Tue 6 Jun 2006
Lots of startup folks live in fear that Google will eat their lunch. Google, the theory goes, has at least 10 brilliant people working on every interesting problem in software and the internet, and they have a gazillion dollars too. They could release the Google “Click Here for a Fart Noise” Toolbar and a hundred thousand people would install it on the first day.
It happened with Google Calendar. It’s happening today with Google Spreadsheet. Boston-area startups Numbler (which is shockingly similar to Google’s spreadsheet, having live collaboration and instant messaging support) and GroupSharp (agruably more generic) are having a heart attack. Or are they?
The optimistic school of thought says it’s a good thing when Big Company A enters your market. It means Big Companies B and C are going to do the same, soon, and what could be easier than acquiring a nimble little startup? It might have kinda worked for HipCal, which was acquired by Plaxo shortly after Google Calendar launched. Of course, we don’t know how the numbers in that deal, leading to comments like this one by Brad Root on TechCrunch:
It’s almost like you could hear the HipCal developers frantically shopping it around to as many people as possible, spurred on by Google Calendar’s release.
HipCal Dev 1: Dude, Google Calendar.
HipCal Dev 2: Yeah, man.
HipCal Dev 1: If the highest anyone will offer us is $1,000, we’ll take it. OK?
HipCal Dev 2: I’m not a moron, man.
Plaxo: Hey guys, we have absolutely no use for your product since our own guys could make something like HipCal in a few hours (and it wouldn’t freak out come day-light savings time and duplicate everyone’s events), but we understand your plight and we’ve personally pooled together about $900.
HipCal Devs (Uninamously): We’ll take it!
What do you think? Will the BigCos be calling with acquisition offers, or developer job offers?
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June 6th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Hope you have checked out http://zohosheet.com .
June 7th, 2006 at 7:29 am
Once upon a time people went into a panic when Microsoft entered a market. But the Microsoft entering a market was not the kiss of death for a desktop app - Intuit (taxes, quickbooks) being of course the stand out example but there were many others.
It takes more than just a great product to out compete an elephant but if not impossible.
If anything, Google’s Microsoft obession is likely to be their undoing. This is one area where I’m in agreement with
Henry Blodget
June 8th, 2006 at 11:39 am
The other side is that the Big Company does all the marketing to convince people that there is a need for Product A, then the nimble competitor comes in with a better implementation and *BANG* profit!
June 20th, 2006 at 9:03 am
How about if google comes up with a search engine that finds what I am actually looking for instead of 100 links to unrelated sites that just slipped google cash!!! Since the IPO I have found the site useless. Yahoo is getting as bad.
August 16th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
[...] Local Y-Combinator startup Kiko is up for sale on eBay. Having made fun of calendaring apps in the past, this isn’t exactly shocking, and you have to respect the Kiko founders’ willingness to let go. For sale is the domain name, the web hosting account, and all Kiko intellectual property including the software; as well as the option to buy a week of consulting time from the founders for $1500. Now the big question is whether it’ll sell. Most of the recent, smaller tech acquisitions seem to be thinly veiled signing bonuses. Perhaps owning upcoming.org isn’t that important to Yahoo! — they could rebuild it in a few weeks — but it is a sign of hiring a highly competent person. As alternative to recruiters that charge $7000 per hire, an acquisition that binds a small group of people to your company for 3-5 years while their stock vests could easily be worth several tens of thousands. But without the option to acquire the Kiko team, I’m not sure who would buy their domain and software. [...]
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