Buell is Dead

http://www.buell.com/en_us/

8 15 17 years ago

A great (and now tragic) story of one man's vision to take on the world, create a great product, become absorbed into a gigantic corporation and then cast aside when times get tough.

jws• 17 years ago

The brand, not the man.

dotcoma• 17 years ago

even though it certainly looks like he has taken a hard hit.

fishercs• 17 years ago

Buell has always made amazing bikes, pretty hard to compete with the cheaper japanese bikes though but they always seemed to offer something a little more unique and different than their japanese counterparts.

I'm sad to see them go.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

With this comes opportunity.

I hope he goes on to create a new motorcycle brand.

swombat• 17 years ago

I hate to be the one to say it, I know I'm not supposed to, but...

How is this Hacker News? I didn't even know what "Buell" was until I clicked on the link. Are most american hackers motorcycle afficionados? Is Buell a super-important brand in the US, like Michael Jackson? Does this have an impact on start-ups? Was this Buell company a haven for hacker minds? Is this intellectually gratifying? I can't quite fathom why this got posted here.

Edit: instead of downvoting, please do explain. I'm clearly missing some essential bit of hacker culture here.

pclark• 17 years ago

I think the bit where he said "we proved that a small team of determined passionate engineers could take on industry titans" probably resonated with most startups.

Startups aren't limited to the web. Buell was a startup at one stage, then they got acquired, now they're dead.

jasongullickson2• 17 years ago

Right. I suppose most folks here are not as familiar with the Buell story as I thought, but this is exactly why I posted this.

gdp• 17 years ago

I'm with you on this one. It doesn't even seem to have even passing interest to the general HN audience as I understand it.

pxlpshr• 17 years ago

Well, I think it's more related to HN from an engineering/innovation standpoint than the Tiger Woods earns $1B article that circulated here last week. I was downvoted and told to see the "rules" to a site I've been visiting for ~2 years.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862601

I think it's just a matter of growth and therefore dilution.

allenbrunson• 17 years ago

it looks to me like news.yc doesn't ever suffer from "dilution." the editors are very active, they'd kill this in a heartbeat if they thought it was off-topic. it could still happen.

acangiano• 17 years ago

> How is this Hacker News?

He is a hacker who accomplished what most of us would love to accomplish. Yes, it's a different field, but it's still a story of entrepreneurship and hacking at its finest.

mikeryan2• 17 years ago

This sort of thing happens across industries and is a warning to entrepreneurs of all stripes.

How many tech startups have been purchased by a Yahoo, MS or Google just to see all their work scrapped at some point?

I like to believe that many people build a business not for the exit but because they believe in building something. That's the whole hacker ethos.

It's sad to see and a warning.

wkdown• 17 years ago

I think it's because Buell's motives and ideas are similar to the hacker culture. Instead of just being another name creating bikes, they 'hacked' the classic motorcycle and came up with radical new ideas to push themselves forward, like fuel in the frame. This makes the company more likely to be known and/or appreciated by the hacker community than, say, Kawasaki or Honda.

That's just my two cents tho.

MikeRB23• 17 years ago

This is especially surprising given the new high production value ads they've been rotating on TV and online. Sad to see them go as well, I hope Erik continues to innovate.

Buell is Dead

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