Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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...

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.

"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

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?

> 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

Yeah yeah. I hope it wasn't a technical acquisition, because then obviously this guy was a failure and no where near as cool as rockstar dot com bazillionaires like you. Following HN rules, if we were face to face, I would say this to you.

That said, either way, congratulations to the guy. It takes a lot of work to develop something that interests anyone (whether it's our users, Google, or someone else). Maybe his next one will be worthy of your appreciation and congratulations.

Then again, entrepreneurs learn early on that they can't and should not try to please everyone.

I'm not congratulating them because there is no information that will make it plain if this is a real acquisition or if these guys just got a job. If and when that comes out it will be time enough (and if they just got a job, then, of course, congratulations are still in order, but if that results in their start up being shut down then somewhat less so).

> I hope it wasn't a technical acquisition, because then obviously this guy was a failure and no where near as cool as rockstar dot com bazillionaires like you.

You seem to have a completely wrong impression of me, if you feel like discussing that further feel free to email me, address in my profile.

Good point. Even if you do sell for lots of money, and even if Google keeps your startup running, from Google's standpoint it still might be a talent acquisition. Lots of folks dream of selling out to Google. Little do they realize that once they flip the startup, they're usually Google employees. Not exactly the end-state they might have had in mind when they began.

For many people, being a Google employee with a few M (or even a few hundred K) in the bank is a pretty darn good end-state...

Agreed.

But even then, where you end up might be very different than where you were heading.

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

According to a screenshot in the Reddit thread of a mail allegedly sent by Plannr, it will be shut down.

It is not about what is "real" or "unreal". Calling it an acquisition is part of the value Google is providing to the deal. It is not measured in dollars but maybe just as valuable nonetheless.

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