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Command AI Bought by Amplitude

(www.command.ai)
84 points jshchnz | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 15:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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gkapur ◴[15 Oct 24 17:04 UTC] No.41850639[source]▶
Interestingly, according to Axios, the price was pretty limited: "Amplitude (Nasdaq: AMPL) acquired CommandAI, an SF-based software user experience startup, for $20m (net of cash). CommandAI (fka CommandBar) had raised around $23m from Insight Partners, Itai Tsiddon, Thrive Capital, and BoxGroup."

I would be curious to learn more about the rationale to sell the business as I understand the strategic value to Amplitude. Interestingly, these next-generation digital adoption platforms have generally been pretty challenged.

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gk1 ◴[15 Oct 24 17:17 UTC] No.41850767[source]▶
You almost don't have to snoop for details to have a good guess at what happened. If the acquisition announcement is the first time in a year or more that you're hearing from this company and they omit the sales price, you can bet this isn't the exit most parties wished for. Although by this stage the founder(s) is probably happy to find a buyer who will retain their team.
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1. pajeets ◴[15 Oct 24 17:23 UTC] No.41850836[source]▶
> you can bet this isn't the exit most parties wished for. Although by this stage the founder(s) is probably happy to find a buyer who will retain their team.

I've seen a startup that was bootstrapped 10 years ago but took on too much money and ended up getting acquired for "undisclosed sum" but at the same time everybody knew the investors were just recouping their money while founders got nothing (they had sold their equity for raising more money as their costs were way up but nobody was buying their product). Cue local news reporters don't know the nuances so they'll just announce "Startup X acquired by Y, wow!"

Founders place a lot of emphasis on getting "acquired" but there is roughly 95% chance of you selling at breakeven where the terms leave you with a year's worth of salary as a junior SWE

Get ready to see a lot more of these "acquired" news coming out in the near future. something around less than 1% chance of getting more money than you put in.

Startup has horrible odds especially if you are building a simple GPT wrappers