

Are Customers the Losers in the Startup Game? - nhangen

With Groupon's acquisition of Pelago:<p>http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/groupon-acquires-pelago/<p>And the quick closure of Whrrl, I get the sense from reading the email that Pelago sees this as a victory because they got their exit, and that's cool.<p>http://cl.ly/2a1V1v2E022H2r0t393X (the email)<p>But what about the people like me or you that invested time in this service and helped them build it? Why even bother if we're only pawns in the acquisition game?<p>Why bother being an early adopter at all? It just doesn't feel right to me.
======
onan_barbarian
This wouldn't be the first time that a startup - including recent YC-funded
one I can think of - went from "hooray, we're absolutely psyched to be coming
into 2011 with our AWESOME new stuff, stay tuned" to "sorry, we're ditching
all our customers and completely dropping the product because we've been
'talent acquired', bye", all in the space of about a month.

This is a real problem with the notion of startup as a portfolio item for a
talent acquisition.

~~~
bdclimber14
I personally was very bummed when etacts got acquired. What a great product
that never really saw the light of day.

------
wmf
I guess you should judge a service based on how much current value it provides
you and discount its future value.

------
mapster
Executive team is/was a group of tech insiders with connections. Think they
are career Pelago-ists? 1st big lucrative buy out not a surprise. Its a lovely
MBA inspired model.

