

Fridge is Joining Google+ Team - joetyson
http://keepitfresh.frid.ge/post/7885676041/keep-it-fresh-with-fridge-and-google

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nadam
Funny how the startup scene changes. Years ago, Paul Graham wrote essays like
'You weren't meant to have a boss'. Nowadays talent aquisitions are seen as
huge successes while (money aside) we are celebrating that some former
founders found jobs at big companies. (I am also more pragmatic in this
question than years ago, so I am not criticizing anyone.)

~~~
pg
_(money aside)_

That's the mistake in your reasoning. The money makes a talent acquisition
significantly different from getting a job.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm curious what the average founder's take is in a talent acquisition.
<http://ycombinator.com/nums.html> indicates that 80% of YC's acquisitions
have been for <$10M - so does that work out to about $1-2M per founder, after
investors and employees get their cut?

Not chump change by any means, but skilled engineers in Silicon Valley can
easily make $250K/year in total compensation. If a startup takes about 3 years
of ramen wages to come to fruition and then the founders are locked up for
another year while they vest, the plain old employee will have made about $1M
in the time that the startup founder made maybe $2.5M. Startup founder is
still ahead, but they took on all the risk of their startup failing and them
getting nothing, and the difference is only about a factor of 2 instead of an
order of magnitude.

~~~
onewland
$250k easily? I think that's a level of skill that is not at all common.

I'm not saying nobody gets paid that all, but developer compensation needs to
be more realistically looked at on this forum. I'd say the majority make less
than $100k, and $150k or more puts you in the top 5 percentile.

~~~
nostrademons
The level of skill needed to build a company from scratch and have it bought
by Google is also not all that common. Apples-to-apples here: if you're going
to compare a startup founder to an employee, you should compare them to
someone of equal skill.

~~~
Hisoka
Anyone can "build" a company from scratch.... But it takes a lot to build a
successful company from scratch, which isn't what Fridge did here. I mean, I
know not everyone is a startup founder, but the costs and barriers to being
one is pretty low these days... just start a website, say you're doing
something special, and you can call yourself a "founder".

~~~
nostrademons
That's still missing the "and have it bought by Google" part. I know how low
the barrier to entry for founding a company is - hell, I've done it myself -
but there's still a fairly high bar to being acquired, or even aqhired.

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ma2rten
Quite ironic, I just watched their promo video.

<http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q>

It literally says: "You don't have to worry about other people seeing what you
posted, not that random person from school, not Google"

~~~
18pfsmt
Maybe this acquisition will bring the interests of someone like myself, that
are non-public personas and wish to keep it that way, to the table where we
can participate publicly. We would be able to use a single handle in our
Circles marked 'public', so we could be blocked but still not be stalked.

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rdl
Wow, congratulations! I'm really impressed by how successful Google+ has been
so far, and I'm sure you guys will help make it even better.

It will be interesting if you can post in a year or so about what it was like
going to work for Google as a talent acquisition in a related space to your
own startup (i.e. what was better and what was different). I'm sure the food
will be an improvement, but it will be interesting to hear how it was learning
to use the google internal deployment environment (in general, non-NDA terms).

Also, thank you so much for extending data availability on frid.ge until the
end of the summer!

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happyfaces
Didn't know what fridge was so I watched the video on their website, funny
thing is at some point the speaker goes like: "share whatever you want without
worrying of other people or google seeing it!" that made me smile

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fourk
The wording on this article makes it sound as though this was NOT an
acquisition of the company, but a "job offers for everyone on the team" sort
of deal. To be clear, was the company acquired, or did everyone quit and join
Google? How do investors generally react to deals of the latter form?

Edit: The Techcrunch article [1] states that the company as a whole was
acquired, in this particular case. However, how do these deals work out for
investors when the company is not acquired, but the entire team quits and
joins Google? Note, this is seemingly what occurred with YC Summer 08 company
Scoopler yesterday, as mentioned in the TC article.

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/g-google-acquires-
privacy-c...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/g-google-acquires-privacy-
centric-social-network-fridge/)

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ryanb
Austin and the Fridge team are super sharp. I'd say this was a great move for
Google+.

Congrats!

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bconway
Congrats to the Fridge team on being hired by Google!

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dennisgorelik
Yet another startup is chewed by big-co.

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Robin_Message
A shame they are not migrating the content into Google+, in some form, for
customers who want it. But then I suppose fridge was a group thing, so getting
consent could be tricky.

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SimpleConcepts
Congrats guys. Google+ saw a trend within small groups and decided to enter
that market. However, I would assume small groups aim to limit your time spent
with those who aren't as close to you. Now, I have tons of circles, and
connecting with even more people than ever. Its organized well, but whats the
point? Facebook has Lists right? Buying out Fridge and growing a community
from the ground is a much better/sustainable strategy for google. Just an
opinion :)

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puredanger
Man, I was really disappointed to click this link and find that it was not a
news story about William "Refrigerator" Perry from the Chicago Bears joining
the Google+ team.

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pge
you're not alone:) I thought Google+ had found a new front man...

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cookiecaper
It's funny that places like Google even perform talent acquisitions. I guess
when you're controlling billions of dollars a few million here or there is a
comparative "drop in the bucket" but it really has to be about covetousness or
something, because there is a large supply of talented engineers that would be
willing to work at Google as normal employees, and certainly many of these
would have the same capabilities as the Frid.ge team. Does it really cost
anything close $5M-$10M to find a handful of employees with that skillset? I'd
say Google is definitely doing it wrong if so -- I can understand a premium
for demonstrating competency with something like Frid.ge, but it just seems
quite inflated when all Google ends up with in the end is a few employees for
a few years (if that). I have to say I'm pretty skeptical that talent
acquisitions are a decent deal from the acquirer's side of things.

No offense or displeasure to the Frid.ge team of course, if they're happy with
it that's fine. I just don't see it as an economically effective investment
from Google's end. Perhaps part of it is the extra headlines that are
inevitable when a YC company gets acquired? Just doesn't seem like a good
value to me.

~~~
roc
How much would Google have to spend to hire a complete team to add and expand
fridge-like features for Google+? It's got to be in that same ballpark.

Surely it's worth the premium to hire a cohesive, motivated team that's
already learned the domain and has a proven ability to execute.

Particularly considering the benefit Google can realize from getting a better
solution to market faster.

~~~
cookiecaper
_Why_ would it be in that same ballpark? Google has a notoriously silly hiring
process so its costs are probably higher than the costs of some other
companies, but really 5-10MM to hire 3-4 people? I guess if they're willing to
spend that on a "talent acquisition" it may not be that far out of line with
normal hiring costs but I'd say there's certainly a problem there.

As I stated in my post I understand that demonstrating ability via Frid.ge can
certainly be valuable and worth a premium. It just seems to be much higher
than one might expect Google to spend on normal hiring processes.

~~~
roc
I think the part of the equation that we're weighting differently is the value
to Google of having better features for Google+, available sooner.

I'd join you in surprise if we weren't talking about Google Plus.

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ehc
Quite ironic since Fridge markets itself on not sharing your data with Google:

[http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q?iframe=true&wid...](http://www.youtube.com/embed/TRYntzWLJ7Q?iframe=true&width=640&height=360&rel=0&wmode=Opaque#t=00m30s)

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watty
So do they need more staff or were they buying out the competitor who did
"circles" before they did?

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cemregr
Another article mentioned frid.ge had 40.000 uniques and 20.000 groups. Does
that say something?

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gpp
Any idea how much Google or other companies pay for acquisition like this?

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riordan
Fridge built a really amazing product - Social groupware for people outside of
Facebook. I'll be sad to see it go.

I wonder if the team is going to be moved out to Mountain View or stay in NYC?

~~~
cemregr
I like Austin, but a group I was part of used Fridge and it made my pull my
hair.

Thanks to Fridge, I now know how my grandmother feels like using a computer.
The UI was really overwhelming and I could never find what I was after or why
things were sorted a certain way.

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ianb
Since Fridge itself is shut down, I'm not curious exactly how their model
worked. Anyone know of (or care to make) a technical description of how it
works?

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phodo
Does anyone know what languages / technologies they used?

~~~
kfir
php not sure about the rest.

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peterzakin
Congrats, guys!

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randall
Just got the email. Congrats guys!

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jasonwilk
Congrats Austin!

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plannerball
Fridge? Never heard before

