Isn't this just all inevitable? Aren't all these startups just lining up all in the hopes just to get acquired?
I guess when we see VC Funded™ on any startup what it _really means_ is that:
"We are prioritising a return for our investors even if it means violating our mission statement".
This outcome is almost certainly seen as a failure by the VCs. It looks like an acquihire. If so, it's quite possible that the VCs didn't even get their money back. Acquihires generally do not return money to VCs -- obviously, given that the employees are free to work anywhere, the acquirer's interest is in paying as much as possible to the employees and as little as possible to the now-worthless acquired company.
It's likely the employees are the ones benefiting most from this outcome, in that their pay has probably gone up considerably and they are no longer nervous about their job security, after many years of high stress and low pay.
It's possible the VCs were even offering some more cash to keep going, but at unfavorable terms, and the team said: "No, we'd rather take the big paychecks from Zoom."
Given Keybase has only had one funding round (according to crunchbase), the founders certainly still had a controlling stake in the company and the VCs couldn't force them to sell or not sell.
You can blame VCs for a lot of things but this kind of outcome is just not one of them (except insofar as that it allowed a company with little viable business strategy to exist in the first place).
(I am the founder of a failed startup. We had multiple "acquihire" offers, none of which offered any money back to investors.)
For example, if it was optional to connect to the Keybase network to begin with.
Imagine a keybase-type app that is built on web of trust rather than centralized servers.
An open source social identity attestation layer that people can operate and federate. Now that sounds cool!
Hard agree! Let me know what you think of this project Iris. I know it's still early, but the plan is sound imo https://github.com/irislib/iris
So either you're self-sustaining and are in it for the long haul, or you're looking to get acquired.
You really want to lock down some strategic IP that stands in the path of a behemoth and hope they'll want to aquire it under their growth goals or attempts to stomp out potential competitors (by throwing money at them and not through litigation or other paths). The big boys win because they buy out proven effective solutions/IP and models while failed startups eat the market high-risk exploratory costs.
What is more 'fun'? USD in bank account, USD as cash, DAO, or gold? I would think those are monotonically decreasing in 'fun'-ness. "Actual" money is not a good word for printable items of arbitrary scarcity. Not arguing for or against GP, just saying.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_company_limited_by_gua...
I guess most founders are really just motivated by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow :/
Even Mozilla Foundation [2] was spun off from Netscape, and heavily supported by AOL in its early years.
[1] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/why-nonprofits-sh...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#History