
Octopart (YC W07) is Joining Altium - ahhrrr
https://blog.octopart.com/archives/2015/08/octopart-is-joining-altium-2
======
omarish
IIRC Octopart was a part of one of the 2007 batches. Congrats on staying with
it!

Relevant:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html)

> When we first met the founders of Octopart, they seemed very smart, but not
> a great bet to succeed, because they didn't seem especially committed. One
> of the two founders was still in grad school. It was the usual story: he'd
> drop out if it looked like the startup was taking off. Since then he has not
> only dropped out of grad school, but appeared full length in Newsweek with
> the word "Billionaire" printed across his chest. He just cannot fail now.
> Everyone he knows has seen that picture. Girls who dissed him in high school
> have seen it. His mom probably has it on the fridge. It would be unthinkably
> humiliating to fail now. At this point he is committed to fight to the
> death.

Edit: Funnily enough, one of the Octopart founders quit grad school on the
first day HN existed. Time flies:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

~~~
ninetax
Following that archive.org link is really incredible. To be able to go back to
the first day this site was launched and click around like I'm viewing today's
site; just amazing.

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aylons
Congratulations for the Octopart team. However, as a user of both Altium and
Octopart, this is worrisome.

Altium has a bad history of licensing schemes, bad support and, most of all,
old technologies. As a user, I understand a professional tool must be stable
and not jump in the latest fad, however, the Delphi and Turbo Pascal cracks in
Altium show all to often. Most designers I know get the illustrative habit of
closing Altium from time to time to avoid losing data in the next crash.

Their version control bindings also show their age, and a few years ago I
cracked in a post[1] about Altium and git:

> The answer I eventually got from Altium was "what is git?" I took that as a
> "don't try it."

I really like the tool, but the company seem too invested in selling services
like Vault and flexboard, which sound great for big companies and consumer
products, but, as a freelance and custom projects engineer, they are a much
lower rank to me than simply good and practical ECAD.

[1][http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5121233/how-to-use-
altium...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5121233/how-to-use-altium-with-
git)

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dmix
Has Octopart given interviews regarding their technical infrastructure?
Everything on their site is very fast and performant. The autocomplete on the
homepage is excellent. And the filtering done via the sidebar post-search
handles a high-level of complexity quite well.

~~~
lbotos
See if you can find some job listings. I think they had a few and you can
glean the stack from the languages they are looking for. ;)

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calcsam
Octopart's founders in Newsweek in 2007, under the title "Meet the Next
Billionaires":

[http://docs.octopart.com/newsweek_octopart_small.jpg](http://docs.octopart.com/newsweek_octopart_small.jpg)

~~~
Axsuul
Full article: [http://www.newsweek.com/boot-camp-next-tech-
billionaires-100...](http://www.newsweek.com/boot-camp-next-tech-
billionaires-100977)

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ChuckMcM
Yay, I hope you can influence Altium in a positive way. CAD is changing so
much and some of the old school guys want to get back to the old days of
$25,000 "seat" licenses and what not but that horse has left the stable.
Octopart has been my go to source for finding parts (and datasheets given the
crap that is the datasheet web spam) for many years.

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jordigg
Yesterday I had PG's Startup School 08 video[1] on the background and he spoke
about them just after being a cockroach and how companies succeed not just by
not being evil but by being good.

Really happy for them. Great team.

[1][https://youtu.be/q7K0vRUKXKc?t=891](https://youtu.be/q7K0vRUKXKc?t=891)

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deelowe
Congrats octopart. You guys found a niche, offered an excellent service and
stuck by your mission (despite naysayers).

Also, good seeing people make money off the new electronics revolution.

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quadstick
Well done. I love Octopart. It's on my browser tool bar next to the Google
icon and it is my starting point on every production run's buying cycle.

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drusenko
Congrats guys!! I guess it's down to us and Virtualmin as the last to
represent YC W07 :)

~~~
SwellJoe
Are we really all that are left? Interestingly, Octopart and Weebly were among
the companies in the program I would have enthusiastically invested in, had I
had that option.

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pilingual
Congrats! Octopart is a wonderful tool, and I look forward to see it continue
to grow.

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tnn225
Awesome, congrats on seeing it through 8 "short" years. PG spoke highly of you
as being benevolent so I wonder about your progress!

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d136o
Congratulations and good luck on a new stage of Octopart!

I met one of the Octopart guys at a YC at NYC event one time and we briefly
chatted about Griffiths' QM book, what customized site would be like in the
future, and other random things. Brief conversation, but walked away thinking
they were nice people working on a cool idea. very cool to see this.

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jkosai
That's great! I've been an Octopart-Arena user for nearly 2 years. I've had
good experiences with their support and APIs.

I hope this will allow for a better implementation of compliance linking --
I've been waiting for a good RoHS and REACH tool, and I think Octopart has a
great start.

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compumike
Congrats Sam and team! One of the most helpful founders I've ever had the
pleasure of working with.

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_pius
Not a user of Octopart, but a fan of them and their story ... congrats to
them!

~~~
CamperBob2
I _am_ a user -- congrats, and please don't start limiting your service to
Altium users! :-P

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dmritard96
Exciting for octopart and altium users :)

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hkmurakami
One of the companies I've admired most through the years. Congrats!

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blantonl
Octopart took forward what Tandy and Radio Shack couldn't... Congratulations
Octopart!

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bosky101
just learnt harish from octopart is now hacker at angellist.

congrats to the founders.

~~~
gobeyond
Both octopart and ciiva join altium. [https://ciiva.com](https://ciiva.com)

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rasz_pl
RIP Octopart, and good luck in the Delphi aka Turbo Pascal house.

~~~
_pmf_
> RIP Octopart, and good luck in the Delphi aka Turbo Pascal house.

Yeah, it's probably buy and bury.

