
Hackpad shutting down - geuis
https://hackpad.com/
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newsat13
All these "generic" apps like notes, photo, project management etc will all be
bought once they become successful and be consumed by one of the existing
giants in the space. On one hand I would love to try out all the latest and
greatest apps. On the other hand, I already know that they will either a)
shutdown OR b) sell my data OR c) show ads or some such nonsense.

Why can't people just build products and ask for money upfront? Is
bootstrapping really so out of fashion? The startup agenda is either make a
billion dollar company or go home. Nothing in between. Very sad (I even saw
Sam in some video last week asking 'how do you become a monopoly'?) Why this
obsession to grow massive?

~~~
nsedlet
I think you're attacking a straw man - this situation is nothing like the
typical pattern of "acquire company, shut down the product". Hackpad has been
running for years since it was acquired (everyone in our company uses it
regularly). Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad.
Anyone using Hackpad can "upgrade" by moving all of their pads into Paper. We
just moved over - it was easy and cost nothing.

~~~
wslh
> Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad.

How do you create cross links between pages in Paper?

~~~
qznc
Prefix +

~~~
wslh
Great! I have been waiting for a mobile personal wiki since the Palm Pilot.

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williamstein
A year or two ago when I was running the SageMath booth at a conference a
woman (with a Eastern European accent, I think) walked up to me and said "My
son co-founded Hackpad. Their company recently got bought by Dropbox. I was so
happy because he said now he can finally eat!!"

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krakensden
Hackpad was cofounded by one the original authors of Tomboy, which was a
really excellent desktop note taking app that has withered since. It was based
on a fork of Etherpad, which was a startup that made a multiplayer, web based
note application- that company was purchased by Google, the code open sourced,
and the service wound down. Sort of a long sad trip.

I really liked Tomboy, I enjoyed Hackpad, although I quit using it over time-
I collaborate much less now.

I don't take notes anymore, with software or on paper.

~~~
copperx
> I don't take notes anymore, with software or on paper.

This sentence made me laugh out loud, sounds like you gave up on life.

~~~
mathgeek
I understand where you're coming from, but there is a mindset for some people
that note taking isn't all that necessary. It often goes along with the
mindset of "enjoy today without worrying about trying to capture it for
tomorrow." An example would be those who scoff at trying to capture everything
on film and forgetting to enjoy the experience.

The opposing mindset is also valid, of course. Different strokes.

As an aside, there are also so many ways that archiving is automated these
days that many things we used to have to manually take note of are
automatically and indefinitely searchable.

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dceddia
Here's the original HN post when Dropbox acquired Hackpad:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7604809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7604809)

1104 days ago -- about 3 years and a week. Something makes me think this had
been planned for a while.

~~~
draw_down
In my experience, companies do often plan things, yes.

~~~
dceddia
I think you're implying that I'm stating the obvious here, but, almost every
time one of these sunsetting announcements comes out, it's written as if the
company just recently decided this was genuinely the best move for everyone,
customers and employees alike. "We've had an incredible journey and _it 's
just time now_."

I think the timing of "3 years plus a week" indicates that they either decided
this date 3 years ago and were just biding their time, or that someone signed
an agreement to keep it going for 3 years and they're no longer being held to
that.

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Illniyar
3 years of development, open sourcing and auto migration to a new app made by
the purchasing company and lead by the original founder.

Not sure if all the functionality was kept but really I think one of the
better acquisition and eventual closing of a Saas app I've heard of so far.

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lewisjoe
[https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad](https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad)

There's this open source version of Hackpad, under Dropbox's Github account.
Apparently, it's an obsolete version, since the last commit made dates back to
two years ago.

Not sure whether they would take down this repo too.

------
domino
Shameless plug here, but if you were using Hackpad for meeting notes, links,
code snippets and other short work notes, you should give
[https://memo.ai](https://memo.ai) a try!

We're building Memo, a note-taking app for technical teams. We integrate
deeply with Slack which makes it super easy to save notes while in Slack, and
you can write notes using both Markdown and Slack formatting (including
@users, #channels and :emoji:).

We were recently on Hacker News and Product Hunt and got a ton of great
feedback:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14092279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14092279)

Having been through an acquisition before, our plan is to build a sustainable
business asap by charging for the product.

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jtraffic
Sincere question: why do people use apps like Hackpad and Paper? I mean,
obviously "to take notes", or "to collaborate", but in what contexts? In what
use case do they add lots of value?

~~~
6stringmerc
I dig your style. I'm not about solutions looking for a problem. One of my
favorite back-and-forth "arguments" with a legit software developer is how
much he embraces tech vs. my "luddite" insistence on paper and pen. The use
cases end up being very telling.

As I learned from a Jeopardy answer the other day, the most patented design in
the United States is for a mousetrap. Everybody tries to build a better
mousetrap, apparently that cliche is true! Big picture stuff is kind of wonky
like that from my studies, and I love it.

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banhfun
What an incredible journey.

~~~
schoen
Probably a reference to

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/about/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/about/)

~~~
zazpowered
[http://svdictionary.com/words/awesome-
journey](http://svdictionary.com/words/awesome-journey)

------
6d6b73
I really love this part: "Paper takes many of Hackpad’s best features—like
instant collaboration, comments, and real-time editing—and adds a lot more,
including additional security features, faster search, and more visibility for
teams. "

I know it talks about Dropbox Paper, but I just find it funny that this
"recommendation" works as well with the real , physical paper.

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pbiggar
Anyone know how to export docs for an account for which you're not the admin?
I have some docs in various HP orgs that I'd like to export.

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valuearb
I liked Hackpad better when it was named "Bachmanity".

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esharef
So sad! I love Hackpad

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Scuds
Woah! I knew you from sigmil ACM@UIUC

best of luck in the future

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hackpadrx
please dont shut down it is a great service better than google docs

~~~
searchfaster
Move your data to dropbox paper, which I assume is hackpad++

~~~
copperx
I wish these companies published their expected longevity at launch. e.g.,
"We'll be in business from 2015-2017," so you could plan to migrate your data
to the next newness ahead of time.

