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0 pointsnostrademons3y ago0 comments

Yeah. It doesn't really work all that well. Xerox tried it with Xerox PARC, Digital with Western Digital, AT&T with Bell Labs, Yahoo with Yahoo Brickhouse, IBM with their PC division, Google with Google X & Alphabet & DeepMind, etc.

Being hungry and scrappy seems to be a necessary precondition for bringing innovative products to market. If you don't naturally come from hungry & scrappy conditions (eg. Gates, Zuckerburg, Bezos, PG), being in an environment where you're surrounded by hungry & scrappy people seems to be necessary.

For that matter, a number of extremely well-resourced startups (eg Color, Juicero, WebVan, Secret, Pets.com, Theranos, WeWork) have failed in spectacular ways. Being well-resourced seems to be an anti-success criteria even for independent companies.

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davidthewatson3y ago· 2 in thread

That may have been true in the 70's and 80's. However, I worked for a 2000 person (startup) software company in the 90's that was acquired at 1.8B, another 4000 person (startup) software company in the 90's that was acquired at 3.4B, and then a few years ago, the acquirer of both was itself acquired for 18B.

I survived ALL the layoffs somehow. Boots on the ground agrees with "doesn't really work all that well" but the people collecting rents keep collecting. Given the size all of these received significant DOJ reviews though the only detail I remember is basketball sized court rooms filled with printed paper for the depositions. I'm sure they burned down the Amazon to print all that legalese, speaking of scaling problems.

ricktdotorg3y ago

buyout bingo!

i'm thinking:

- Lotus

- Macromedia

- CA

edit: i take it all back! my memory is not as good as i thought it was re: software companies. i will leave up my sorry list as penance for my crappy recent tech history skills.

davidthewatson3y ago

Thanks for the comment. Chortle. That's hilarious.

Indeed, you are right on: Legent, Platinum, CA, and Broadcom in order from little fish to big. CA was the second largest software company in the world behind Microsoft then.

The weird part you couldn't see from this telling is that I worked in the Legent office in Pittsburgh, moved to Boston post-CA acquisition and worked in the CA office in Andover. Resigned and went to Platinum in Burlington. Moved to Seattle. Second CA acquisition in 5 years. I should have quit while I was ahead. Moved back to Pittsburgh. Worked in the exact same office I'd worked in 5 years earlier with the same crew. Weird feeling is a mild understatement. I still know people who work for Broadcom now. I should reach out.

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pneumonic3y ago· 1 in thread

> Digital with Western Digital

Digital (DEC) had no substantial connection with Western Digital; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital#History

nostrademonsOP3y ago

I got the name wrong; officially it was Digital's Western Research Lab [1], hence colloquially "Western Digital".

[1] https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10275038...

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