

Salesforce buys Assistly for $50M in cash - atldev
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/21/salesforce-buys-social-customer-service-saas-startup-assistly-for-50m-in-cash/

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bentlegen
What I think is great about this story, is that there's nothing particularly
novel about Assistly. They entered a pretty crowded market and made better
software. That's it. And they're $50 million richer for it*.

Too often we harp on people for building "another [insert existing software]",
but there are more success stories here than you'd think.

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jakeisonline
(Full disclosure, I'm competitively bias, but try to keeping balance) Is it
really the case that it's the software that wins out, or the founding team
behind it? While I certainly agree we do harp on about "another [insert
existing software]", in this case look at the track record of the team behind
the software - mostly all worked together before, mostly all sold before. Does
the age old adage "It's not what you know, but who you know" come in to play
here? It would be interesting to look at other similar success stories as
this, where it's already a crowded market being penetrated, to see what the
teams are behind each success.

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kingsley_20
Ex-salesforce here, in full agreement. Who you know has a big role to play in
most acquisitions, but quite important for a corp culture as unique as
salesforce. In all fairness, knowing the team & culture well (and seeing a
close fit), helps mitigate the risk that the acquisition won't take.

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talbina
No surprise here.

The software is practically flawless. I am happy for the team.

After using Assistly for thousands of hours it is dead clear to me that a
complex product CAN be easy to use and have many features/customizations while
being virtually bug free with excellent usability.

~~~
jonathanmoore
I couldn't agree more. After trying several other support platforms moving to
Assistly drastically changed our process for the better. Good for them!

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happyfeet
Totally agree with you. Using a helpdesk system does have a positive impact -
I no longer need to track every mail, tweet & facebook conversation listening
to customers & potential customers.

Which helpdesk systems did you evaluate & did you find them very different? I
have been evaluating Zendesk, Freshdesk & more recently Assistly.

For a starter Assistly pricing is very attractive to me. But other than that
do you find marked difference in terms of the support process for those that
you evaluated?

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jonathanmoore
When we first started the process I was evaluating both Tender Support
(<http://tenderapp.com/>) and Uservoice (<http://uservoice.com/fullservice>).
Overall I preferred the way that Uservoice worked although there were a number
of limitations at the time to how you could brand your help page.

Then we moved to Zendesk and used them for several months. Overall we were
incredibly pleased with the process, although I was not a fan of their public
support portal unless you use their API to roll your own.

Three weeks ago we setup an Assistly account and were instantly blown away at
how they simplified the process of providing support, and added the ability to
easily create complex business rules. When you're using Assistly it feels more
like an native application full of keyboard shortcuts rather than a website.
In short Assistly isn't a chore to use.

Plus, Assistly has some of the best support for their customers.

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gavanwoolery
The CEO, COO, and Chief Architect were all my former bosses at Goowy Media
back in the day, it is great to see their flawless track record continue! :)

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jedberg
I'm slightly amused by the fact that Salesforce is one of their investors, so
they just paid themselves.

~~~
michaeldhopkins
It is funny to think about, but most likely the purchase is for the rest of
the shares SF doesn't own.

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kinkora
If you are reading this Assistly dudes, good job!

Genuine question for people who had sold their companies: How much does it
matter if a deal is made "in-cash"? What does it affect by doing a deal in
cash? Does it get bought at a lower price in comparison to an all stock or a
mix cash-stock sale? Who determines whether it should be all cash or not?

~~~
workhorse
Be very careful of an all-stock transaction. I had to pay a lot of money out
of pocket to the IRS for shares in a company I couldn't sell.

I found out the hard way that restricted stock stays restricted until the
company officially releases it to you (via a letter from their CFO, etc), even
if you already satisfied the requirements to release the restriction per the
terms of the deal (SEC restrictions, contract obligations, earn out, etc).
Apparently this is a grey area and the company is under no obligation to
release the stock.

Most brokers won't touch restricted stock with a ten foot poll. They tell you
that you have to speak to their special division about restricted stock. And
then they want to charge you to help you get it unrestricted and even then,
there are no guarantees.

Stock is just a piece of paper until you can put it into a brokerage account
and sell it. You MUST understand exactly what it will take to be able to sell
that stock and who it will hinge on and when.

To add an additional headache, if you're still working for the company this
complicates it even more depending on your role with the company.

TL;DR

I received stock after my company was sold, I had to pay tax on that stock as
if it were cash in the bank, now I can't even sell the stock due to ambiguous
rules. And the worst part is, even if I could sell my stock at this point, it
wouldn't even cover what I paid in taxes.

You live, you learn. Rant over ;-)

~~~
kinkora
or in this case, you live and i learn. :)

Thanks for that awesome bit of info. I've always assumed stock options are
better because it raises the purchase price of a company in comparison to an
all cash sale. I guess even if the purchase price is lower, money in your bank
is always > paper money.

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bentlegen
If Assistly is worth $50M, where does that put ZenDesk (<http://zendesk.com>)?

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dreww
have you used either one? because you'd understand why acquiring assistly is
more attractive.

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bentlegen
Who said it wasn't?

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ajones05
SalesForce is piecing together social CRM: integrating social data into their
CRM system. This will add to the monitoring (and in-progress publishing)
capabilities from the Radian6 acquisition. The triforce is almost complete...

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hello_moto
Question for those in the know: how tedious/challenging/hard/annoying to work
on products that integrate various web 2.0 properties such as linkedin,
twitter, facebook? (serious question)

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aaronblohowiak
In terms of ease: twitter > facebook > linked in > salesforce.

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hello_moto
Is it annoying to work on a product that integrates various web properties?

Cause that sounds like a typical Enterprise Integration project that most
programmers are dying to escape. Except instead of invoices, payments, they
deal with Likes, Tweets, networks.

What about test environments of those web properties? do they have one?

Is it easy to include unit-test/integration-test?

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gte910h
I was just thinking about setting it up for a client for his iphone app and
couldn't remember the name...glad this worked out.

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dreww
such a good service - hope the project continues to receive the kind of
stewardship it has gotten thus far.

if you haven't tried it, you're missing out.

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trestles
decent service I've heard - good purchase

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sfoguy
Proof again you can hit it big despite a stupid domain name.

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redorb
What available domain name would you pick? Its not easy.

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sfoguy
That is my point! A great product is what counts.

