

Google Acquires Omnisio (YC Winter 08) - markbao
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/30/google-acquires-omnisio-to-spice-up-youtube/

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matt1
Congrats!

Just for my education: say that TechCrunch is correct and they did sell for
$15 million and that YC took 6% equity in the company. Does that mean that
that YC gets a $900,000 payday too? Or is it more complicated than that?

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jsmcgd
This one liquidity event must go a long way to cover all the investments of
ycombinator.

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mpc
They've had quite a few now. I could imagine YC becoming profitable soon if
they are not already.

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mhartl
I just saw the Omnisios last night, and there wasn't a hint in their manner
that this huge news was about to break. Great poker faces guys, and
congratulations!

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ryan
Believe me it was really hard to not tell you guys what was going on... but we
were/are bound by some pretty strong NDAs

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mhartl
No worries, mate!

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thomasswift
Huge! Congrats Gentleman.

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markbao
Much congratulations Omnisio!

First found out about Omnisio from the synced DHH talk at Startup School, and
thought it was brilliant. Awesome that Google thinks it is too :)

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wave
Wow, this is really good news. Omnisio, how long did it take you from the
inception of the idea to selling it?

Why did Google/Youtube spend $15mil acquiring the company instead of creating
a similar service? I think more than the technology itself, Google would like
to hire the Omnisio team.

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jmtame
Startups consist of much more than just "number of lines of code written."
It's not that black and white.

When you make an acquisition, you inherit not just code, but you inherit the
massive amounts of iterations the product went through. That's part of the
problem these days: everyone looks at a product and they forget the
painstaking amount of time and dedication that went into getting it that far.
It took a lot of sleepless nights and coffee.

Not to mention, you're inheriting the users (which also have an acquisition
cost, even to Omnisio, it may have been going around and talking to people
individually about feature requests and bugs, etc).

In addition, you're acquiring the talent behind the startup. These are people
who not just understand how to code, but they develop products with the user
in mind. They have the determination and persistence to get updates done and
out the door. If you sit these guys in front of a board, or in front of
investors, they have already proven that they will not flake out or give up.
This is something that sounds trivial, but a lot of people lack the self-
motivation to direct a project like this into completion and market adoption.

I'm missing a lot of other things, but that gives you an idea that the startup
you look at is far more than just pages that show stuff.

Also, major props to the really strong UI work at Omnisio. UI is becoming one
of the most overlooked aspects of technology. People focus a lot on the
engineering or code or architecture or scaling, but forget that the usability
is really what makes it enjoyable to use the product in the first place.

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adrianwaj
Omnisio - used it once and was impressed - viewed videos of speeches and could
skip to various pre-determined points, with accompanying slides at left for
viewing, and underneath for navigating.

<http://omnisio.com/startupschool08>

But, if one sells out, the startup never goes on to acquire other companies as
seen at Sun, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google etc. Perhaps only early players
in any industry or application type can obtain such growth to stave off the
gorillas and sharks, and resist the temptation to be acquired in order to vye
for a shot at the IPO brass ring.

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ajju
Well done! Knew this would happen the first time I saw how awesome it was.
Proof - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169159>

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staunch
Congratulations. Omnisio was extremely well done. I hope YouTube will be as
good for presentations soon.

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bbgm
Now that's a good acquisition. Omnisio was very cool. Could slideshare be
next?

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andrewf
You made the front page of news.com.au as well. Congratulations :)

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mchristoff
party time!!!!

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beaudeal
seriously, a huge congratulations to these guys... i remember hearing about
them when they first came out, but only got around to using (and loving) the
service recently when i watched the startup school presentations on their
site...congrats again!

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babul
Is this the fastest liquidity event for a YC company?

Well done all at Omnisio!

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babul
Or was Zenter faster?

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auston
Wow! That is awesome... they're like what 14 months old? So awesome.

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auston
edit: 4 months?

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kyro
A thousand congratulations to you guys.

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ashu
Dyamn! Congratulations, folks!

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aschobel
Congrats guys! Well done!

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fallentimes
Congrats Ryan and team!

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ovi256
Bravo! Well done lads!

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lyime
Congrats! Great news!

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Baltropreneur
Congrats..cool tech!

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spencerfry
Congratulations!

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jasonlbaptiste
many many kudos

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blader
wow! congratulations omnisio team!

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rokhayakebe
As I read this I happen to be listening to a selection of songs I put together
using Omnisio. Great Guys.

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ashish1
wow!! i'm now digging in omnisio to find the recipe for such hot cooked
deal!!!!

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ian
congratulations!

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siculars
mazal tov!

