Six Apart acquires and shuts down Pownce

http://venturebeat.com/2008/12/01/six-apart-acquires-and-shuts-down-pownce/

by jmorin007 • 18 years ago

100 148 18 years ago

venturebeat.com

azharcs• 18 years ago

oh, there goes another twitter-killer.

jonknee2• 18 years ago

Let's hope it wasn't for the programming talent...

http://leahculver.com/2008/11/25/couchdb-documents-python-ob...

http://leahculver.com/2007/04/19/star-ratings/

jonursenbach• 18 years ago

Yeah aside from the programming "talent", I'm quite perplexed as to the reason of this acquisition. Last I checked, Pownce wasn't competing with any SixApart services.

unalone17• 18 years ago

I have some sympathy towards Leah, because I'm not an experienced coder myself, and I'm also working on a start-up.

While I thought Pownce was useless and never used it myself, it was a good-looking product and it had a nice layout. Six Apart would do well to learn from the Pownce team about making a pretty product.

ojbyrne7• 18 years ago

I think that "good-looking" and nice layout were both courtesy of Daniel Burka, and he's not going to SA.

crabapple5• 18 years ago

I'm not an experienced coder myself, and I'm also working on a start-up.

stop wasting the precious hours of your life

kirse• 18 years ago

Ouch, what a burn. Just curious, what companies have you built and sold?

I tried to check your profile but it was empty.

jrnkntl• 18 years ago

That's just lousy. Can't someone say the soup tastes like shit in some restaurant when all he can do in the kitchen himself is boil some water?

strlen9• 18 years ago

that's a non-sequitir. the original parent was talking technical talent (or lack thereof), not ability to build/flip a website.

the parent is disputing whether the acquisition for "the talent" in this case makes sense: your rebuttal here seems to be circular "6a acquired pownce because pownce founders are talented. pownce founders are talented, because they made something that got acquired by 6a".

cglee3• 18 years ago

Just wanted to point out that I've seen the karma point of this post bounce up and down from 3points to negative 2 and, as of this writing, is sitting at 1 point. Obviously, this post is a lot more interesting than other 1pointers who haven't received any votes in either direction. It would be interesting to show a total number of votes for the comment.

pxlpshr2• 18 years ago

You're right, it was for the get-it-done talent that so few people actually have... developers are a dime a dozen. Stop glorifying yourself.

allenbrunson2• 18 years ago

okay, i'm going to take the unpopular opinion here (based on the karma votes i see in this thread), and say that those two linked blog entries show a profound lack of programming ability. since when is it wrong to expect a programmer to be good at programming?

MisterMerkin2• 18 years ago

I wish I had downmod right now. Go back to reddit you comment troll.

johnrob• 18 years ago

Just goes to show that startups are more about making stuff people want than about technical ability.

raffi• 18 years ago

I'm learning this very fast (and the hard way unfortunately). I launched two technically deep projects to no response. Then I spent a week putting together a hack and people started buying.

neilc• 18 years ago

Was Pounce really "stuff people want"? Without knowing the terms of the Pounce acquisition, it's hard to say whether this is closer to success or failure. SixApart certainly aren't buying Pounce because of the quality/popularity of their product.

petercooper10• 18 years ago

You are right, but I don't see how that answers the GP posters' point. If Pownce was purchased just to be shut down, then I doubt very many people wanted it to make it economically viable.

calambrac• 18 years ago

Sure, Pownce is no localeater.com or Mobile Drudge Report, but cut her some slack, huh?

utnick• 18 years ago

Um, These 2 blog posts really aren't bad.

So she isn't the next guido van rossum, but if any of us ( maybe even guido ) posted our thoughts, code examples, and solutions on a blog there would be many examples of less than ideal or poor code.

breck• 18 years ago

http://www.linkrap.com/teddyquote

gcheong2• 18 years ago

I don't think you can judge a person's ability based on a couple minor things like these. I applaud her honesty and willingness to put herself out there and the fact that she got things out the door. A lot of developers I know would rather chew off their left leg before admitting to a mistake or flaw in their coding much less have the balls to publish it.

aswanson• 18 years ago

What was wrong with the CouchDBObject?

Timothee• 18 years ago

FYI, she updated the code linked in her post after some comments. You can find some bites of the original code in the comments though.

astrec4• 18 years ago

It used exec instead of setattr/getattr.

brandonkm• 18 years ago

Will be interesting to see what six apart does after this transaction. Seems like Pownce was always a "me too" web app that got some hype from being an idea of Kevin Rose. Its still a cool and useful app, just never had the critical mass to overtake twitter or become a real force in the micro blogging space. Despite this Pownce was a solid django web app, and its always good to see those out there.

shafqat2• 18 years ago

We're in the process of converting NewsCred to Django. We thought we'd be joining Pownce as one of the few larger-ish startups using Django, but looks like we'll be going at it alone. I was surprised to see the biggest team of Django developers was 10!

aston• 18 years ago

Disqus is Django. Don't lose the faith.

crabapple5• 18 years ago

shutdowns like this are going to be common. 90% of existing websites have no viable chance of being self-sustaining by ads or subscriptions...but this shouldn't surprise anyone, at some point, a near-frictionless model coupled with strong winner-take-all economics is bound to result in a few dominant players choking off nearly everything else

axod4• 18 years ago

I disagree. Creating a website/webapp is ridiculously cheap IF you do it well. There's no barrier for entry. Anyone in their bedroom could be the next twitter on a shoestring.

Creating a website teaches you a lot, and is a lot of fun.

elviejo• 18 years ago

Yeap twitter doesn't make any profit.

A model worthy of emulation indeed.

danw• 18 years ago

Any one know if Pownce was profitable? They've had ads from the very beginning and there are pro accounts, it would be interesting to know how effective these revenue streams were.

thomasswift• 18 years ago

I'd be interested in a general sale price.

diego• 18 years ago

Judging from their traffic, any revenues must have been negligible.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pownce.com

Jem• 18 years ago

Alexa has never been a good measure of traffic.

My blog has a much higher Alexa rank than pownce but has half the unique hits (based on numbers given above). I skewed my rank myself using the SearchStatus plugin for Firefox.

webwright3• 18 years ago

Almost certainly not. 200k uniques per month (from Compete.com). Call it 3 page views per person (average). 600k page views. They charge $3/CPM for ads (that's $3/1000 views). Say they average showing 2 ads on every page view (I doubt they have that much paid inventory, but pretend they do). That's $6 earned for every 1000 page views, or $3600 per month. Double or triple any of the numbers in the formula and I still think you aren't in the ballpark.

These are pure wag #s, of course.

On the cost side, say that 1 fully loaded dev on starvation wages in the Valley costs $10k/mo (taxes, benefits, costs on top of an $80k/yr salary). Hard to tell with their about page, but it looks like they have 3ish FTEs. Add in office (dunno), servers (?), contract folks (legal, accounting, etc), and I bet you have a burn rate of $30k-70k/mo. If they are getting paid market rate, on the high side of that.

jamiequint• 18 years ago

What are you calculating as dev costs?

I've found that good healthcare + FICA + SECA + 401k costs about 15%-20% overhead on salary, not anywhere near 50%. ($120k/$80k = 1.5)

In any case, I agree with the general analysis.

petercooper10• 18 years ago

The male median income in Santa Clara County is $56,240. 42% above median is "starvation wages"? Even the median income in Palo Alto is only about $90k.

callmeed3• 18 years ago

Here's what really bugs me: 2 months ago, Leah was on the cover of Inc Magazine and part of their "cool, determined, under 30" feature. They quoted the NY Times assessment that Pownce is "one of the hottest start-ups in the valley".

Why is it so hard for the media (print and web) to cover technology start-ups and founders that are actually changing the world and/or making a profit?

Are you telling me that 3 months ago the Inc editors saw Pounce as some huge, valley juggernaut–and now it's shut down? Or did they just have that much trouble finding good under-30 entrepreneurs?

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081001/

ojbyrne7• 18 years ago

Professional PR gets you into Inc. But it also increases your burn rate.

petercooper10• 18 years ago

Or social connections. Given Kevin Rose's involvement, it was next to impossible for Pownce not to get more press than it deserved.

petercooper10• 18 years ago

If you're connected, you get featured.

There are plenty of folks out there (even young folks, say 20-30) who are making millions each year from businesses they're not shouting about. They don't get the same sort of self-serving press these digital socialites get, but they're still raking in the dough and having real success.

Entrepreneurs have to make a decision. They can either be part of the in-set and get a constant ego boost from the press, or they can just get on with running their business. The smartest people choose the latter.

callmeed3• 18 years ago

Yeah, I guess you're right. I'm actually in the latter camp myself (although I'm not < 30 anymore).

I'm honestly not bugged personally about any lack of press. Having a successful company with no press is much better than the opposite (like you said).

I think my main beef is with the press itself (not the companies). I enjoy reading Inc mag ... but I was suspect as soon as that issue dropped in my mailbox. I knew Pownce wasn't "hot" and that it probably wouldn't last. Aren't they worried about looking stupid when crap like this happens?

I wish a Inc (or someone) would send 1 good journalist and 1 good photographer together on a road trip to profile a dozen tech startups that (a) aren't in NYC or the Valley, (b) have substantial revenue or growth and (c) haven't set out to be the "Next [INSERT UNPROFITABLE SOCIAL NETWORK/UTILITY]" ... it would actually be an educational and interesting read.

strlen9• 18 years ago

If you wonder about feature articles, read this: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

gcheong2• 18 years ago

It's Kevin Rose's Internet; we're just using it.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/keeevviin.html

GHFigs• 18 years ago

1) I can't believe I clicked that link. 2) There is no way that guy is 6 feet tall.

ojbyrne7• 18 years ago

Random factoid. All of the people in those pictures are employees. That supports a totally different interpretation.

eventhough3• 18 years ago

Leah Culver is hot. Problem solved.

sh1mmer2• 18 years ago

I know Leah and she is also sick of comments like that.

Aside from being one of the lead engineers on Pownce she wrote parts of the OAuth spec as well as the standard Python implementation.

Why not comment on her engineering talents instead?

ssharp• 18 years ago

She is only hot by geek culture standards. She's a 6.5, 7 tops. Same thing with Sarah Lacey.

ComputerGuru• 18 years ago

Anyone have any insight on how exactly Six Part benefits by closing down Pownce? If Twitter bought Pownce to kill it, I'd understand... but what's in this for Six Apart?

petercooper10• 18 years ago

They get the people. Stopping Pownce means those new hires won't be working on Pownce and they can be doing whatever 6A wants.

Personally, I think this "acquisition" is a hiring technique. Instead of making Pownce look like a failure, 6A acquires it and shuts it down - the creators then look like heroes. If 6A had got them to shut it down and then hired them, they'd look like quitters running away to cushy jobs instead of being devoted to their startup. An acquisition makes it look a lot nicer in PR terms for both parties.

gaius2• 18 years ago

Aquisitions for people to put them to work on something completely different rarely make sense, unless you know for a fact up front that the key players are just as bought into the acquirers idea as they are into their own.

blasdel• 18 years ago

They get to pretend to be relevant again.

They get shiny PR-magnet people as employees, halfheartedly using Vox.

ojbyrne7• 18 years ago

I'd bet they had investors in common (Ron Conway?) who put pressure on SA to let them save some of their balance sheet and some of their face.

As an ancient example, that's how it went with Philip Greenspun's ars Digita and their asset sale to Redhat.

Haskell• 18 years ago

Looking at the comments, I have only one thought: Pownce was thrown to the sharks!

sgoraya• 18 years ago

To restate the obvious, its definitely a great thing that they got acquired, so congrats to the pownce team.

However, my brief experience with the app was to create an account, login 2-3 times afterward and then never touch it again. I was surprised, like a lot of other people, about the amount of press they were getting for such a mediocre app.

greatreorx• 18 years ago

I always thought Pownce was a solid product. Design, UI/UX, the site copy and marketing - overall I thought it was really well done. If it wasn't for the overwhelming success of Twitter or how easily Facebook launched the same features, things could have turned out much differently for them.

It wouldn't surprise me if within 3-6 months, Six Apart launches a rebranded version of Pownce geared towards companies and enterprise to compete with Yammer. As much as it pains me to agree with Arrington and Calacanis, I'll admit that Yammer has a good business model. And I can't imagine that it would take a tremendous amount of development time to make Pownce ready for those types of customers.

Six Apart acquires and shuts down Pownce

Related Stories