
"Google bought my first startup today. I learned to make stuff here on proggit." - sadiq
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dopkt/google_bought_my_first_startup_today_i_went_to/
======
jacquesm
From now on whenever I read a 'google bought my startup' and there is neither
mention of the amount nor of the products projected path post acquisition I'm
going to assume it's a talent acquisition, possibly with a signing bonus
masquerading as a buy-out.

Anything over a few hundred K deserves the benefit of the doubt.

If your service gets shut down after the acquisition that's not a good
indicator that they bought the startup, that's an indicator that they bought
you.

In a proper acquisition the team _and_ the product matter, and the product
will not normally be discarded after taking over (there are some exceptions to
that, but this is not one of those by the looks of it).

In this case, the acquisition was for an undisclosed amount, the TC article
guesses $6M but why is not detailed.

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/google-confirms-
acquisition...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/google-confirms-acquisition-
of-everything-is-the-best-plannr/)

So, I'm curious if plannr will be shut down or will be allowed to continue and
develop.

The fact that "Having met at Stanford, Eidelson will be Product Manager and
Prado will be Software Engineer of a new project they declined to mention at
Google." does not bode well for plannr, after all with the two founders
working on other stuff it might not survive for long.

Possibly a team of googlers will take over the running of the site or maybe it
will be integrated in to other google services.

~~~
gcheong
"Thank you for using Plannr. We’ve greatly enjoyed building Plannr and working
with you to improve it over the last few months. However, we have decided to
put our time and efforts elsewhere and have closed down Plannr. "

<http://www.useplannr.com>

~~~
SabrinaDent
Chalk that one up to talent acquisition. Nobody buys a company and then closes
it if what they want is to develop the product; they buy it and close it when
what they want is the talent solely focused on their own, in-house projects.

Which is fine. It just begs the question:

How much would someone have to pay you to drown X months of development work
and your entire userbase in the Deadpool?

It's an interesting question. For how many people is a buyout, a 9 - 5 job,
and some 0s in the bank account a desirable, worthwhile exit strategy? How
many 0s does it take to make an option that's viable into one that's
desirable?

~~~
TotlolRon
> _How much would someone have to pay you to drown X months of development
> work and your entire userbase in the Deadpool?_

Destruction is so much easier than creation. They don't have to pay you, they
just need to send the in-house destruction team.

> _How many 0s does it take to make an option that's viable into one that's
> desirable?_

How much does it take to fix a "man barely alive" into something that is
"better, stronger, faster"? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA>

------
kjksf
All those acquisitions for talent made me think that a good business model
would be to simply develop a clone of such a purchased-but-discontinued
product (and of course keep developing it).

After all if you believe Lean Startup ideas, the biggest problem that a
startup faces is an idea that has not been vetted by costumers.

I assume that even though those startups don't have products that are
interesting enough for Google to keep working on them, in order to get noticed
(and eventually bought) those startups had to show solid traction numbers so
those ideas are already vetted by costumers. The biggest startup risk has been
removed.

All that's left is good execution. It might not be a good business for Google,
but could be a good business for a small team.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Foursquare agrees with you.

------
psawaya
There's some serious sour grapes in that thread. I'm disappointed in you,
reddit.

~~~
etm117
I agree, a very hateful thread when the guy was just thanking the community
for the help and ideas/motivation they gave him.

With that said, I think I agree with the less hateful comments that Google
bought the programmers behind the startup, not the product itself (though that
was a bonus). Kind of like PG and others focus on the founders themselves as
much if not more than their current product idea.

------
vaksel
that post is severely lacking in information

all you learn about, is the founder's age, location and a short description of
what the site did. For a reddit post, I was expecting details on how they got
the deal, traffic numbers etc.

