Diary of a Corporate Sellout | Hacker News Reader

Diary of a Corporate Sellout

medium.com

189 pointsrtpg35 comments

I worked on Upcoming briefly as a contractor in 2006, and it was a strange thing to witness. At the time Yahoo was acquiring a bunch of small sites but seemed to have no idea what to do with them. They just hung there suspended, like raisins in a jello mold, waiting for something to come along and digest them.

Eventually Yahoo solved the dillema by wrapping these projects in successive layers of management, like a bureaucratic oyster reacting to some irritant it doesn't understand but can't get rid of. Vast amounts of time would be spent on things like requiring integrated login, rather then stepping back and figuring out how to really fit Upcoming or Flickr or Delicious into a vision of what Yahoo was for.

I'm really happy Andy got the domain back. I'm still holding out for Joshua to reclaim Delicious!

Excuse me for being off-topic and awkward. But whenever I read something like

They just hung there suspended, like raisins in a jello mold, waiting for something to come along and digest them.

I pause and take a look at who wrote this.

And almost always it was written by that Pinboard guy.

Agreed, it was one of the best comments I've read in a long time. Well-chosen words and imagery, great metaphors.

Second metaphor about the oyster seemed perfect. Can't say I have had raisins in jello before, but it was easy to imagine and understand what he was getting at.

Really like the oyster pearl one though, gonna have to steal that one. I'm sure I could use it daily at work.

I actually preferred the second metaphor, about the oyster. :) Perfectly captures my experience of corporate M&A, and the way it actually handles what is commonly termed the "digestion" process.

I love this guy, one of my favorite twitter accounts.

Delicious is now owned by Science Inc.

I would probably be more interested in recovering Delicious if I hadn't migrated to Pinboard.

then I can re-motivate you with a few short keystrokes!

Your comment is making me hungry.

"My hope was that I could use a social network to solve other first-world problems"

I like this piece of self-awareness.

“So… Yahoo bought my website.” “I don’t think I can counteroffer that.”

That put a smile on my face. Thank you for sharing!

Here's a great podcast hosted by R.U. Sirius (of Mondo 2000) with the author, Andy Baio, as a guest - mere months after he sold Upcoming.

Lots of discussion about his foray into copyright infringement.

http://mondoglobo.net/neofiles/shows/neofiles-034.mp3

I wonder if we'll see more 'resurrections' of good ideas that were acquired and killed simply due to bad business rather than bad ideas. Is there a list of companies/ideas somewhere that went down the acquisition path only to be killed ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

This page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...) doesn't exist though interestingly enough

Amazon's list isn't long enough (yet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Acquisitions_and_in...

From the friendly article: http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

One of the saddest:

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/477095755564318720

I am rather shocked that people are paying for it to come back.

I mean, the original was done as a side-project by the owner who did not have the money that, I assume, said post-acquisition owner now has.

This article is a candid perspective on making things, making money, integrity and other nuanced topics. Crying 'You're rich, do it out of pocket.' is the opposite.

People donate to projects like this on kickstarter because they want a project to go ahead exist and they want to be a part of that. The writer is getting (reasonably modest) resources with which to make it happen, perhaps even some compensation. He gets the support of 1000 true fans who put $40 where their mouth is. That knits together some valuable forms of validation, encouragement, responsibility and other small nuanced things.

Why would you inject your negativity into this mix?

So, I had a similar thought and I think there is more here than just hating on people who supposedly have access to resources. It goes more into the question about why people support Kickstarter projects that are more business than art. When you contribute money to a business venture, it is reasonable to expect either ownership in the company or interest payments plus your original principal down the road. In this case you get neither. While a $75 t-shirt is nice, it's probably not going to turn into a $100 t-shirt.

That being said, it looks like people have pledged over $100K so far, so as they say, "the market has spoken."

I didn't consider my comment negative, nor am I hating on the writer. I was just expressing shock because I literally cannot understand the mindset of the backers in this case.

On a sidenote: Even if I did want to be negative about the whole thing, that is my prerogative, there is no rule on HN "only be positive". The up / down arrows are on the left of my post if you think it has no value.

Anyone know how much Upcoming was originally acquired for?

No one involved ever released details about the acquisition, I know it was for cash - but they likely didn't allow disclosure of the actual price.

The author is right that no one really scratched that itch, at least up until recently. I spent a few years building something in my spare time to try to scratch the itch (and did a fair amount of research on the space) after Upcoming fell into disrepair but couldn't get enough momentum on it.

That said, Sosh seems to now be finally scratching that itch, just as Upcoming is trying to make a comeback.

Same. Learned a lot doing it but the events space is very difficult to grow a business in.

This was a great story to read, and the ending hit me like a surprise twist, so much the better for being a real event. Thanks for sharing it.

Wow what a story!i was an avid upcoming user in London back in 2007 and inspired my own startup back then.. Insane to learn now it was a side project! The first refusal idea should be part of a startup code or guidelines that all adhere to..

Luckily, I think even Yahoo has improved since these days, thanks to Marissa Mayer.

Great post.

It seems quite similar to French http://www.sortiraparis.com/ that exists for more than 10 years I think.

This guy really has a shrewd mind for nuance.

I'd never heard of upcoming, but I will definitely check it out in the future.

This was back when every new websites monetization strategy was to be acquired by Yahoo.

Good ideas should survive. What technology are they going to use to build the new site?

Andy, any reason this is on Medium and not waxy.org ?

Acqui-hire by Google in 3... 2... 1...

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