I see a lot of undeserved negativity here for what I'm sure is an exciting time for the Cover guys. Let's not piss on their parade. I say congratulations, I hope you guys made a bit of cash, had a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy working on interesting projects at Twitter!
It's not undeserved if a product you really liked is effectively deadpooled. It's possible to be both happy for the team that made it but also lament the thing you lost. That people are commenting more on the latter, tells me that this product must have been pretty good.
It's just the fundamental bipolar nature of Hacker News. For the VC side, a successful exit is the goal. For the programming side, a successful product is the goal.
An acquihire is not a success it's a failure, and instead of being excited, I'm sure the feeling is more like being resigned to at least having a place to go after closing the doors. It's sad too because their product is ace.
You have no idea how they feel about their acquisition and to project your negativity on their situation is a mean thing to do. For all you know they could be popping champagne bottles and eating chicken wings and you're being a debbie downer.
I don't know how they feel but if they're popping champaign bottles after abandoning their product and their users then I don't give a shit how they feel.
I do understand the situation better than most however because I've been there in a startup when the end is there and you're faced with acquisition to hire talent or closing the doors. You face it every day as time runs out and your runway shrinks. You face it a thousand times until you finally make a decision you were avoiding for a long time. It's not fun. So if these guys are happy it's probably because a weight has been lifted of their chest, not because they succeeded.
Without knowing the founders' goal when they set out how can you reasonably conclude that they failed? They built a product that was enjoyed by thousands of users. I'd say they succeeded.
There are different types of aquihires. Those that happen quickly, in which a fresh, innovative company is offered a large-to-them sum of money and cashes in their chips right away. And those that happen at the end of life of a company, when they are running out of money, and it's just a positive way to spin the failure. I guess this could be either but to me it seems to be the former, not the latter.
