Amazon Alexa, and Slack.

Isn't this very little time if your company depends on Astro for work?

~~~
drivingmenuts
Move fast, break things.

The new reality.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And another example of why you shouldn't depend on SaaS startups for anything
you can't replace very quickly with another SaaS or a homegrown solution.

------
igreulich
This is very disappointing.

1 - Slack has a terrible Electron app. I'd like to see money spent fixing that
over buying more talent for some odd integration between my email and my work
chat. 2 - Astro was great, it met all my needs/wants in an email client.

Point 2 is really the gotcha here. Astro snoozes, allows using the gmail
keyboard shortcuts, supports maOS and iOS, and most importantly, implements
the Office365 api directly. (As opposed to the typical Exchange and/or IMAP
tunnels most clients use.)

The company I work for either through mandate, or just letting IT do stuff (I
don't know which), has disabled IMAP access AND Exchange access to our
Office365 Instance. BUT I can use the api.

Astro and Polymail both fit the bill.

I liked Astro better. I immediately thought about going to Polymail, but they
have gone subscription. (I don't have a problem paying for an email client,
but once should be enough, thanks you.)

------
logicman
I am going to stick to the ecosystem (Apple, Google or Microsoft) from now-
onwards. Too many email apps tried - Sparrow, Mailbox, Newton, Inbox and now
this. I have come to realize that the Mail app on Mac or Gmail just works. I
can do without all those fancy features that were built into these apps.

~~~
schmappel
Agreed. It seems there's no business model for third party email clients to
ensure its continued development.

------
Lazare
This is so frustrating, as I really loved the client, and now it's just being
killed off. It's absolutely burning a good chunk of whatever goodwill I may
have had for Slack.

------
neillyons
I really liked Astro. Can anyone recommend an email client for macOS and iOS
that has scheduled sending and read receipts?

~~~
kareemm
Superhuman. It’s hands down the best os x email client I’ve used. Don’t think
they have an iOS app yet but it’s coming. Or maybe they do, I don’t do email
on my phone.

~~~
neillyons
Thanks. I signed up ages ago for Superhuman but haven't received an invite. If
it is possible can you invite me using stdin@neillyons.io?

------
allenleein
Slack, just fix the performance of desktop first.

~~~
leovander
FTFY make a native desktop app first

~~~
enraged_camel
To this day I haven't understood why people use the desktop client.

Browser client is fantastic and has all the features of the desktop client
(including desktop notifications, if they are your thing).

~~~
neon_electro
I've been using the desktop client for keyboard shortcuts, how's the web app
doing on that front?

~~~
omneity
So far all my common shortcuts are working in the browser (starting with cmd +
k)

------
schmappel
Sigh.

------
lwb
Everyone's moaning about "aquihire and shut down" but it would make ZERO sense
for Slack to do that in this case. Astro was in no way a competitor to Slack.
Seems to me like they're going after Gmail for Business.

Edit: Apparently they did shut it down...

~~~
corobo
But they did acquire and shut it down. They may have future plans at some
point but it has been (or will be very soon) shut down

> On Wednesday October 10, we’ll shut down our Astro apps for Mac, iOS,
> Android, Amazon Alexa, and Slack. As of today, we’ve also disabled signups
> of new users.

~~~
maxxxxx
October 10 is really short. That doesn't give people much time.

