

Kima Ventures' Jeremie Berrebi says no journalists told true Sparrow story  - rvarza
http://techbaguette.com/2012/07/22/sparrow-truth/

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smalter
It's not smart to publicly badmouth an entrepreneur you've invested in.

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shpoonj
Yeah I was just thinking... is this guy new?

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macspoofing
So what is the true Sparrow story? Because it looks like the Sparrow guys
simply cashed out. I'm sure the founders and investors got a nice return, and
the rest of the team, outside of stock options, got great salaries, and great
retention bonuses. What else is there?

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danielpal
Thats the problem. Probably investors didn't get the return they expected.
Google bought sparrow's for the team, not the tech. So what likely happen is
Google payed a small sum for Sparrow and instead gave huge sign-in bonuses to
the team. Thus investors don't ge a huge return, the team does.

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Steko
I love how the "true sparrow story" is purportedly the one where the people
who were already millionaires made a profit somewhat less then they had hoped.

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cloudwalking
I think the more likely explanation is that the Sparrow guys realized how
tough it is to make a lot of money writing email software.

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carsongross
Again, the problem Sparrow, and all desktop/mobile apps face(d) is the one-
time nature of their revenue. You _must_ try to establish a recurring revenue
model if you want a long term sustainable business.

Ironically, despite objections, I think recurring revenue models are better
for the user in the long run: it keeps the developers solvent so you don't
have any "oh shit, discontinued?" moments, it reduces the temptation for
feature-bloat to drive upgrades, it allows you to more easily stomach pricing
the software closer to what it is worth to you (a lot) than to its incremental
production cost ($0), while still allowing you to send market feedback if the
product ceases to be useful to you.

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macspoofing
>the problem Sparrow, and all desktop/mobile apps face(d) is the one-time
nature of their revenue. You

That's a problem!? That business model has been a staple of software
development for decades!!!

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carsongross
It is, indeed, a problem. Software is maturing (has Office improved much in a
decade?) and, assuming software engineers continue to wish to eat, they will
go where the money is, which is in recurring revenue products like Basecamp.

I think the same thing will happen/is happening in mobile, but it's being
masked to some extent by the fact that there is so much greenfield still
available there.

It's a tricky problem, but it's one that entrepreneurs and developers
increasingly can't afford to ignore.

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macspoofing
Hold on a second. We've never had the notion of buy once, free upgrades
forever. What developers did was version their software. You get minor updates
but pay again for major releases. It isn't a bad model. It still largely
works.

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carsongross
And this is where we disagree: I think software is becoming a more mature
industry, and the upgrade-train model we've had for the last few decades is
coming to an end.

I might be wrong.

