Comment by zoom6628 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zoom6628 | Hacker News Reader

Very happy for the folks at Trello. Great outcome for a great tool. Seems lots of JIRA-haters in the comments but lets get back and look at this event. The folks at Fog Creek brought us FogBugz, Stackoverflow, Trello.

We should celebrate their success because its events like this that create the motivation for some of us to go create something that "stands on their shoulders" or competes with them or creates some new paradigm of how tasks can be managed. Fog Creek is almost the ultimate startup - they keep it small, do things right, stick to their craft. What is the result? Regularly bring fantastic products to the world. Anybody contemplating how to get setup and run a software startup should start by reading most/all of joelonsoftware and then the later blogs about SO and Trello.

Yes Im huge fan - because i applaud geeks that put heart and soul into their craft as well as running their business and getting great outcomes like this. Would love to see more of it.

0.2c

> Seems lots of JIRA-haters in the comments

Not just JIRA; I think a lot of people were burnt by Atlassian's management of Hipchat or Bitbucket too.

Historically there's something of a track record where Atlassian is the place where interesting, innovative products go to stagnate. Bug fixes happen glacially (a 1 year turnaround seems to be standard), and new feature development doesn't happen at all. Running Hipchat is like looking through a window back at 2012.

> Very happy for the folks at Trello. Great outcome for a great tool.

Great outcome for a great team? Perhaps. But I don't really see how this benefits the tool, nor the people who use the tool, because I (and a lot of other people here) are assuming, with reason, that this deal heralds the end of further development of Trello.

That was my first thought too. Jira has Kanban so there's little point for them to improve Trello if they can convert people to Jira.

Trello is more than Kanban. I would imagine their strategy is to use Trello as a beachhead to get less technical teams into using their expanded suite of tools

Do you think the reverse would be true?

If Bitbucket was not bought by Atlassian, it will be able to grow and compete with Github/Gitlab?

If Hipchat was not bought by Atlassian, it will be a serious contender for Slack?

Or perhaps the group behind those products reflected their growth today?

Do you think it is because Atlassian's management or because local's management? Say if Atlassian hold to their words: "we leave them alone".

Or perhaps the issue is Money+Motivation than anything else? Exit => rich => decrease in Drive.

> If Bitbucket was not bought by Atlassian, it will be able to grow and compete with Github/Gitlab?

It can't compete now anyway.

> If Hipchat was not bought by Atlassian, it will be a serious contender for Slack?

Hipchat is not even close to being a serious contender for Slack.

> If Hipchat was not bought by Atlassian, it will be a serious contender for Slack?

We can debate counterfactuals all day, but the potential was absolutely there. Consider:

Hipchat was purchased by Atlassian before Slack even launched. (Slack launched August 2013; Hipchat purchased March 2012.) And back in 2012 Hipchat was almost exactly what it is today: A functional chat app with searchable logs, native clients for many platforms, a somewhat clunky UI, and some persistent issues with syncing and reliability. Further, when Slack launched, it wasn't nearly as good as it is now: They've made significant improvements over the years. Back in 2013 the Hipchat/Slack race was still pretty close, and that's after Hipchat had spent the last year doing nothing.

Slack launched into an opening that Hipchat created by stagnating. It's not that Hipchat could have potentially competed with Slack; it's that Hipchat could have easily crushed Slack. Slack exists now because they built the stuff that Hipchat didn't.

I think you miss my point/question.

Have we ever looked the discussion from a different perspective?

This is fact: Atlassian tend to leave the acquired product alone.

This is question: These products that Atlassian left alone, why are they not growing according to (_yours_ assumed) potential? Have we ever asked that perhaps the people behind Hipchat maxed out their potential? Or perhaps the drive is not there anymore?

What I'm asking is this: Did Atlassian do something destructive after they acquire the company? or perhaps the acquired company just simply can't live up to their potential (for any reasons except Atlassian pushing their management to the acquired company).

How on earth is this a good "outcome" for anyone who is not an equity holder? So tired of that word, it's the worst possible one because the outcome is terrible 99% of the time for the real people who actually care about the "outcome"

Hmm... How long does a company have to be around until it's no longer considered a start-up?

Plus Fog Creek is more on an anti-start-up since it explicitly did not want to grow fast at all costs. That's why Trello was spun off.

Do all start ups have to grow at all costs? I know it's standard for most start-ups to accept as much VC money as possible and find ways to spend it, but there are also young companies that don't need VC money and are successful. Don't know why those shouldn't be start-ups.

Perhaps startups just have to look or be sexy to be startups. Successful and boring don't seem to get all the gushing press.

Because we already have the terms "small business" and "ISV" to refer to small companies which are happily making small profits and not trying to take over the world.

Like Trello was?

I work at a company that considers itself a startup -- we're seven years old and completely bootstrapped. I've had many people tell me that we're not a "startup," we're just a "normal company." Usually this comes down to people saying that unless our priority is maximizing growth in the short term, we're not a startup. (We are obviously still focused on growth, just not at the expense of our stability, our product, or our company culture.)

"Startup" is a nebulous term with no firm definition, so these kinds of arguments are bound to happen. Some people still say Facebook is a "startup" because it has the fast-paced environment with the normal superficial cultural trappings of a tech startup (food perks, no dress code, casual interpersonal culture, etc. etc.).

Ultimately it's probably just a dumb semantic argument that's best avoided.

I think a good definition of what a startup is would consider rate of growth (now and projections into the near future) rather than length of time since inception.

> How long does a company have to be around until it's no longer considered a start-up?

My simple personal guide is: when it has been around for more than 2 years, has found a viable business strategy or is certain to be around for 4 more years.

There is a discussion on this question here: https://www.quora.com/When-does-a-startup-stop-being-a-start...

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