Affinity Studio now free

I realize that money rules everything but I find it so confusing that so many companies will spend a decade building a great product and then just exit with full knowledge that it will be the inevitable end of the relevance of their work.

You might think that some founders somewhere out there would be motivated by some level of ego to say “no, I won’t sell out, I built this amazing thing and the highest bidder owner will milk it dry.”

But no, in technology the cult of the exit rules all. The end goal isn’t to build something great that last, putting food on the table for the long term. the end goal is to sell to the highest possible bid capitalist leech and move on to the next one.

>> technology the cult of the exit rules all

Technology also moves fast, highly competitive and expensive. I'm definitely sad about this, but I can't blame founders for this. I've never founded any company myself, but I can imagine after decade of working on same product as a relatively small shop, it can be tiring, exhausting and probably new priorities (personal life, health etc ...).

How much of this is just getting a skewed view because you don't typically hear about the acquisitions that don't happen?

Beyond that, overcoming bias is really hard. An acquirer is probably going to talk a good game about how the acquisition is going to benefit the product and the customers from more resources, better integration, etc. Hearing that, we know it's probably BS, or sincere but incorrect. But when an eight or nine figure pile of money is on the line, you have a very strong subconscious motivation to believe it.

It's more complicated than that. Sometimes after 15 years, the founders want to move on and do something else. Or they want to build a dream house. Or their cofounder wants to get out. Or they hear the long-term vision of the acquiring company, and want to be a part of it.

Although it's an uphill battle, not every acquisition ends with the product being destroyed. Just look at what Apple did with NeXT and PA Semi…

Perhaps they know that a large buyout will help their employees for various reasons, and they set aside their ego to take care of them.

A company that hasn’t sold out is Adobe— are we in love with Adobe?

Because it’s not inevitable. I know it’s the fashion on HN to say it’s inevitable, but it’s not, and if it were, then it would be inevitable for all companies, including those who didn’t exit, which would mean those companies would fold, which would make it a capitalism problem, not a “founders exit” problem.

Either way, trying to place blame on individual people is kind of silly.

It's a lesson as old as history: You either exit a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.

Adobe is a public company, so they exited.

You can have controlling ownership in a company that you don’t manage on a day-to-day basis.

You can have controlling stake in a company without working there day to day.

Apple literally destroyed those companies. After Apple acquired NeXT there was one less operating system on the market. PA Semi now doesn’t have a product that is sold to the open market.

Maybe not inevitable but “most likely outcome by far.”

It’s not like your median founder hasn’t heard of enshittification. They just don’t care. They’re by and large out for a quick buck, not much different than a day trader or a gambler. And the VC system enables that rather than being focused on building companies that are generational and customer focused.

Apple bought NeXT and made it one of the most popular operating systems on the planet.

It may or may not work out. Once you are not actively involved, its not per your vision anymore anyway. And at the end of the day, if you don't think e.g. in this case its very hard compete with Adobe and I really don't want to risk my payday, you'll sell it and move on to do whatever next you want to do.

If we want something to last, I think open-source is the solution.

What do you think MacOS since v10 is?

lmao ok

You can remain in control and continue to make good quality software, but that means staying small, very small, like a handful of people small. There are numerous software providers like that still making niche software.

In this case their work is getting a whole lot more impact as people are getting it for free and there is a huge marketing team behind it. If I was an engineer at this company I would be thrilled.

MacOS v10+ accounts for NeXTSTEP, but what do you consider to be the current MacOS (classic) to satisfy the not having one less operating system condition?

But if Apple didn’t buy them, Apple would have made their own operating system and NeXT might still be here today with their own operating system.

Like I said, a competitor was removed from the market.

It’s the ashes or NeXT.

If Apple hadn’t bought them, they’d have to make their own OS or license something else, and NeXT would potentially still be here making their OS.

We have one less choice on the market because Apple acquired them.

See also: DarkSky. No more Android version!

Hate to break it to you, but NeXTSTEP failed in the marketplace. If Apple hadn't bought them, they'd still be gone.

But more importantly: who cares? There is no moral imperative to keep products alive. It's just stuff that people make. Products come and go, and founders owe you nothing.

This would be my reaction as well. The commenters on this post are exceptionally cynical and jaded even by HN standards.

We all know that free versions like this are exercises in frog boiling.

No? This is a company (Canva) that is known to kind of suck.

Who cares right? Maybe Apple and Google and Microsoft should just merge. Then we can just use the same operating system for everything.

Can’t think of any downside!

I’m not mourning the loss of a product, I’m lamenting the negative externalities of acquisitions. Some of them are a net positive for sure but it seems like those are in the minority.

The only operating system that was killed was Mac OS 9, while NeXTSTEP lives on in billions of devices today