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Comment by Gentil | Hacker News Reader

Power move by the new CEO. Haha. I have read about this, but only recently have I started noticing this. Acquisitions are expected after a new CEO.

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Although the new CEO has only been in place for about a week. I bet this acquisition has been in the works for longer than that.

But what we don't know is how long Jack and Parag have been thinking of Parag as the new CEO. It's perfectly possible that he had significant influence here if Jack has been grooming him as CEO for a while.

On the other hand, I just saw that "Quill was founded by the former creative director of Stripe, Ludwig Pettersson". [1] And who was Stripe's CEO, but Jack. So this could easily have been Jack arranging an acquihire for a pal.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/23/the-new-new-slack-quill/

Stripe was founded by Patrick and John Collison. I’m guessing you’re confusing it with Square, another payments company, which was co-founded and still run by Jack Dorsey.

Sorry. My mistake absolutely. Thanks for the correction. Not the first time I've accidentally mixed up the two finance companies named for common one-syllable words starting with s and ending with e. I'll be more careful next time.

I have done the same on many occasions myself. It's horrible branding by whomever came second.

Eh, Tumblr and Twitter are both social networks beginning with T and ending with r, but you wouldn't get them mixed up, right?

This seems like just the result of unfamiliarity with the payments domain to me, rather than "horrible" branding.

It doesn’t have to be. I’d never make that mistake. Not because of anything special by me. But just because I’m familiar with the names.

I’ve heard someone mix up Slack and Stripe. Doesn’t mean those two are bad branding. The person isn’t someone who cares about SV or startups.

I can’t reply to your dead reply to mine. quadrifoliate’s example illustrates things much better. Familiarity is important.

It’s not unusual for a CEO to be hired specifically to orchestrate an acquisition.

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