Only in the start-up world do you call a few months a "journey". But as I'm sure they got very little sleep it probably felt like a journey for them. Cover only launched (invite-only) in late October.
Same for believing in rather mundane things, visions of rather mundane things, and writing a billion paragraphs about a thing only using sentences you could say about anything else, too - leaving the reader with exactly zero information as to what you're actually talking about. Writing as well as reading such blurbs could and should be automated.
I swear term sheets must have a clause that requires you to use an acquisition blog post template.
"When we started FooBar.io $n years ago, we had $VISION_WITH_RAINBOWS_AND_UNICORNS in our young eyes.
...
It’s been an incredible journey and we are proud of what we've accomplished in the last $n years.
...
We were surprised when $BigCo approached us in the spring. But as talks progressed, we realised our magnetic fields were super aligned and in fact we are twins separated at birth, merely waiting to be reunited.
...
(Yes, we were building $mobifotosocioapp for Android, whereas BigCo is an ad retargeting corporation for iOS, so we may look very different, but actually it's turtles all the way down.)
...
With all the free snacks and Rifts now at our disposal, we can march forth with double the speed in achieving our real mission which was always actually about whatever BigCo's mission is right now.
...
None of this would have been possible without you, our amazing users. So, for you, we have a special something.
...
We won't simply admit that we'll be ignoring and soon shutting down your beloved app. Instead, let's pretend that everything's gonna be the same and we'll update you when "something changes" and give you ample time (at least 3 hours) to download your data in the extremely unlikely case that we pull the plug.
...
You guys are the best. Thanks for making us rich. Love from Jo, Flo, Beau, Mo and $obligatory_pet."
"For now, Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here."
tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.
Maybe they weren't making any money. If that's the case, the product would probably die eventually anyway, like Everpix, for instance. I guess that's the issue with these bittersweet acquihires. Tough to tell what the alternative is.
Is anyone aware of a standard promise or "contract" startups can sign with their users that says if we close or get bought and the product is shut down we promise we'll open source it within X days under Y license?
This happens so often it would be great to have a standard and clear expectations.
Likely, and maybe they're going to work on something like "Twitter Home," a new lock screen & experience for the Twitter app only on Android. If done correctly (and not invasively) I can possibly see people using it. Then they'll announce the Cover app is no longer available.
This is yet another example of why all startups should have a responsible sunset pledge[1]. The pledge should contain something along the lines of, "If we shut down, we will make it possible to run an instance of our product." That means open-sourcing server code, writing some minimal docs, and probably building some data export APIs.
I had the idea before starting Floobits (YC S13 yadda yadda), and of course, we've made a pledge: https://floobits.com/pledge
This helps the company as well as customers. People are more likely to adopt your product when they know you'll give them the source code if your company dies.
It's helped in subtle ways that I didn't predict. For example: If I ever think of taking shortcuts or building embarrassingly bad software, I remember that the public will likely see this code one day.
If you run a company, consider making a responsible sunset pledge. If you use a SaaS tool, consider asking that company to make one.
Cover didn't really have customers - their app was "beta" and was free. I don't know that they had any servers or anything is stored online, you don't create an account to use the app. The type of pledge you're advocating wouldn't really make a difference for this app, but I can see where it could be useful in other cases.
This is yet another example of why all startups should have a responsible sunset pledge
Why, exactly?
This probably won't be a popular view on HN, but I think a lot of people complain about companies shutting things down for the sake of complaining.
Cover was a free, beta application with a very limited number of users. There was no personal data saved by it and no future plans announced. For those users Cover will continue to work today like it did yesterday. And yet the top voted comment is complaining about it being shutdown. Pfft!
In general, customers want a supported product (eg, the endless complaints about every single startup bought by a larger company, even when they completely open source their product).
In most cases a pledge like this puts extra restrictions on what a startup can do. I'm not saying screw over your customers if you get bought, but making a pledge is completely different to building some kind of data export facility if it ends up being needed. Why take on challenges that you don't need?
In some cases (typically enterprise focused) some kind of business continuity plan is absolutely appropriate. In many consumer-focused app start ups? Not so much.
Exactly. The thing is that they offered FREE service. They made no money from it (at least that's how this appears). They didn't shut down the app, they didn't just close the whole thing. They gave users fair few months to move to another service. Even if it sucks that such quality app/startup will be probably gone soon, its still much better than just shut things and run.
exporting user's data is absolutely the right thing to do.
About open sourcing the code :
If the acquiring company sees the "existing" product as IP even if they do not see the product/service making (enough?) money - they may consider the "code" as IP.
In such case - the acquired company may not be "legally" allowed to make the code open source.
Damn. This was one of the few apps that made me prefer Android over iOS. It's highly likely it's now going to die (the only thing Twitter gains from this is the team, the app has no relevance to them). It also probably means my one major annoyance with the app won't be fixed. It changes to work settings based on location but I work from home. Was hoping they would add a setting to set it to work between certain hours.
Not sure about the volume key but you can toggle manually. That kind of defeats the purpose a bit though. One of the draws is that it does these things automatically.
The simplicity of it was key. I'd previously been excited about Aviate (admittedly a launcher not a lock screen) but it was much too complex to get working perfectly. Cover showed me the apps it thought I needed but allowed me too easily swipe up to see more. It's 'peek' feature was very useful I found and I also liked it's quick task switching (swipe down from status bar to access most recent apps).
Don't the original investors usually get their investment back from these things? So Twitter pays the investors $1.7M and pays the founders $200K per year as a dev team.
I think the parent was inferring that recouping $1.7M isn't viewed as a success for a VC.
In general I think acquihires are moderate successes for the founders. Not just financially but external validation of their collective skills as a team.
Yeah, that's pretty much the value of a talent acquisition the founders: enough cash and credibility to make things go a lot faster the next time around.
I highly doubt it was that little. I've seen quite a few acquihire term sheets and the payoffs are a lot better than you would think for the founders.
I bet the investors get their money back, the founders of Cover get $2m - $4m each in stock alone (vesting over 4 years of course), and the employees get $500k / year in total comp.
Someone has explained it here a couple of years ago that VCs generally view them as failures as they have investment pools with lifetimes of 7-10 years and each pool is expected to yield something like a 10x profit at the end of the period. There's not much difference between losing their original investment and getting it back as they will have similar effects on the performance figures of the pool at the end of the cycle.
Depending on whether a fund is still in its reinvestment period, they may also not be able to put that money to work - it may automatically go back to the LPs, who aren't generally very happy to just get their money back when they're expecting 25% or higher IRRs.
The $1.7M investment was a seed round (in Oct 2013), with lots of individuals putting money in[1]. If it were bought for say $20M (who knows?) then I'm pretty sure those seed investors would be happy with their 5x to 10x returns (depending on liquidation preferences) in 6 months.
If it were bought for $5M, then not so much. But if it was only $5M on the table I doubt they would have sold that quickly.
Based on "Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter," it's unlikely that it will receive updates, and may get pulled altogether soon.
This is really disappointing news if this acquisition goes the way it's sounding. Cover was a great app and one of the reasons to use Android over iOS (along with Link Bubble, etc.).
At the least, if it gets pulled or falls into abandon, that's opportunity for someone else to fill the spot. There are obvious ways to improve Cover (like picking a time interval for it to default to Work mode--it is pretty bad at detecting Work mode in general IME). It would also be nice if you could customize the number of apps that show up in the app switcher (mainly useful on large devices like a Note 3).
As someone who had recently had to switch to an Android phone (Note3) I'd love to know of other apps beyond cover and Link Bubble that you like. Can you please expand on the "etc." in your first paragraph.
Such a shame. After owning an iPhone for since the first launch, I recently bought a Nexus 5. Cover was one of the first apps I downloaded that showed me the power of Android. Effectively doing what you want with the OS. I wasn't oblivious to it, but here was a nice approach to make my life just that tad bit easier. I showed a lot of friends and they were all impressed. Felt like maybe something that should be baked in Android. Unfortunately, after 2-3 weeks of usage, I gave up after it wouldn't reliably switch home to car or car to work and found I needed to intervene a lot more than I would have liked to. However, I was hopeful this would be smoothed out...guess not now.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Can someone explain what it is/was? This is the first I've heard of it, and the site doesn't appear to have a description. Google's app store is returning a million apps with the word "cover," and none appear to be this.
I really don't connect with the "build a business to sell out" mentality. Cheapens the whole idea of entrepreneurship and self made independence. Maybe it's just me.
It's all the same thing in my mind. Build a business with the idea of selling out to some big corp, or to sell to as many customers as you can. Either way, you're going to be beholden to someone else. I don't begrudge these folks whatsoever.
It was very useful for me to be able to go right from the lockscreen to the app i wanted without the intermediary step of going to the launcher.
It was also very useful how i could just drag a bit on an icon and get a peek of what the app is doing.
It was also useful how from any screen I could drag from the upper-right and get a sort of alt-tab list of recent apps that involved less tapping around than hitting the Android multitasking button and then which running app i wanted.
Never heard of them before. Seems neat, but I was curious about need for so many permissions for a lockscreen and task switching app.
(Several minutes later) Installed it. It fired bunch of network connections right at the startup and doesn't even worked without registering with some cloud service telling me it needs one to just "install" (like I didn't install it already). I really don't get why such app would need cloud junk except for spying^W metadata analysis and/or advertising. Oh, right, an important feature to back up the fact I browse HN in the morning should work as an excuse.
I must say that Cover could go long road to a medium sized company instead of selling. IMO they sold out way to early. The product was great, it looks like they followed Startup spirit and really invested in this. The concept is also pretty nice and they had huge user base. Endless ways to monetize.
Unless they got really good deal this transaction could be premature...
74 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 23.5 ms ] thread"When we started FooBar.io $n years ago, we had $VISION_WITH_RAINBOWS_AND_UNICORNS in our young eyes.
...
It’s been an incredible journey and we are proud of what we've accomplished in the last $n years.
...
We were surprised when $BigCo approached us in the spring. But as talks progressed, we realised our magnetic fields were super aligned and in fact we are twins separated at birth, merely waiting to be reunited.
...
(Yes, we were building $mobifotosocioapp for Android, whereas BigCo is an ad retargeting corporation for iOS, so we may look very different, but actually it's turtles all the way down.)
...
With all the free snacks and Rifts now at our disposal, we can march forth with double the speed in achieving our real mission which was always actually about whatever BigCo's mission is right now.
...
None of this would have been possible without you, our amazing users. So, for you, we have a special something.
...
We won't simply admit that we'll be ignoring and soon shutting down your beloved app. Instead, let's pretend that everything's gonna be the same and we'll update you when "something changes" and give you ample time (at least 3 hours) to download your data in the extremely unlikely case that we pull the plug.
...
You guys are the best. Thanks for making us rich. Love from Jo, Flo, Beau, Mo and $obligatory_pet."
tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.
I think it's the point of the author of the comment here.
This happens so often it would be great to have a standard and clear expectations.
For example, what happens when "Cover" is discontinued, but it got bought for the underlying technology? It needs to be open sourced because of that.
I had the idea before starting Floobits (YC S13 yadda yadda), and of course, we've made a pledge: https://floobits.com/pledge
This helps the company as well as customers. People are more likely to adopt your product when they know you'll give them the source code if your company dies.
It's helped in subtle ways that I didn't predict. For example: If I ever think of taking shortcuts or building embarrassingly bad software, I remember that the public will likely see this code one day.
If you run a company, consider making a responsible sunset pledge. If you use a SaaS tool, consider asking that company to make one.
1. http://geoff.greer.fm/2012/09/19/a-responsible-product-sunse...
Why, exactly?
This probably won't be a popular view on HN, but I think a lot of people complain about companies shutting things down for the sake of complaining.
Cover was a free, beta application with a very limited number of users. There was no personal data saved by it and no future plans announced. For those users Cover will continue to work today like it did yesterday. And yet the top voted comment is complaining about it being shutdown. Pfft!
In general, customers want a supported product (eg, the endless complaints about every single startup bought by a larger company, even when they completely open source their product).
In most cases a pledge like this puts extra restrictions on what a startup can do. I'm not saying screw over your customers if you get bought, but making a pledge is completely different to building some kind of data export facility if it ends up being needed. Why take on challenges that you don't need?
In some cases (typically enterprise focused) some kind of business continuity plan is absolutely appropriate. In many consumer-focused app start ups? Not so much.
About open sourcing the code : If the acquiring company sees the "existing" product as IP even if they do not see the product/service making (enough?) money - they may consider the "code" as IP. In such case - the acquired company may not be "legally" allowed to make the code open source.
How does that usually work?
In general I think acquihires are moderate successes for the founders. Not just financially but external validation of their collective skills as a team.
I bet the investors get their money back, the founders of Cover get $2m - $4m each in stock alone (vesting over 4 years of course), and the employees get $500k / year in total comp.
The $1.7M investment was a seed round (in Oct 2013), with lots of individuals putting money in[1]. If it were bought for say $20M (who knows?) then I'm pretty sure those seed investors would be happy with their 5x to 10x returns (depending on liquidation preferences) in 6 months.
If it were bought for $5M, then not so much. But if it was only $5M on the table I doubt they would have sold that quickly.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/cover-android/
Based on "Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter," it's unlikely that it will receive updates, and may get pulled altogether soon.
At the least, if it gets pulled or falls into abandon, that's opportunity for someone else to fill the spot. There are obvious ways to improve Cover (like picking a time interval for it to default to Work mode--it is pretty bad at detecting Work mode in general IME). It would also be nice if you could customize the number of apps that show up in the app switcher (mainly useful on large devices like a Note 3).
Edit: http://i.imgur.com/ewXHcbp.jpg
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.
I would put money on Cover being a WhatsApp success story in 3yrs. Oh well, there must have been some internal issues we don't know about.
Hope someone steps up quickly to fill the gap!
"Sparrowed!"
(I am imagining it being said in the Strongbad/Teen Girl Squad "Arrow'd!!" voice)
Cover is (was?) a phenomenal addition to my Android experience.
It was also very useful how i could just drag a bit on an icon and get a peek of what the app is doing.
It was also useful how from any screen I could drag from the upper-right and get a sort of alt-tab list of recent apps that involved less tapping around than hitting the Android multitasking button and then which running app i wanted.
(Several minutes later) Installed it. It fired bunch of network connections right at the startup and doesn't even worked without registering with some cloud service telling me it needs one to just "install" (like I didn't install it already). I really don't get why such app would need cloud junk except for spying^W metadata analysis and/or advertising. Oh, right, an important feature to back up the fact I browse HN in the morning should work as an excuse.
Guess, nothing of value was lost, then.
To bad it's going to die :(