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I have to say this kind of announcement sticks in the craw. I get that Mikael Cho and colleagues created Unsplash and it's theirs to do with as they please: they don't owe us anything. But really, couldn't they just come right out and say "They offered us too much money, we couldn't resist, So long, suckers"?

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I remember the day Crew.co (another Mikael Cho venture) was sold to Dribbble. I was a member of, and I've felt cheated. I was sold and paid nothing. I've contributed to the value of Crew.co and I was ousted from a day to another.

The official reason selling Crew was to focus on Unsplash. Another venture where network effects (free work done by contributors) can generate later a fortune for few.

So ... we've been tricked. Our collective efforts was monetized by a few. That's network economy.

nobody needs to say that anymore; it is a given.

if you sell your company to a Getty or Facebook or Zoom, for example, you really were just selling your customers and eliminating yourself as competition, for probably a nice payoff. if you had a bad VC deal, then you the founders/builders might even get nothing.

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