
Motorola Snaps Up 280 North (YC 08) For $20 Million - icey
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/motorola-snaps-up-280-north-for-20-million/
======
pchristensen
%^@&&(*%^@%@!

pg, please, please get the people building awesome tools to become
ridiculously profitable like Wufoo! I so wanted to use 280 North but I was
scared they would get bought and vanish. My fear came true. EDIT: Half true.
No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them.

Congrats to the 280 Norths, YC, and their other investors. Let's all join
hands and pray that Motorola allows development on Cappuccino et al to remain
public.

~~~
asnyder
There are plenty of other awesome tools out there. The valley has a tendency
to idolize certain people unnecessarily, this leads to a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

Worst of all the attention that one development tool or team gets, reduces the
attention that other teams get. As a competitor (former competitor?), I
sincerely congratulate 280North, but to suggest that they're the only ones
building awesome tools is the furthest from the truth.

Edit: No reason to down-vote this. No animosity should be read here. I was
just saying there are other cool development tools. I congratulate 280North.

~~~
andreyf
_There are plenty of other awesome tools out there. The valley has a tendency
to idolize certain people unnecessarily, this leads to a self-fulfilling
prophecy._

No offense dude, but I've tried using both noloh and Atlas, and you really
can't compare the two.

~~~
asnyder
Correct, you can't compare the two. NOLOH is a development platform, Atlas is
an IDE. If you're comparing NOLOH to Cappuccino, that's a different story.

Furthermore, I don't recall ever interacting with you in our IRC room, or
through support, thus I'm a little suspect as to your development claim, I
also don't see you as ever signing up for a sandbox or a download.

NOLOH has received significant praise from developers, and non-developers
alike. We've had people with no programming background create complex
applications with little help.

In any event, nowhere in my post was I promoting NOLOH, I was simply
suggesting that there are in fact other tools, aside from NOLOH, that are
pretty awesome. As a developer of one, we make it our business to see what
else is out there.

[Edited] Removed Unnecessary Paragraph

~~~
jasonkester
Out of curiosity, why would you expect to know whether a given developer was
using your technology using the criteria you list?

As an example, I've been using Microsoft technology for the better part of 20
years now, and I've never sent them an email. I'm sure there are chat rooms
for their stuff, but honestly I can't come up with a reason why any grownup
would ever enter one.

My suspicion is that the developers you see on the support forums are not the
best ones. The ones that simply get it immediately and start running are the
ones you'll never hear from.

------
quux
"We believe 280 North will be instrumental in helping us continue to foster
the Android ecosystem with innovative web-based technologies and
applications."

Ironic, since cappuccino is an implementation of Apple's Cocoa frameworks in
javascript. Are we going to see a lot of Objective-j running on droids now?

~~~
whalesalad
What do you mean are we? Objective-j _does_ run on Android (aka, Droids as
people are beginning to refer to them thanks to Verizon's marketing)... it
runs on anything. It lives inside of the web browser. The "j" in Objective-J
stands for JavaScript :)

Any half-decent browser will run Objective-J applications. Motorola's move has
nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with the people. As
someone commented earlier, Motorola just gained one hell of a web team.

~~~
greendestiny
I think its everything to do with the technology. Web apps are a huge part of
the future for mobile devices - this gives them a huge in. Frameworks are
really important strategically - they can optimize Cappuccino for their
devices and even add functionality specific to their devices.

------
saikat
I'm so incredibly happy for these guys. Deciding to use Cappuccino has been
one of the best technical decisions I've ever made. It's an incredibly fun and
impressive framework. But what really made using Cappuccino so rewarding was
interacting with Ross, Francisco and Tom. The 280North guys have consistently
gone out of their way to help me out, and it's very obvious that they are
incredibly talented developers. They have also managed to create a great and
very active community in a very short period of time, and are just very nice,
great people. They deserve this like none other. Congrats guys and looking
forward to where you go from here!

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Keyframe
Congratulations, great news for guys that worked hard on it. May I ask what is
the reasoning/breakdown of $20 million valuation? For example id Software was
sold for, rumor has it, 105 million dollars - only 5X the amount, while they
generated over $2+ Billion in revenue with their products over time.

~~~
mediaman
That price seems very low for an incredible brand franchise and IP rights to
Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, Rage -- only $105mm? An article I picked up on it
indicates they had 105 developers at the time of acquisition.

I would bet that rumor is false, or that there was some sort of extreme
extenuating circumstances that we're not privy to.

~~~
Keyframe
It was indeed $105 million as SEC filing showed
[http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1092835/00010928350900000...](http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1092835/000109283509000004/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml)
I am pretty sure there were some additional benefits, as in "you don't tell us
what to do, ever" or something.

~~~
traskjd
I thought the $105m was new debt raised? I could be wrong as I'm not used to
look at these forms, but I thought the story went that it was AT LEAST $105m
because that was the ADDITIONAL raised. I might borrow 100k for a house,
doesn't mean I only spent 100k for the house.

But, as I say, I could be wrong - I'm not an American so I haven't seen these
forms too much :-)

~~~
Keyframe
I don't know either to be honest, paper says: "Total Offering Amount
$105,000,000 USD | Total Amount Sold $105,000,000 USD"

------
JMiao
haha, i saw ross & tom last night and asked how things were going. "good."

motorola bought a hell of a web team.

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smithbits
Does this make it more or less likely that I'll see <http://280atlas.com/>
without paying for the beta program?

~~~
swaits
I've paid for the beta program. It's $20 and that goes toward your purchase of
the final product anyway.

I wouldn't worry about it too much though, because it's not really Beta
quality. I wouldn't even call it Alpha. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing
them one bit. I love it and am incredibly impressed with what they've
accomplished!

Hopefully this will give them the resources to finish it!

------
superk
"Developers we’ve spoken with have praised the framework, calling it one of
the best ways to make applications with little programming knowledge."

Surely they mean "little web programming knowledge" and a lot of Objective-C
knowledge. I don't really understand this page either:

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/04/cappuccino-brings-cocoa-
lik...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/04/cappuccino-brings-cocoa-like-
programming-to-the-web/)

"There are other advantages to basing things in Objective-J as well:
advancements in the Cappuccino frameworks don’t wait for the slow emergence of
new standards, developers only deal with one language, and Cappuccino comes
with useful language features simply not available in JavaScript."

Isn't that backwards? New features come out in Javascript and I have to wait
until they're incorporated into Objective-J to use them?

~~~
boucher
What new feature has been released in JavaScript in any widely usable way in
the last decade?

~~~
superk
Funny you should ask that because the internet is just now taking a big lurch
forward with Canvas and everything in HTML5. Would Objective-J quickly adopt
new features in Javascript or stay closer to developments in Objective-C?

Since everything gets compiled down to Javascript in the end (and Objective-J
doesn't feature 100% browser compat either) I don't see how they can offer
anything not possible with Javascript to begin with. Actually that's a
question? I don't understand how it is different than, for example,
CoffeeScript - but I would be happy if you could explain how it is.

~~~
boucher
It's very similar to CoffeeScript. It is a strict superset of JavaScript, so
all valid JavaScript remains valid Objective-J.

You also shouldn't confuse the language (Objective-J) with the Cappuccino
framework. Objective-J is just about providing certain language level features
on top of JavaScript, the same way Objective-C implements features on top of
C. It's also 100% cross browser, so I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Cappuccino is a full fledged framework for building apps which run in a
browser. I'd argue that it's the best, but my opinion would hardly be
unbiased. It does in fact implement an API for using Canvas (which also works
in IE). Though, that isn't a JavaScript feature. And pretty much nothing in
HTML5 is present in 50% of the browsers out there.

------
richcollins
Is this YC's biggest exit?

------
samratjp
Wow that was fast! Congrats guys. I expected Apple to snatch Atlas for
Objective-J and it would make sense for iOS Objective-C devs to jump ship
easily.

But, man this is a great deal for Motorola. These guys did two startups worth
of work atleast and 280 Slides alone is a startup itself :)

~~~
necubi
Apple threw their lot in with Sproutcore, the other cocoa-inspired (though not
Obj-C inspired) thick client framework by hiring the lead developer (who's now
departed) and implementing MobileMe with it.

~~~
samratjp
I am well aware of SproutCore, but Capuccino is more cleaner than Sproutcore
in that you just write Obj-J, not worry about HTML, CSS. The Capuccino
framework works well because it's exactly like iOS kit and the native app
export option is way better than Adobe AiR - no flash, all JS!

I wish SproutCore dev could be faster - it's god awfully slow with dev server
and preview. But, that's not a big problem for now.

~~~
ynniv
Install "thin", and use the latest code - development is much faster than they
used to be.

------
irons
Nobody else is having visions of Metrowerks? Lucky you.

~~~
krevis
Exactly. Motorola doesn't have a great track record at successfully
integrating software companies that it acquires. It feels like where software
goes to die.

------
JoeH
Congratulations Ross, Tom & Francisco - go YC08 Alumni ;)

------
woid
Congrats to 280 North guys.

------
mattmaroon
Grats guys!

Perhaps the founders will be so kind as to tell us if they manage to retire on
$4.3m each :)

------
pmjordan
Wow, congratulations! You wouldn't know from the founders' twitter streams.

~~~
Luecke
That's because no official announcement has been made.

------
cameldrv
Based on the Motorola guy's comment, I can't help speculating that they will
retarget their system to parse Objective-C, implement Cocoa Touch, and emit
something that can be run on Android phones -- maybe Javascript. If there were
an easy way to port iPhone apps to Android, Android would have a lot more
apps.

~~~
hammerdr
From a technical perspective, this isn't likely the purpose of the
acquisition. Cappuccino does relatively nothing in terms of making headway in
parsing Objective-C, implementing a (native) Cocoa Touch or integration with
the Dalvik VM system except by way of a browser.

Not to say that the 280North guys aren't capable of that but Cappuccino
certainly isn't geared toward that type of goal.

------
nl
Did they really only take 500K in funding?
(<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/280-north>)

I know they had some revenue, but 500K across 4 developers + expenses for 2.5
years seems low.

~~~
daniel_levine
rumor from a very good source has it they actually took less

------
davidw
Man, I'd be willing to sell them Hecl for 200K :-) Congratulations, guys!

------
niccolop
Agree with everyone else! Couldn't have happened to a better group of guys!
Well done!

Now go and kick Motorola into shape!!

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gmosx
Motorola snapped a word-class team

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thingsilearned
Couldn't have happened to better or harder working guys! Congrats!

------
_pius
That's awesome! 80x return is pretty sweet ...

~~~
rafaelc
Just to clarify, it's not an 80x return or even close. I think you may have
gotten that by taking the money in ($250k) and looking at the exit price
($20mln).

The truth is that if the round was priced, then the investors took call it 25%
of the company, meaning the post-money was $1mln and thus at a $20 mln exit
there was a 20x return... which of course is still pretty good.

~~~
rythie
Does anyone know what ycombinator got from this $0.4m to $2m (based on 2% to
10%)? or was it diluted in the later round?

~~~
lyime
Pretty sure YCombinator's stake would be diluted, unless the 250k was raised
part of the YC round. Which is possible but unlikely.

~~~
rythie
Crunchbase says the 250k round was only 2 months later, so maybe no dilution?
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/280-north>

