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Dropbox acquires Hackpad (YC W12)
- bitsweet 12y agoHackpad is pretty awesome. Glad it will still be running after the acquisition. Congrats Alex & Igor
- orik 12y agoHackpad and Loom? Dropbox is on a bit of a feeding frenzy.
- ihuman 12y agoAt least Hackpad is staying open (for now). Loom is no longer allowing new signups, and is shutting down completely next month.
- rhizome 12y agoA bit of goodwill generation after the whole Condoleeza thing.
- api 12y agoSo did they dump the Bushevik war-pushing bitch or not?
- mhurron 12y agoThey probably don't need too, I doubt much of a stink was raised. EDIT: Oh my, people are upset that I stated I don't see much of an issue being made over Rices appointment.
- bendoernberg 12y agoClassy
- api 12y agoClassier than starting a war for no discernible rational reason. Edit: just to make my position clear: this goes beyond Democrat/Republican ideologies or politics and into the realm of criminality. This is in a wholly different league from the Mozilla CEO gay rights controversy. Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the Bush administration cynically exploited 9/11 to launch a completely unrelated war for no discernible reason other than to enrich their pals in the defense contracting industry and perhaps to pursue some crackpot political theories that were never publicly disclosed or discussed. These people lied us into a war, and every indication seems to be that they did so intentionally. They committed fraud at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money and (conservatively) tens of thousands of innocent human lives. They are white collar criminals with blood on their hands and belong in prison. Am I wrong? They've had ample time to explain themselves and have failed to do so. I think it's because they can't. Anyone want to link to a rational and defensible explanation for the Iraq war that does not reference crackpot baloney from a right-wing rag like Pajamas Media or Fox News? (Just so you know this isn't totally partisan... I'd say the same thing if a similar thing were done based on information from AlterNet or TruthOut or some other lefty rag. By rag I mean 'clearly biased to the point of being untrustworthy news source.') What would you think if Dropbox had recruited -- say -- a Bernie Madoff type who happened to "get off" on a technicality for running a Ponzi scheme? What Bernie did did not (directly) kill anyone. I'm very curious to see how the stock of a company that recruits crooks to their board does on the open market.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago> Just so you know this isn't totally partisan I've never even been to America, and I know fellow hackers who have also cancelled their Dropbox account over this. The Iraq war and American surveillance are not partisan topics. I'll be advising against Dropbox (and their new acquisitions) wherever I have the chance/influence.
- api 12y agoIraq is far worse than mass surveillance, though the latter is definitely a problem. At least in the case of surveillance the supporters have made something like a rational case for why they think it's needed, and the topic is being debated as it should be. It also usually doesn't involve killing people, and the cost is far lower. I'm honestly not familiar with anything in recent American history as flagrant as the Iraq fraud. Even Vietnam made sense from a certain point of view and its supporters made their case and it was debated. It ended up being a bad idea, but it was technically a lot more democratic and less fraudulent. Some of its supporters have even admitted they were wrong. My darkest suspicion about Iraq is that the reasons are either too corrupt or insane to even discuss... either flat-out premeditated fraud or something in complete fruitcake territory like trying to initiate the millennial Christian eschaton. The fact that nobody has even tried to make a coherent well-articulated case that doesn't insult my intelligence makes me wonder.
- nymph 12y agoGrow up, please. The b-word was completely uncalled for.
- api 12y agoSo was a trillion dollars in fraud. "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said."
- jkelsey 12y agoMost people here who don't have good opinion of Condoleezza Rice (myself included) because of the significant parts she played during the Bush Administration probably agree with the points you're making. However, gender has nothing to do with it. Building your criticisms on top of misogyny throws your entire motivations into question. The foundation has already rotted out and the rest of your arguments fell through; it's doubtful that most here are taking you seriously at this point.
- api 12y agoI sort of agree, believe it or not. At the same time, I must confess to harboring a dislike for polite civilized discourse in at least a couple circumstances. The films in the Hunger Games series (especially the first) really nail something: the way barbarians hide behind polite rhetoric and noble behavior. The brilliance of things like the original punk movement -- and comedians since time immemorial -- has been to mock that, to discuss the piggish behavior of corrupt elite deviants in appropriately piggish language. Condi's behavior in the 2000s I believe merits a little mockery for the upper-class rules of conduct that people like her hide behind. Of course I've had a mild personal disdain for the trappings of polite society ever since I did a stint in business consulting and watched the way white collar sociopaths conduct themselves in the real world. I'd rather count myself among the trash, thank you very much.
- 12y ago
- dang 12y agoThe combination of inflammatory, if not abusive, language with glib one-liner sarcasm makes for a particularly bad Hacker News comment. All: When you see a comment that is truly bad for HN, you can flag it by clicking "link" to go to the item page and then "flag" at the top. We monitor those flags and take action based on them. (My point here has nothing to do with the Iraq War.)
- mbesto 12y agoThey are prepping for an IPO. (note - for anyone not familiar, a common strategy just before an IPO is to cash out on a large chunk of capital so as to sweeten the deal for the much larger public capital raise)
- prostoalex 12y agoMmm, how does having less capital on hand benefit the company that's approaching public markets for financing?
- rattray 12y agoI think this makes a lot of sense for Dropbox. Documents are moving online, which means people won't need Dropbox for them. I have a half-written blog post from months ago on why Dropbox should by Quip for this reason - they should be trying to leapfrog Google Docs to stay competitive. Best of luck to the team!
- subdane 12y agoBox made the Writely founder VP Eng for precisely this reason.
- jdp23 12y agoCongrats Alex and Igore, Hackpad is really impressive. Great move by Dropbox. What's the state of the opensource alternatives? Etherpad development seems to have plateaued a while ago.
- 0x006A 12y agoWhat features are missing in Etherpad for you?
- jdp23 12y agoThe ones Hackpad added :) And, raw Etherpad has a lot of usability problems as well. Plus it's challenging to integrate it with an outside authentication mechanism. I've looked at the code some and while on the one hand this could all be added, it's a clunky base. Node's come a long way since etherpad lite started.
- 0x006A 12y agoCould not find any overview of what features hackpad adds exactly (besides requiring a login). Has anyone made an overview?
- jdp23 12y agoThe "How to use Hackpad" page has an overview [1] -- unfortunately it's not responding right now :| For me, three big ones are the checklists, @'s to refer to people and pads, and the much better display of who's changed things. [1] https://hackpad.com/How-to-use-Hackpad-mlZvEsJykI5 https://hackpad.com/How-to-use-Hackpad-mlZvEsJykI5
- unhush 12y agoHackpad is an Etherpad fork, so you might conclude that someone has already done the work of wrangling Etherpade code and making those patches. ;)
- 12y ago
- amykhar 12y agoJust a little side note. I really wish people would give an overview of what their service is or does in press releases like this. Quite often, I see 'Facebook bought x' or 'Dropbox bought y' and I click to see what it is, and if I would want to use it. More often than not, there's no little blurb that lets me know what their product even does.
- cshimmin 12y agoAgreed... often these sorts of headlines are the first time I've ever heard of "x" or "y". And in many cases, it's probably the biggest publicity hit these companies have ever received. Except perhaps in the case of an acquihire; if they're going to pull the plug on the service, there's not much point in advertising what you can't have ;)
- wehadfun 12y agoi would upvote this twice. It is also really bad when all the links point back to the blog
- kiwibulldog 12y agoSold did a good job on this... See "What was Sold?" http://www.usesold.com http://www.usesold.com
- orph 12y agoLuckily Hackpad isn't going anywhere so you can go ahead and sign up to try it out :)
- Angostura 12y agoCould anyone tell me what it is? Even the test drive link on their home page offers no clues without signing up, and the blog isn't responding.
- dbarlett 12y agoSort of a hybrid of Google Docs and a wiki. Example from a recent hackathon: https://hackpad.com/Dataset-Wish-List-MeMfcb91BLL https://hackpad.com/Dataset-Wish-List-MeMfcb91BLL
- xianshou 12y agoAcquihires are pretty much the default hiring method these days, so "victory" now requires keeping the product active after acquisition. A toast, then, to Hackpad. Well done.
- opendais 12y agoIs the human capital pool really that tight in the Valley?
- api 12y agoGiven that a 2br apartment is $8000/month in some places, yeah.
- opendais 12y agoAm I the only one that immediately sees that as a sign of 'Maybe people should setup satellite offices and stop recruiting in the Valley due to costs'?
- mimiflynn 12y agoIs remote work a viable option?
- iron_ball 12y agoNever seems to be.
- opendais 12y agoI'm sure for some companies. Personally, I have to deal with too many physical things that require my presence for it to be viable.
- dchuk 12y agoSure, it just takes a certain type of employee. Needs to be someone who values autonomy and is working on things that don't need two guys on a keyword in front of a monitor trying to figure out.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoOne of those 'no brainer' moves, glad to see it got done. Love the irony of a YC exit as an acquisition by a YC company :-) Congratulations, hackpad is an awesome product and the combination with Dropbox has excellent potential.
- yukichan 12y ago> Love the irony of a YC exit as an acquisition by a YC company :-) Honest question, why is that irony?
- ChuckMcM 12y agoFair question, perhaps recursion? I could imagine an unscrupulous person creating the 'mega-startup-accellerator' and having as its first round a startup they fund which is required to acquire half the startups of each subsequent round. Thus creating the worlds most successful startup accelerator where nearly half the companies are guaranteed to have an "exit". In this case it is more like having the kids grow up and being successful than anything nefarious. And YC gets to put 'acquired Apr '14' in the box of outcomes.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Numberwang 12y agoHackpad seems down at the moment. Wouldn't trust them with my documents.
- colmvp 12y agoSnarky comment aside, we've used them for many months and have had a fantastic experience on it. Great for collaboration is significantly better than Google docs/e-mails.
- r4m 12y agoIt's not snarky to bring up the fact that their site is down and point out that that reflects poorly on their service. It's a perfectly valid criticism.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- npizzolato 12y agoCan you explain why it's better then Google Docs? I've never heard of Hackpad before, but from their front page, it seems like it fills exactly the same space as Google Docs (collaborative, real-time editing), with little information about why they're better.
- unhush 12y agoThey don't do a great job of advertising why they're better, but semi-sensible keybindings (similar to Github markdown) and code syntax highlighting sold it for me. Also doesn't require a Google account to use. Also auto-embeds photos/videos/soundcloud when you paste in links and has prettier UI. Not sure if Google does the former.
- brianr 12y agoWe love Hackpad at Rollbar. Congrats guys, keep up the good work!
- UVB-76 12y agoThis is how it was always going to go. Dropbox's core business is unsustainable, and they can't compete long-term with rivals like Google and Apple. They're flailing in all directions at the moment; pushing for the enterprise/government market with the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, now burning a load of money acquiring businesses offering tangential services, in the hope they can diversify their business model. It won't work. Acquisitions like this never go to plan, and they are almost always a waste of money.
- rattray 12y agoI agree and disagree; file sharing alone was never going to be "enough". But even Search wasn't enough for Google; it's not wrong for companies to expand their offerings. In the case of Dropbox, they need to go head-to-head with the Drive/Docs/Apps provision coming from Google. They're not as well-positioned to do that as they could be, and I'm not sure hackpad will be close to sufficient to get them there. But it's certainly a step in the right direction; documents are moving off the hard drive entirely, and there's no reason Dropbox can't help with the move to the cloud by expanding their offerings with moves exactly like this one.
- tomhschmidt 12y agoThe difference is that Search was enough to sustain Google and still is its cash cow. They branched out due to interest, not out of necessity. Dropbox's current business will not sustain and they NEED these acquisitions to find viable business models for the long haul. What I don't understand about these acquisitions is how tangential it is to Dropbox's original value prop of being a "dumb" folder that would magically sync all of your files and stay out of your way. Now, instead of Dropbox passively running in the background and letting me do my thing, they want me to start actively engaging with the software. I agree that it's necessary and overall a smart move, but still a very large and difficult pivot to make.
- kenjackson 12y agoAdvertising I'd their cash cow. Google's original business model was enterprise search. It took them a bit of time to land on their current business model m
- matthuggins 12y agoIs the landing page terribly jittery for anyone else? I can barely tell what's going on and scrolling takes a bit to respond.
- unhush 12y agoIt is often like that in Firefox.
- elliott34 12y agohahahaha ctl-f for "journey"
- quadrangle 12y agoUgh, Etherpad shoulda been copyleft. Hackpad is a travesty for being so non-transparent that they're just a tweak of Etherpad.
- yeukhon 12y agoI've only seen HackPad and my impression is it was built upon Etherpad. Someone confirm that? I don't want to sign up a new account just to find out.
- quadrangle 12y agoThat was my point. Hackpad is Etherpad and people should use Etherpad more instead and work to improve it so we have better free software.
- teacup50 12y agoWhy should it be copyleft? If people want to overpay for acquihire teams that add very little value, licensing doesn't seem like the problem.
- kunle 12y agoThis is an exceptional deal. The hackpad team is awesome, the product makes sense, and I remember thinking after Box bought Crocodoc, that Hackpad would make sense as part of Dropbox, especially as it went enterprise and started competing with Word, Google Docs etc. Congrats to the Hackpad team and to Dropbox here. Solid deal.
- unhush 12y agoMy favorite parts of Hackpad were the features that weren't intended to have mass-market appeal (ex: code syntax highlighting, markdown-inspired keybindings, ability to easily create/delete accounts). These will likely be gone in whatever notes product that Dropbox makes with the help of the (wonderful) Hackpad team. So for me, this acquisition seems like a loss. I realize that Hackpad has said that they'll keep the site alive, but I expect it to be less functional if everyone maintaining it is a full-time Dropbox employee now. Fingers crossed that there will someday exist a good collaborative doc editor for hackers that doesn't fall over when >10 people connect or require a Google account! Full disclosure: I have written code and done security auditing for Hackpad. I tried to get them to add vim mode. :)
- matthewcford 12y agoSounds like redirection for the Condoleezza Rice fallout.
- matthewcford 12y agodo downvoters have anything to add? I think it's a valid comment given the timing of these acquisitions.
- dduvnjak 12y agoWell this is not very promissing: http://i.imgur.com/1vCvZzI.png http://i.imgur.com/1vCvZzI.png
- deciplex 12y agoFor those who missed it, this is a company that also acquired Condoleeza Rice on its board recently. Yes, Dropbox, aka 'next' according to a few NSA slides that have been making the rounds, is now taking advice from Condoleeza 'Warrantless Wiretapping' Rice. Run away. Sprint.
- Shank 12y agoPlease don't shut it down, like Readmill. I use Hackpad daily, and I'd hate to see it go by the way of Readmill and shoved down the toilet.
- stillsut 12y agoDropBox looks like the company that walks on four legs, then two, then three. First, it was just a smart choice to replace emailing yourself files. Pretty soon, it will be an IBM, where some sales guy will convince your boss that the DropBox Q1000 is what your business needs for synergy and you'll end up having to use it.