Gazehawk Team (YC S10) Joins Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Gazehawk Team (YC S10) Joins Facebook

gazehawk.com

65 pointslsb22 comments

I interned at GazeHawk in the summer of 2011 as a blogger. It was my first job in technology as well as my first real job after graduating from college.

It was one of the best summers of my life. The GazeHawk team is incredibly talented and full of amazing people. I particularly miss our company lunch discussions, which regularly ranged over number theory, politics, literature, and everything of interest in-between.

I remember, when I was trying to set up my own personal website after hours, I asked Brian to take a look at the PHP I was writing (I still did not have that much programming experience at this point). He glanced at my code, then looked back at his computer and instantly typed out a SQL injection attack that would have dumped my database. Then he grinned and showed me exactly how to fix what I was doing.

Good luck at Facebook, guys!

I've seen a few of these recently where Facebook "acquires the team." What does that mean, exactly? What happens to GazeHawk the product? Who owns it? Does it continue to operate? Who does Facebook pay? What happens to GazeHawk investors?

In one of Facebook's more recent big acquisitions - Gowalla - the product was shut down within a few weeks.

"The team welcomes suggestions and thoughts on potential options at team@gazehawk.com."

Guessing that means they are open to offers and if nothing comes along.. it will be shuttered..

Is the term "shuttered" to describe closing a business unique to the US? Or UK too, thehodge?

I hadn't encountered it used in this way prior to the last year or so, and then only through tech writing. Origin is the closing of window shutters, I presume?

It's retail door shutters:

http://www.kone.com/countries/en_GB/Products/PedestrianDoors...

Ahh, a "roller door" in Australia.

Thanks.

Well I'm British and I use it.. I thought it was a lot nicer than deadpooled or sunk...

whats the term yahoo used? Sunset

I'm also pretty curious to know what happens now. Are the investors going to lose their money?

"Acquiring the team" usually means the investors make their money back, maybe with a small return.

In some cases they received Facebook shares. Eg, FriendFeed sold to Facebook in return for Facebook shares. Obviously they are quite happy now with the deal that they made!

With something like friendfeed there may be IP issues that may force a buyout, but what about cases (like TeachStreet/Amazon) where the acquirer may prefer to just hire and pay the engineering / management talent, and not pay a chunk to the investors? Do investors have any recourse? Will they change the way they write term sheets to protect themselves in the future

Facebook "acquires the team" means the startup has failed and all the founders and engineers are going to work for Facebook?

What does that mean, exactly?

It doesn't mean anything, "exactly", and that is part of the point of the semi-vague wording.

Generally speaking when something is described as a "team acquisition" it means that the product they were working on was deemed unlikely to be successful. Technically what is happening here is some or all of the current team is being offered jobs at Facebook, quite possibly to work on something totally unrelated to whatever they were doing before.

Payments could range from nothing, to a token sum, to paying back the investors, depending on many factors. The founders may or may not get some kind of small bonus/signing bonus in the process.

These are usually regarded as "nobody gets rich, but maybe a couple of folks don't lose their asses" deals.

It is the startup-as-job interview. Technical success (at least as an "artist portfolio" for engineers), but business failure (relative to the rather high standard of a Facebook engineer income, and which wouldn't necessarily be failure in any other context! The only losers are paying customers and investors.)

I wonder how investors feel about aquihires like this. Do they structure term sheets to guarantee a payout if the founders abandon ship for a payday at a new job?

Would you guys open-source the technology?

This is awesome. I started testing for them when the first HN post was made; or round about, just let me brag. I was always amazed with their tech and even tried applying- didn't make it- and can't think of another HN company who has made bigger strides or a better product.

I'm glad that you guys are getting to move on to bigger, and hopefully better, things! What are your plans for the company/tech? It would be nice to see this introduced into the medical field as a cost effective way to manipulate UI.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mick_ebeling_the_invention_that_unl...

Maybe one of you can answer my question, even if it's not directly linked to GazeHawk. If I found a start-up, am lucky and get some funding and it doesn't work out and the company tanks, what happens to you as a founder? Are you personally liable or any debts? I'm asking because I guess US law is quite different from ours.

For the most part, you're not liable as long as you're properly incorporated and don't sign anything making you personally liable, unless you committed various crimes such as fraud along the way.

Corporate bank loans for early stage companies do typically require personal liability, but VCs and angels do not.

So it's basically the same as over here. Thanks for the fast answer!

So facebook is going to use gazehawk to (potentially unwittingly, given their privacy track record) track the eye movements of its users to see where they look most of the time.

No web services can record a users webcam "unwittingly".

Did you not read the announcement? FB is not acquiring the technology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com