
Max Levchin to Leave Google As Slide Is Shut Down - jamesjyu
http://allthingsd.com/20110825/max-levchin-to-leave-google-as-slide-is-shut-down/?mod=tweet
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dts
"After being acquired, Slide had operated as an independent unit out of
Google’s San Francisco office, maintaining existing apps like SuperPoke Pets
and experimenting with new ones such as messaging app Disco and photo-sharing
app Photovine, which was released only last week. The apps, none of which were
extremely popular, will be sunsetted over the next few months."

If Google is going to "sunset" apps which are being judged as successful after
only a couple of weeks, why bother with the bait and switch? Why don't they
just tell everybody that they were acquired purely for talent, there wasn't
really interest in certain developing products, and that here is your new
"just as exciting and fun" project at Google? Seems like a waste of everyone's
time, money, and trust to lead people along as if their idea in development
actually mattered.

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ma2rten
I think the article makes that pretty clear. They were not just acquired for
the talent, but meant to run as an independent unit in Google, which they did
for quite some time. But now the internal situation changed at Google.

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PanMan
Interesting, Google shutting down new services like photovine (just launched
last week!) this fast. To me Slide seemed quite sucessfull in trying to get
some startup speed back into google. Suprising move..

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re_todd
Seems like Google is becoming more risk averse focusing more on quarterly
profits, which will make them more boring in the long run.

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jedc
Larry Page has said something like "putting more wood behind fewer arrows."
Which makes some sense when you see a list like this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products>

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meterplech
I'm not highly educated about this. But, it seems like they are assigning a
lot of deep motives to people. Maybe he just didn't want to work for a big
company any longer. He is obvious very entrepreneurial and vested in the
startup community.

I don't like when articles assume so much about an individual's motivation.

~~~
hinathan
Seems pretty clear he's leaving because Larry Page gave up on his creations.
It's pretty simple to empathize with "this thing you worked hard on is great"
followed by "never mind, we're going to kill it"

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marcamillion
This has been coming for a while. When they paid $200MM, that didn't make much
sense to me.

I guess they are finally admitting it now.

~~~
webwright
Google pays 1-3M per engineer in all sorts of acqui-hires. This netted them
~100 engineers of the kind that Max can attract (i.e. top tier). It's a lot
faster than acquiring 50 $2m companies that have 2 engineers each.

~~~
neilc
I think this approach makes sense only if the acquired engineers stay at
Google (and are significantly more productive than the average talent Google
can acquire through less expensive channels).

I suspect that many of the folks working for startups prefer being at small
companies: if they wanted to work for Google they already would be.

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dgallagher
I loved Cringely's interview of him on Nerd TV in 2005:
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8717497020389276502>

~~~
necrodome
This quora answer also gives some info about his approaches on
entrepreneurship:

[http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/Among-Max-Levchins-
les...](http://www.quora.com/Entrepreneurship/Among-Max-Levchins-lessons-
learned-as-a-young-entrepreneur-which-are-the-greatest)

~~~
johnyzee
There's a good chapter about Max in _Founders At Work_ , too.

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coolswan
Re: negative comments. You're assuming that the human capital, aka all the
engineers, they acquired are going out the door too. Far from it.

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mathattack
Many folks are viewing this from the wrong angle... This is a serial
entrepreneur. Guys like this rarely stay at big companies.

Take this from the point of view of a potential entrepreneur - wouldn't it be
great to have a guy that's done it twice be one of your angels?

Or let's say he starts another company - wouldn't that be a great one to work
for?

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guelo
It's interesting how Slide and RockYou were kings of the hill in the MySpace
era but then got their lunch eaten by Zynga when Facebook blew up. Goes to
show, uh... something.

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lurker19
Goes to show that if you are sharecropping, you need keep your eyes open for
the time to move to a new owner's land.

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jonathanmarcus
$200MM is a lot of money. It seems rather unsavory and uncool that Google
bailed out Levchin and their investors.

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mdwrigh2
Why are you convinced that this was a "bail out"? Why is it unsavory if Google
thought that the team and its expertise was worth $200M? Google clearly was
trying to get into social at the time, and this team did have a lot of
interesting ideas in that space. Plus it seems that most of them are sticking
around.

You seem to be attaching a lot of motivation behind the acquisition that I
haven't seen elsewhere.

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jonathanmarcus
What were some of their 'interesting' ideas? Are you familiar with Slide's
history as a start-up? Nothing but hype. Always jumping from one bandwagon
(widgets and ad networks) to the next using every anti-consumer trick in the
book to generate traffic. No authenticity to any of their pursuits, just a
means to sell 'users' to advertisers. Talent acquisitions don't go for $200MM.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I hate to agree with you. Slide was never original at all. However they do
have some social networking and gaming experience. This is just like Zynga
snapping development companies.

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a3_nm
From the submission title, did anyone else think this was about slides in the
Google offices?

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ahoyhere
So, what are the chances he walked away with most of the money? From what I
understand, these types of acquisitions usually require x years at the
acquiring company before the buyout terms mature.

