> We discussed each of our paths to achieving this vision, and while both teams felt confident in their paths, it was obvious that we would move much faster together. The way that each of us has approached this market is different but inherently complementary. And so the conversation became... “What if we merged the companies?”
> Over the next few days, through discussions with Grammarly CEO (Rahul Roy-Chowdhury) and the co-founders (Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko) we started sketching out what a combined company would feel like: how the teams would fit together, where the products could immediately integrate and amplify, etc. And we also discussed the leadership structure, and agreed that I would lead the joint company as CEO.
> With a round of sushi and some sake, we shook hands — excited to work together on the future of AI.
—
The idea that any acquisition, but especially this one, was minted in this fashion is hilarious.
Well, in this case, the new CEO of the combined company is from Coda, so perhaps a little less likely than otherwise...
>> zuck pinged me to say "i'm not sure if this is a good idea yet, but i think maybe facebook should buy instagram, what do you think?" [0]
The next conversations also read as if they were happening over lunch, albeit with lawyers whispering approved language into each participant's ear [1]
[0] https://www.techemails.com/p/instagram-cofounder-on-mark-zuc...
Business people spend their entire day talking about their business, that's literally their job. Sometimes business opportunities come from random discussions. Sometimes they are more like arranged marriages. And just like with marriages, the story that is told to the public might not be the actual story.
This acquisition is concerning because Grammarly is well known for its bad privacy policy and how it's essentially a keylogger. Now that it has access to probably thousands of companies data hosted on Coda is a huge concern.
But it's high time Grammarly evolves itself into some other product or die trying.
… ChatGPT is good at improving grammar, but it doesn’t “understand” what it’s doing (by design), and doesn’t have a complete and consistent ruleset, which is what you want in a grammar checker. Also, grammar and style rules change with time, and you want to have good and precise control of what rules you’re applying.
Hold your beer, I built that https://chatgptwriter.ai
Leadership issue.
They switched from parse trees and rules to LLMs, presumably some things got better and some got worse
Then again, I can't imagine the struggle of having to rely entirely on libraries pre-internet
Curious if anyone here uses it, and if so, what value it provides (I've been bombarded with its ads for years, but could never see what value it provides). Even a quick search of its website gives inanely basic examples (like correcting Ive to I've) [1].
[1] https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047727871...
So yes, fancy autocorrect, but apparently better enough to matter for them.
I don’t pay for it anymore because I am more comfortable in my current company where I am sure my colleagues won’t be bothered by frequent mistakes and misspellings. Also, for the eventual more important text that I want to be grammatically perfect, there is free ChatGPT now.
...and it's not like it improves his grammar or spelling - they're still terrible!
With Grammarly it's right here in the text box as I am typing.
And how does ChatGPT differ?
If anyone else thought of Panic, here's what happened with that Coda: https://panic.com/coda/
Pretty interesting twist. It’s almost as if Coda acquired Grammarly.
A) we acquired a small (2 person) company for the people. Basically paid of their debt and they became employees. They gad experience in our domain space.
B) we acquired our distributer. We make product (hardware and software) and our (exclusive national) distributer went onto the market. We made an offer. We subsumed twice as many staff, and three times the offices.
Fast forward a decade later and the (combined) business has grown a lot, customers are better served, and there is more continuity from "farm to table".
So, from my perspective, your proposal to ban acquisitions seems to be painting with a very broad brush.
Equally, at the macro scale, there are regulatory controls in place. The recent denial of the T-mobile merger being a case in point.
Just going through one right now; can't tell if the sickly sweet, positive executive speak is an act or they honestly believe it.
What's the difference?
For Coda this makes sense to kind of kickstart/boost their AI efforts.
But not immediately clear to me why Grammarly is interested in building their own doc builder tool?
>I am excited to share today that Grammarly agrees to acquire Coda
Whatever cool things Grammarly may do, the brand won’t work for me.
