Sure, there are also examples where the startups did not exactly die Dropbox/Box Vs Big Tech storage.
This is a great read about the rise and fall of WordPerfect. http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
The latter had too much pride in their collection of DOS printer drivers, but what really killed them was releasing something that passed the bar of not crashing, but would per a lawyer I worked with regularly drop all your tables and figures to the bottom of the document. Borland was slow to get their stuff working on Windows, was late to bundling an Office equivalent according to a marketing guy from there I once worked with, and had the bad portent of the edifice complex: http://www.krjda.com/Sites/BorlandInfo1.html
To this day, well it's after they started going beyond their start in computer languages, their 808x C compiler for example blew away the competition when it finally launched, we ding Microsoft for their quality problems, but especially in the days Gates ran it one of the "secrets" of their success was writing software that basically worked, didn't crash on you etc. This makes it easy to beat competitors who lose that ability, or aren't as good at it.
Actually, this bet was made because Microsoft told Lotus OS/2 is the future. They developed a very nice spreadsheet on OS/2, but we know how that ended.
While Lotus was focusing on OS/2, M/S created their spreadsheet for Windows in secret and stole the market. Lotus did not have the resources to develop on 2 different platforms.
This is from people I knew who were high up in Lotus. Another reason to never trust M/S now that they "like Linux". :)
That gave them a couple of years when Microsoft applications could do things on standard customer machines that their competitors couldn't do.
That one deliverable was worth more than MR has cost up to this point.
It was a viable competitor of Microsoft word in the Ms/DOS era, but did not manage the transition to the windows era.
Travel planning agencies. Print media, especially local newspapers. Traveler’s guides & maps.
Small niche tech industries being consumed by more general products; i.e., smartphones reducing to irrelevance dedicated GPS devices, MP3 players, DVD players, calculators, landline phones, and point-and-shoot cameras.
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/tt/podcast/20vc-ripplings-parker-...
I don't feel it's deserved even though I worked for an acquired company that certainly did fail because of their leadership—I think we were the exception though. For Mulesoft, Tableau, Quip: I don't think it's clear these would be successful companies on their own.
They paid a ton of money for Slack and need to protect that investment.
Is there a clear example of Salesforce failing at an acquisition? Or do people see the examples I gave above differently than I do?
It’ll never get better, the smart people working on it quit and go elsewhere.
Slack is the wedge the Salesforce product team is using to reinvent itself.
Netscape Navigator VS MS IE
Also see how Friendster failed after the VC types ousted the founder and focused on doing deals with other companies, were not interested in reports from those below them that it was taking tens of minutes to even log onto the site.
Cutler had already delivered an enterprise kernel that carved a market out of IBM. Windows NT was likewise going to rip market share away from anyone in conflict with Microsoft.
I don't know the exact timing when Microsoft dumped Xenix, but I know that it was close.
Snapchat is probably a good example of a company that made the right move by not being acquired.
Continues my theme that a lot of these examples start with a failure by a company.
I think a lot of times they would rather just buy the company than hope that they can somehow be more innovative.
Maybe Facebook/Instagram vs Snapchat?
Microsoft is making money hand over fist on Office365.
Every game market platform vs Steam.
Same for games - gog, epic store, humble store, ms store. You may not like them, but they're around and booming.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/4/18651190/apple-ios-13-mac-...
Docker had a lot of problems, but it didn't help that they had made bets in orchestration and then the industry largely converged on kubernetes instead of their products.
