
Blippar finds life after death; former investor buys assets to relaunch - theBashShell
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/blippar-finds-life-after-death-as-former-investor-buys-assets-to-relaunch-ar-startup/
======
mikekchar
This is actually a viable exit strategy for a founder, if you can believe it.
The first startup I worked at blew up _3 times_. The initial investors gave up
and sold their losses. The assets were sold to a large company. The large
company agreed to keep the company separate with the founders on the cap table
in exchange for keeping the team together. Ran through all _that_ money and
then sold the company again, though abandoning the tech and really just
selling the team. Each round everybody got non-trivial retention bonuses. The
founders were careful to negotiate a non-preferential cap table (how they did
that is beyond me -- amazing sales people) and made a tidy profit on each
sale. It's not "unicorn money", but it's definitely "living well" money. And
the funny thing is that running the same company in the ground 3 times is
_not_ a strike against you in the VC world it seems.

I was young and stupid at the time. I should have stuck around and rode their
coat tails for a while -- I would have made at least "house money" off it. But
I was a bit too focused on doing "real work" and ended up embarking on a
career that made many people very wealthy, not including myself ;-) No regrets
really, but I may have some when I retire...

------
warent
> "After it failed to pull together an emergency funding deal ... One of the
> AR startup’s main investors, Candy Ventures, has acquired the company’s
> assets and will be keeping the brand alive underneath the leadership of
> [the] founder"

I'm no investing expert, but this indicates to me that Candy Ventures
intentionally allowed the Blippar to fall into this state of shambles so that
Candy Ventures could somehow get a better deal. Seems like an absolutely
brutal business strategy.

~~~
cma
> intentionally allowed the Blippar to fall into this state of shambles so

To take this as a strategy you'd have to assume none of the other investors
nor anyone else would out bid you. It wouldn't make a lot of sense. Throw away
an X% stake in something in order to bid on a 100% stake in it in bankrupcy
court?

If you had some kind of secret knowledge that none of the other original
investors had and that you knew wouldn't be disclosed in the auction I guess
it could work.

------
kuhhk
> Blippar may have blown up in dramatic fashion, burning through more than
> $130 million in funding for its dream of building an augmented reality
> empire...

Wow

> At one point, the startup had more than 300 employees and claimed a $1.5
> billion valuation.

Somewhat surprised I hadn't heard of them. Lots of posts about them [0], but
it seems this is the first time they're being upvoted. I would have loved to
see more of these posts than the common posts about Tesla, Uber, Apple, and
Google, and cryptocurrencies that get so many upvotes. I generally just scroll
through the "new" page now.

[0]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=blippar&sort=byPopularity&pref...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=blippar&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
brian-armstrong
To follow up on the recent HN post about Glassdoor fraud, it's amusing to see
how many people were apparently happily bopping along at Blippar as recently
as 6 months ago

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Blippar-
Reviews-E810640.ht...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Blippar-
Reviews-E810640.htm)

------
bruceb
Maybe this is a case of too soon for the market?

Plus being in the UK instead of the US.

------
puranjay
Is AR inherently vaporware? I've been very underwhelmed by both HoloDeck and
MagicLeap. Is this basically a promise that can't be delivered?

~~~
raudaschl
I very much agree. We recently did a dive into this business model to see if
it solves a problem people would genuinely pay for. [https://medium.com/lean-
canvas-takedown/why-ar-fails-blippar...](https://medium.com/lean-canvas-
takedown/why-ar-fails-blippar-case-study-6bd5507cb2ca)

Short answer: no it doesn't.

