Lift Labs joins Google X | Hacker News Reader

Lift Labs joins Google X

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89 pointsmikeevans19 comments

An inspiring video from a young man with this condition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrWgGj9strs

Prev HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7752528

Congratulations to Anupam and team!

Is this related to the Lift startup that makes the habits app or are they just named the same?

That was my initial thought/worry as well, but it looks like Lift.app is safe from Google acquistruction for now: 'Lift Labs'[0] is the creator of a spoon that helps parkinson's victims eat, and the bottom of the Lift.app website[1] gives the company name 'Lift Worldwide',

[0]: http://www.liftlabsdesign.com/ [1]: https://www.lift.do/

I'm so glad this worried you! I'm the @liftapp founder. When we started there were no startups named Lift. Now the world is rich with L(i/y)fts. It's insane. Things look good for us (as in we have runway and revenue), so I don't think you'll be seeing any acquisition news from us.

FWIW, here's the email where we decided on the name and specifically went looking for other people using it: http://www.quora.com/Lift-app/How-did-Lift-app-get-its-name

Lately, as I hear of extremely-cool startups being acquired by Google, I feel rather sad. I would much rather see them succeed on their own, than disappear into the belly of Google. And I really can't see how Google, which is an advertising company, can bring value to this acquisition.

You can't see how a company with a bottomless pocket and the most computing resources can help them achieve their goals?

You don't think Waze has gotten significantly worse since they were acquired by Google?

The problem with taking vague rhetorical stances like that instead of actually stating how you think it's gotten "significantly worse" is I have no idea what aspect you're talking about, so it's difficult to empathize and try to imagine the downside you're seeing.

I'll go out on a limb and say no, not at all, especially with the qualifier "significantly" on there, which I would take to mean that even the casual Waze fan (like me) should have noticed what's going wrong there.

I don't particularly care about some of the new features like sharing location with friends, but I just don't use them (and they seem plausibly like things they would have added anyway, with or without acquisition).

No.

Sure, they can do research on cool stuff. But do you see Google selling and distributing these utensils anytime soon?

In other words, will this acquisition put more useful devices in the hands of those who badly need them?

I don't think so.

They are already selling. This acquisition won't affect that. It will help them get more publicity with more resources and more expertise. The numbers will be going up, not down.

That seems to be the state currently, but you just never know. BufferBox, a YC alum, was bought out and subsequently dissolved within a couple of years despite their momentum before being acquired.

That being said, Google X operates very differently from rest of of Googleverse.

Actually Google has a HUGE interest in healthcare and longevity. This totally makes sense for them.

Yes, but have they ever managed to do anything good in the space? Google Health crashed and burned remember. Lift Labs could have found a better company to work with just by going to single Standford medicine and tech event, of which there are dozens...

You make it sound so easy. In medical hardware it's anything but.

100% chance of success vs. something much lower than that. Building hardware is hard enough. Jumping through the medical regulations is something else.

I am so happy to hear about this, and about Lift in general. I've had a number of loved ones effected by this and seeing products that make life even a little bit easier is just really cool.

To my shame I'd never heard of this product before, but looks like epic work. Congrats on heading to X!

Awesome news! Congrats to a great team.

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