Clockwise acquired by Salesforce | Hacker News Reader

Clockwise acquired by Salesforce

getclockwise.com

147 pointsnigelgutzmann77 comments

I used to work at Clockwise and am (was?) a common shareholder. I'm happy that many employees got to get a job at Salesforce. I'm sure it was tough to swallow some pride and recommend Reclaim, who was our strongest competitor in the space (or at least the one we talked about the most). Reclaim was acquired by Dropbox a while ago, although Dropbox wanted them to continue to run and develop the product there.

I also applaud them for not selling the data (as promised in the ToS). There was always a strong commitment to that from day 1, but I'm glad to see that wasn't an option when times got harder. Calendar data sometimes has really sensitive stuff in it, and it would have been a massive betrayal to do anything but delete it after a shutdown.

If you are interested in a more detailed piece about a company struggling in this space, I recommend Rise's shutdown announcement last year. We read this at Clockwise and unfortunately felt it in our bones. There is an ironic Clockwise callout in the piece if you can spot it.

https://www.risecalendar.com/blog/sunsetting-rise

I'm obviously not part of the decision, but I'm sorry the shutoff for users is so soon. Also, please don't revoke your Clockwise app authorization before the shutoff, since that will prevent Clockwise from cleaning up your calendar. If you want to cleanly turn off Clockwise before the shutoff, you can go through the normal deactivation process at https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall.

It's a huge bummer for me too to have worked on something for years and then to have it suddenly vanish one day.

If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. If any die-hard users want to make a self-hosted tool, I'm happy to give some tips from my experience. I know at least one large company has an internal tool like Clockwise's autopilot/flexible meetings.

> If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it.

Why is it so rough etc.?

Starting a company, that can get PMF, raise funds and grow is like 2% success rate. Then exiting for upside is like 2% of that previous 2%.

The number of problems, the type of problems, the scale of the problems. Oof.

I am not sure what clockwise is doing, but since calendar was mentionned, basically you need to break into M365, and for most entreprises, why acquiring another tool to manage calendars.

I happened to work for such companies, and the "application owner", and I am really not convinced by the ROI.

The real reason, VIPs didn't want to bother with a computer to manage their calendar, and they (well their assistants) had to organize meetings with 3rd parties.

A VIPs calendar is the most precious resource in a company; such that they're willing to pay $100k a year to manage it alone.

You have to be very good to get them to even try.

Oh I know well the analytics of these costs, but you are incorrect on the very good part...

You did great. It was a product I saw everyone at my company use and love.

Hey, Rise founder here and the one that wrote the sunsetting post–thanks for mentioning it. We obviously followed Clockwise closely and I actually had a great chat with Matt post-shutdown. Can only have respect for how long Clockwise managed to exist and for the way they now handle the shutdown (indeed not handing over that data is a classy move).

Salesforce has lost half its market cap in the last ~year. Spending time and money to acquire a calendar scheduler shows just how badly they have lost the plot.

I know this is an HN meme but can someone look at https://www.getclockwise.com/overview and explain why an internal team couldn't build this in a couple of weeks? And it's not like Salesforce is lacking engineers - they employ 83,000 (!!) people globally.

Clockwise has thousands of companies using it already.

Buying the company gives them those customers. They shut it down presumably so they can do something with those customers they bought.

Making software is easy. Don’t kid yourself. If you’re a swe you’re an expense line item. Getting distribution is hard.

Just shutting it down seems like the worst way to keep the customers. They'd be better off rebranding it as Salesforce Clockwise and then slowly transitioning them.

I suspect it's more of an acquihire.

How does shutting the product down get them any customers?

"Hey you've been paying for this calendar thing for a while, but won't be able to any longer. Go use one of their competitors instead. BTW have you tried our CRM?"

To be fair, Salesforce IS a CRM and can offer people project/time/calendar/team collaboration features, even if it's not a DIRECT competitor to a modern wave of time management startups.

You don't typically buy clients via acquisition and then cancel them before you convert them, though...

Because you might shift them to another product line?

I don't personally care about Salesforce and think they're a low/mediocre company, but having seen acquisitions at my last company we'd shut them down but roll them into our ecosystem.

Obviously there's churn, but that's why you spend MONTHS doing due diligence to figure out if the strategy is sound. For example, most of the customers of one product we acquired were already using our product for other things, or competitor platforms. So, we managed to roll a bunch of enterprise customers onto our platform.

Its not just LOOK AT ME I WROTE SOME CODE :D lol

Or they might just be buying out the team to help them build out something to address gaps in their product.

But it is not just "why can't they just make it themselves"

Is the Clockwise founder mates with anyone in Salesforce?

Probably. The Clockwise folks were from a startup that was bought out by Salesforce before they left to do this.

IMHO, the problem with Clockwise is that there was never a compelling product or a moat they could build with in the space. It was trivial for Google or anyone else to just implement similar enhancements.

Yeah, that would explain it.

I interviewed with Clockwise years ago and was offered a position, but ultimately I decided to pass for this exact reason. This system is great, and I actually used it and loved it, but it was a feature rather than a product.

Typically when a company is acquired and the product is swiftly shut down, the value sought was the team. Although Salesforce has plenty of engineers, they may not have a team that does what the Clockwise team does.

Or they may just think the clockwise team is great and is willing to pay a small premium to get them.

Yeah, the question is how much they paid and what other options the Clockwise team had. I wasn't going to speculate about that, since I've no idea.

That means that for the acquirees that was the only option on the table so GP is likely right.

> Salesforce has lost half its market cap in the last ~year

They're also at record revenue [1].

[1] https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Sales...

> They're also at record revenue [1].

I too have revenue of $1 billion but with $2 billion in expenses

I mean wow, talk about making it up in volume, but hell I would take it.

“FY26 operating cash flow of $15.0 billion, up 15% Y/Y, and free cash flow of $14.4 billion, up 16% Y/Y. Returned $14.3 billion to shareholders, including $12.7 billion in share repurchases and $1.6 billion in dividends.”

Like, literally bullet pointed.

Presumably that's why their stock is down. If you want to have a record stock price you've got to be really unprofitable.

Right and do circular investments in your customers

This is because the stock market valuation of a company isn't nearly as simple as a revenue/cash-flow multiple. It also accounts for predicted growth in the stock, and it's return over the risk-free rate. As interest rates are staying high, and inflation is stickier than expected, one would expect stocks to get cheaper as the risk-free rate is higher and investors lean more towards gilts/bonds/bills/commodities.

In addition people are betting that AI is going to reduce the growth in software stocks. If this is true or not is another thing, but that is the current majority opinion amongst large-scale investors.

Because the features need to be planned by product people, broken down and turned to stories in JIRA. The dev teams need to get together and play planning poker to determine who gets what story and approximately how long it should take. They need to coordinate with the DevOps and security teams in order to ensure it complies with company requirements/best practices concerning authz/authn, o11y, etc.

The good news is the company is headed into a bright and glorious future of productivity. The CEO has been completely one-shotted, and over last weekend he vibe-coded together a companywide TODO app. The submit button glitches out of existence and it authenticates any company email address without even a password, but its existence means the CEO is a dev now just like you. Token and SLOC count KPIs will be implemented next quarter.

> "Spending time and money to acquire a calendar scheduler shows just how badly they have lost the plot."

It sounds like Clockwise was pretty good at what they did, perhaps even the best in its class. Salesforce presumably sees a need for these advanced scheduling features in it's own products, and they figure they can get them more quickly, more cheaply, and with lower risk by acquiring an already-built technology and team. ie: it's an "acquihire".

But it's not like this is a one off. Salesforce has spent over $10 billion on acquisitions in just the last 6 months!

> it has been our mission to help the world make time for what matters. We've built a business to be proud of

There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.

They have families to feed. This might forever protect their families from any financial misfortune. Any sane person would do the same. I would.

Sure but they dont have to act all insufferable about it lmao. Just say it was the best outcome not a bunch of bullshit

People who talk straight like that don't become founders or PR.

Then don't lie! Maybe instead they could say:

> it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first.

There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.

Well, that might have never happened. And don't we all do it for our families primarily.

I do it for my bookie

have you never seen an "our incredible journey" post before? that's NOT how they work!

Warms my heart to learn their families will finally be able to afford nutritious meals, put clothes on their backs and maybe even afford a bike to go to school rather than walking 2h everyday. We need more uplifting stories like this one. Thank you salesforce.

Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.

A valuable skill as entrepreneurs, is to know when to stop and move on. Recognizing what you built may not be viable financially long term or is no longer a fit for the market and then making adjustments is what good entrepreneurs do. Sometimes it means shutting shop, while other times it means getting acquired and refocusing on the path forward.

This is one of those things that sounds so good with a quick read, but for every example you give me of a smart entrepreneur who knew when to pull the plug I can gave you a gritty, determined one who stayed focus on the vision and built something successful. In this case did they ever have market fit or financial viablilty?

I've been inside a couple of these and the founders always do just fine. Rest and vest at the acquiring company for a couple years, earn millions in stock, found another company or go work for OpenAI as an exec.

Rank and file employees who got sub-standard pay for years at Startup get the same comp they would have got coming in the front door at BigCo. It's better than being fired I guess, but it's not some humble, charitable act by the founders. They can always wait a couple years and ride the ride again if they want.

Being proud and being acquired aren’t mutually exclusive things. You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially. They are proud of what they built and are also moving to a place where they can continue building more.

Continuing to struggle for money isn’t a requirement for building cool stuff.

> You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially.

Projects may not be financially viable but it seems the minimum for a business.

> There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.

They probably don't have much choice and Salesfore needs people who have built and launched products (I don't have any info, just a guess).

> There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.

Worst. Isekai. Idea. Ever.

I had stepped out of the high-rise office into the blinding San Francisco sun, a freshly minted millionaire wrestling with the crushing guilt of sunsetting my own creation. We built a business to be proud of, I tried to tell myself, clutching the signed term sheet. There must be a lot of pride and meaning in this.

That’s when I heard the roar of the engine.

Salesforce seems to be doing a shutdown of many of their "pre-AI" products.[1]

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/controlled-demolition-salesfo...

I’m only interested in this because it is the first company I’ve seen try to completely wipe itself off the face of the earth in a little over a week. You won’t even be able to access your billing history after March 27 and there will be no support available after that date.

A huge fuck you to their customer base. Talk about burning bridges to the ground.

They must really be out of money entirely if they can't even keep things running for a bit, or Salesforce really doesn't like what they have.

Or they're burning it to the ground out of spite so Salesforce doesn't get any of it.

Even the Rise calendar link above still is hosted so you can read their incredible journey.

sorry in advance to their employees as they go up against the value buzzsaw that is Salesforce as an acquirer. i have years of firsthand experience, and there was not a single win in my entire tenure there.

Looking back was it better or worse than being laid off instead?

seems like a rather short time frame considering they are just deleting the data, links, calendar events, past invoices, etc.?

hopefully no one paying for their service decided to take a 1 week vacation starting tomorrow.

I think this is the first time I've seen a cookies pop-up that only offered an "Allow All" option and nothing else. Accept our cookies or go away, I guess.

Salesforce integration with calendaring (o365 etc) has been a sore point, i think it's changed multiple times. I was never a huge fan of what Salesforce calls "Activities" which include calendar events. They don't work the same way the rest of Salesforce does. I think all of Activities was from a prior acquisition at some point too. Maybe this acquisition will help with those integrations in a few years.

Why would a company acquire the other one just to shut it down?

Other than directly cancelling a competing product, it's usually to acquire the staff. Bit like the football transfer market, but you can buy Marcus Rashford separately without having to buy the whole of Man U.

Yea, until they leave as soon as they can because working at Salesforce is nothing like a startup

These acquihires seem so ineffective to me unless the acquiring company is truly attractive to the acquirees talent.

That's what the vesting period is for, to ensure the team sticks around for long enough that the acquirer can figure out who is most valuable and make it attractive for them to stay.

optimist's view: if you have faith in SF longer term it's a great time to get your options priced!

I've definitely heard stories of people who wanted to sell their stock after being acquired, couldn't because of vesting/lockup, and were glad because it went up a lot in the meantime.

> buy Marcus Rashford

that would strengthen Man Utd :D

Man Utd mentioned.

It's just an acquihire. On the startup's side, the company has failed and they would be shutting it down regardless; this way they've found jobs for their employees and saved face. On the acquirer's side, they've recruited a team that they think is worth hiring with a lower cost of sourcing them.

The acquirer usually isn't paying that much in a case like this. Unlike what some other comments in this thread say (I assume from people new to the industry), nobody's getting rich.

i wish i had insights into the minds of the MBAs that make decisions like this

Interesting tool, but it seems to be more of a feature than a product.

Now a feature of Salesforce :)

> Any Smart Hold events created by Clockwise (such as Focus Time, Travel Time, Meeting Breaks, and Personal Calendar synced events) will be removed from your calendar. Flexible Meetings will stop moving and the green Clockwise sparkle will be removed.

Doesn't really sound like it.

speaking of, Dropbox bought a similar product a couple of years ago https://reclaim.ai/

speaking of, Reclaim is the company TFA recommends Clockwise customers migrate to

God, remember when Dropbox was just a folder that syncs[1]?

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other...

Every "office" tool expands to be Microsoft Office. Box, Dropbox, Zoom, all are heading down that path.

Has anyone used reclaim? I’ve been meaning to try it.

Hope they enjoy working on Java code... Forever... With 3 month release cycles, no CD... LOL

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