
Rally Software Acquires AgileZen - nkohari
http://www.rallydev.com/company/news_events/press/2010-145-rally-software-acquires-makers-of-leading-kanban-based-project-collaboration-tool.html
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nkohari
This is the press release announcing the acquisition of the company my wife
and I launched last July. I posted a Review My Site on HN when we launched, so
I thought everyone might be interested in a follow-up.

It's our first startup, and we went from launch to sustainability in 6 months,
then acquisition in 9 months. It's been a crazy ride. :)

Here's our blog post about the acquisition:
<http://blog.agilezen.com/2010/04/14/rally-software/>

Here's the original Review My App link:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=691673>

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mattmaroon
Fellow Akroners too! Glad to hear man. Next lunch at Panera is on you :)

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nkohari
You bet. :)

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leftnode
First, congratulations! Doing what you did in 9 months is every entrepreneur's
dream (well, most of them anyway).

Also, I'm looking through your product and I have to say I _love_ the way
you've done the tour and videos. I hate going to a new product and seeing a
3-5 minute video explaining the entire product. It means I have to disrupt
whatever I'm doing to see what the deal is. If a feature is introduced in the
beginning of the video, I may have forgotten about it by the end.

Having many >20 second clips makes it much easier to see how the product
works. My company is looking for a new Agile tool now, and AgileZen is high on
the list.

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nkohari
Thanks! We did that intentionally. I have the same complaint about long tour
videos. It also helps when we roll out new features -- we don't have to re-
record the whole tour, we can just add another video.

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nkohari
Looks like we got TechCrunched too:
[http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/04/14/rally-software-
buys-u...](http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/04/14/rally-software-buys-up-
kanban-based-project-management-startup-agilezen/)

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jim-greer
Congrats! I can see why Rally would make the acquisition. Their core product
has about 8 different ways of doing anything and lots of extra clicking.
Definitely needed streamlining - this is as of several years ago, they may
have improved it.

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encoderer
No, it still is kinda sucky for scrum masters and product owners.

I was always happy using it as a developer, though.

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fretlessjazz
Congrats guys! I love your product and hope that you continue to evolve it
under Rally's wing.

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bond
Congrats to the team! Getting acquired only 9 months after launch is amazing.

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senthil_rajasek
Congrats! How much did Rally Software pay for the acquisition?

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nkohari
You can ask me any question other than that one. :) Their offer was generous
enough to make us completely scrap our plans for staying independent and
growing the business ourselves. It wasn't just the money though, after meeting
Rally we were convinced that everyone was better off if we joined forces.

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kyenneti
Congratulations..Do you mind if you I ask how are you taking the payments. Did
you implement the billing system for user registration and recurring payments
or used an existing payments ? We are a start up building our SaaS products.
We are in a phase with a need to implement accepting online payments. Any
guidance in this regard is greatly appreciated.

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nkohari
We use Braintree (<http://braintreepaymentsolutions.com/>) as our credit card
gateway and merchant account. I can't say enough good things about them...
they're one of the rare companies now that offers an excellent product and
excellent service. (Although I sound like an advertisement, I get nothing from
them for saying that. :)

Our system interacts with their API when people sign up, and for recurring
billing, we implemented a simple nightly process that also uses their API.

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kyenneti
Braintree is what we are test driving right now. My question was did you build
your system for the customer sign-up /management/recurring payments to
interact with Braintree API or did you use any existing software/frameworks. I
am looking for any suggestions/solutions on this. Thank you for taking your
time to answer my questions.

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nkohari
Their API is very simple (just HTTP POSTs) so we just built our side from the
ground up.

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dan_manges
We (Braintree) have updated some things since AgileZen integrated: we now
provide client libraries that simplify integration and also have much more
robust recurring billing capabilities.

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jasonlbaptiste
congrats Nate!!!

