I think mbitter's point might be better explained by an example from outside the world of computers. Audi (high end cars), for example, recently acquired Ducati (high end motorcycles). No-one expects Ducati to be shuttered. Instead, people are expecting both companies to remain and to share their IP and improve both the cars and and motorcycles as knowledge flows from both companies.
In the land of computers being acquired tends to mean the acquired co. shutters their business, and everything they worked on ceases to be available to the customers who made them a company worth acquiring. I seriously applaud your allowing customers to set up their own servers. It's quite atypical... but it's kind of a dead-end thing unless you open-source the code. "Hooray... We can continue... but things will never improve, bugs will never be fixed, and our needs will eventually exceed the capabilities of the software that no-one is working on anymore."
Wouldn't it be nicer if the acquiring company valued the company being acquired enough to keep it going, or roll its functionality into its own offerings so that customers can continue being served?
The difference here is that the greatest asset of Ducati is it's brand as a high-end motorcycle producer. Thus getting a return on this acquisition from Audi's perspective means continuing to deliver on that brand's promise of awesome, pricey motorcycles. (Which incidentally makes good money for Audi as well)
The greatest asset of Clutch.io is the technical team and their ability to produce well-crafted code which means getting a return on the acquisition means deploying that team toward important projects at Twitter which could help them grow their userbase, engage existing users and monetize those users.
(Disclaimer - I have not spoken to the team about why they were acquired and what they'll be working on, but my statements are representative of what the majority of these types of acquisitions are like)
> In the land of computers being acquired tends to mean the acquired co. shutters their business
Not really, e.g. Oracle acquiring Sun or Vmware acquiring Nicira, not to mention all the $100M+ but "unfashionable" acquires that don't even get airtime on HN.
Anyway, I don't get this sort of complaint. If you really think the service had potential to be profitable, why not go ahead and clone it?
Your Ducati example is memorable because Ducati already had a well known brand. But how many small automotive (or insert industry here) business that you have never heard of are acquired and subsequently killed? I expect it happens more often than you think.
Yes, but usually not with any sort of press release from either company, or any other positioning that makes it sound like the "acquisition" was any indicator of success or strength.
Most startups are high-risk, and so it's blindingly obvious that there are going to be lots of ideas which are able to be implemented, but not scaled into a business. And we've all heard about VC's investing in the "team" more than the product, and how hard it is to find and hire really good engineers. So, a startup as sort of a long-cycle public job interview isn't the worst thing in the world.
Still, it would be nice (given the mindset of most engineers) to see the released framed in a more accurate way "Company X team being absorbed into Company Y", or "Company Y extends employment to entire team of Company X".
Perhaps it's just me, but I think most people see these "acquisition" press releases, and resulting "congratulations" rounds as somewhat of a poor veneer over the reality of what really transpired.
I'm not sure I agree. I follow the agriculture channels and you see the same kind of thing when a big agriculture company acquires someone whose products you will never see again.
You just only read about tech-specific acquires here because that is the focus of HN.
In the land of computers being acquired tends to mean the acquired co. shutters their business, and everything they worked on ceases to be available to the customers who made them a company worth acquiring. I seriously applaud your allowing customers to set up their own servers. It's quite atypical... but it's kind of a dead-end thing unless you open-source the code. "Hooray... We can continue... but things will never improve, bugs will never be fixed, and our needs will eventually exceed the capabilities of the software that no-one is working on anymore."
Wouldn't it be nicer if the acquiring company valued the company being acquired enough to keep it going, or roll its functionality into its own offerings so that customers can continue being served?