[sheetjs]

> The people who used the service, and invested their belief and time in uploading photos, or forming friendships, or logging data, are left to find new virtual homes while their former hosts enjoy a nice (if possibly delayed) payday.

In a startup acquisition that would garner the approval of the author of the blog (and many others), the founders would, at the very least, find a way to slowly unwind the service. It wouldn't be an abrupt shutdown, leaving customers in the lurch. IT would be carefully planned.

At the very least, the founders should care enough about their users to make sure the service runs for a reasonable amount of time.

[patio11]

At the very least, the founders should care enough about their users to make sure the service runs for a reasonable amount of time.

A business using a B2B service who wishes to have the service around N months from now has an option to achieve this. It is called "a contract." You can call up your local sales team and ask for prices. It is absolutely a thing you can buy.

If you do not get contracts which guarantee that a vendor will provide you with the services you require, anticipate that business will frequently work out in a fairly rough fashion for you.

[tjmc]

I'm less familiar with US law than that of commonwealth countries, but in Australia/UK/NZ at least a contract is automatically formed when there's been an offer, acceptance and payment for a service in advance. ie. If you've paid for a year's service and that service goes away after a month you're entitled to compensation for the rest.

[patio11]

If you pre-pay $29 * 11 for a SaaS app in the US, and the service closes a month later, you've got a claim against the merchant for ~$290. You almost certainly don't have a breach of contract remedy, because they are not failing to perform under your contractual relationship, and your contractual relationship almost certainly limits damages to the amount you've paid.

You can also probably get your bank to do a chargeback, and they might give you all $319, because it isn't worth their time to do math.

[sheetjs]

I think you miss the thrust of the original argument. No one, especially not the author of the blog, argued that there was a legal requirement. The point here is that the founders arguably got to their position because people entrusted them with services. To defend the blatant disregard for users is to attack the very thing that enabled the exit in the first place.

[tptacek]

Patrick killed my answer; he's nailed it:

If you're complaining that someone acquhired your favorite service, you were being heavily subsidized by a venture capitalist.

[rurounijones]

So the gist is:

SaaS taken VC funding? Do not touch them if you will rely on their service because they might suddenly disappear in an acquihire and you should have expected it, ingrate. [1]

it is Sound advice, although if everyone took it to heart none of these start-ups would succeed in the first place because no one would use them because of the expectation they will be gone shortly. [1]

Poisoning the well of goodwill for future start-ups.

[1] Unless you can get a contract for X months / years of service as detailed by patio above... I cannot remember this as an option by any of the SaaSs that feature on YC. They try to be low friction "Just put your credit card details in, pay monthly and ignore the elephant." They RELY on people ignoring the above.

[tptacek]

You sound shocked, shocked to have thought of the most common sales objection in the history of startups. Sell any product to a real business and see how long it takes that concern to come up. Memetically, it predates "acquihires" by more than 15 years.

[rurounijones]

I was trying to sum it up in a short'ish manner. However https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975185 does it a lot better than me.

[patio11]

There exist companies funded by YC which have enterprise pricing available. All of them will guarantee services being available for the entire contractual term, subject to the usual. (Contracts, paying shedloads of money, etc.)

[birken]

Or they were subsidizing the service with their talent that could have been more productively used elsewhere. People who don't understand this just don't understand business.

Even great HN heroes like Elon Musk (who sold paypal to ebay) aren't doing stuff for charity, they are doing it for profit. Sometimes a personal crusade makes straight monetary profit less important, but most of the time it doesn't.