
After the Deadline: Acquired - karlsutt
http://blog.afterthedeadline.com/2009/09/08/after-the-deadline-acquired/
======
donw
Congratulations! It takes cast-iron balls the size of cantaloupes to make a
product that competes against companies with six orders of magnitude more
funding... and succeed.

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pvg
It's great that the author found a way to continue working on something he
loves but there's a tremendously broad spectrum that 'acquired' could
technically fall under - from 'sold one license and got a job' to 'my
investors bought another beach house and my grandchildren can afford to be
fulltime cocaine addicts'. We don't really know where this particular deal
falls.

~~~
jhancock
It falls under his definition, which is good enough a story for me.

~~~
pvg
Perhaps I am some ogre of a curmudgeon but 'falls under the author's
definition which we have no way of vaguely qualitatively evaluating' is not
good enough for me. What if his definition was 'I was acquired by my mom who
let me move back into her basement'? I'm not suggesting that it is or that
there's anything wrong with an early exit that pays your debts and legal bills
(or more or much more). But we know essentially bupkis about this - it's a
good story because... it has an inspiring ring about it? Having a hard time
throwing my critical faculties to the wind just because it undoubtedly does.

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aditya
Congrats raffi! (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=raffi>) This is totally
awesome news.

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asorbus
I was surprised to follow this link and see a familiar face. I recognize
Raphael Mudge from when I competed in the Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense
Competition (<http://neccdc09.nssa.rit.edu/>) where he was a member of the red
team. I didn't have much time to get to know him personally, but I do remember
him being a nice guy. Congrats, Raphael!

~~~
raffi
That would be me. Thank you very much :) My last day in the (active duty) Air
Force was spent at NECCDC 08 and it was great to work with you guys for the 09
competition. Hopefully Daryl invites me back for 10.

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edw519
Congratulations!

I loved the idea about the NY Times quiz. (I got it wrong). It's a little
thing, but it may have been just the hook to catch the right fish.

I try to learn something from everything here. This was a great lesson that I
hope to put to use myself someday.

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jack7890
I assume the sale price is not public?

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photomatt
Welcome to the family, Raffi. :)

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ujjwalg
Finally, a story in which YC misjudged... :)

Congrats...

~~~
zaidf
Misjudged? Not necessarily.

While getting acquired is cool for the founders, getting acquired so early is
usually not in YC's interest and I doubt they'd have too much regret over
(what is likely) a super-small acquisition.

~~~
Kaizyn
YC may also suffer from an embarrassment of riches, where they have more good
startups than they have resources to fund.

~~~
jhancock
Not sure that is in any way a failure or suffering. I think its a great
success. Look at MIT's move to give away its courseware online. They don't
think it will hurt them in the foreseeable future. Is MIT losing out by not
solving the problem of expanding the number of paying students they can take
in? They don't think so.

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rsingel
Hear, Here! The internet is thankful for all the future Wordpress-powered
blogs whose writers will be spared the embarrassment of confusing its and
it's, their and there, and complementary and complimentary. Congrats!

~~~
jacquesm
> Hear, Here!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear>

~~~
rsingel
Sigh.

------
rokhayakebe
Here it is 379 days ago on HN first.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=286162>

Congratulations.

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mdolon
Awesome, I am incredibly happy for this! It was a pleasure working with you on
both FeedbackArmy and this in terms of design, it is a rare treat to have such
a polite and understandable client. I've also seen you online at the most
awkward times of night slaving away, so I know this is certainly well
deserved. Best of luck my friend!

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tjmc
This is great news. If you can teach the great unwashed blogging masses the
difference between "there", "their" and "they're" you'll be doing the English
language a great service too! ;-)

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yan
Congrats! Does this mean we'll get to see the source?

edit: Any details on the financials?

~~~
raffi
Hi Yan, Yes, we're planning to open source the backend. I will also try to
post snippets of AtD functionality into blog posts as this will be easier to
digest. As a researcher I think the ideas probably have more value than the
code.

------
sgrove
Huge congratulations to Raphael. I had the chance to see a preview of his
presentation, and I was impressed right away. The market is obviously hugely
competitive (who really wants to take on MS, google, etc?), and those were the
biggest questions I had at the time.

But this is a perfect combination of tech and opportunity. Again, well done
Raphael!

------
mattmaroon
Ironically the grammar error he cites might not be an error, depending on
whether Mr Franken said that IRL or in print. If it were in print, such as on
a website or email, then it was not incorrect for the New York Times (which
was why I missed it, because I skip the quotes when looking for errors) to
have simply transcribed Franken's error. (In that case they could put the old
(sic) there, but I view that as a total dick move. Leave that pretentious
stuff for The New Yorker.) If they were transcribing his spoken word, then it
was erroneous.

I view that as ironic because the article talks about contextual grammar
checking, and there's no way a machine (or in this case even a human) could
know the proper context that determines whether or not the article's author
made a mistake.

~~~
pvg
The NYT article makes it quite clear it's an interview. It's just a simple
error of spelling (not grammar, the sentence is grammatically correct) in the
original article.

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mattiss
Congratulations man! Way to not let rejection knock you down one bit!

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hypermatt
WOOOOT ! Congrats dude ! I'm kinda sad I didn't join you. You rock

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sfphotoarts
I thought I'd try it, using the link provided in the article
(<http://www.polishmywriting.com/nyt.html>) I copied some text from my blog
into it. In the sentence fragment:

...took pictures of famous czech and slovak authors...

It noticed that Slovak should be capitalized, but not Czech.

So until it can pass my 30 second test, much as I am pleased for the authors,
I'd not use the product, under any ownership.

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cperciva
A question for the AtD folks: Do you have any concerns about being acquired by
a company which builds such a famously insecure product?

Speaking as someone who cares a lot about security, I'd be concerned about the
reputation for poor security "rubbing off" on me.

~~~
cperciva
I'm not sure why my question here is being voted down; the fact that wordpress
is famously insecure is hardly controversial.

Can some downvoters please explain?

~~~
jrockway
It sounds like you are whining about Wordpress, rather than just commenting on
the article.

Microsoft Research did a lot of work on Haskell. Does the multitude of Windows
viruses make you not want to use Haskell? Probably not. It just doesn't
matter.

~~~
Confusion
_It sounds like you are whining about Wordpress_

I fail to see how the original question qualifies as 'whining about
Wordpress'.

------
Derrek
"[...] as part of an application to Y-Combinator, Spring 09. Later, I was
greeted with a rejection letter. But that was ok! I knew I didn’t need
permission to start a business. So on I went."

I think we all can take a good lesson from this example of determination.

Congrats!

------
nearestneighbor
If they have a better spell checker, why tie it to a particular editor/web
site?

~~~
raffi
It's a software as a service so it isn't tied to a particular editor/web site.

I chose to support TinyMCE as the first editor because of its excellent plugin
API and use in popular applications. I chose WordPress as a first application
because of its excellent plugin API and infrastructure for distributing
plugins to users. The fact I think it's pretty slick helped too.

~~~
Estragon

      It's a software as a service
    

So, when you say you're going to open-source it, does that include the
backend?

~~~
raffi
Yes, the front-end stuff is already available under an open source license.
Something about AtD that amazes me is there isn't a lot of code. The data and
the rules do most of the work. (although there is a lot of stuff to manage the
training and testing processes)

~~~
Estragon
Thanks for the info.

------
richcollins
Did you make more than you would have consulting over the same time period?

~~~
rokhayakebe
I don't think he could have consulted on anything that would be used by
hundreds of thousands of content producers (bloggers) around the globe. I
could be wrong. But I doubt it.

