Ask HN: What are some noteworthy startups lost to acquisition?

2 points

2 years ago

There's a common cliche about companies getting acquired and then putting out press releases celebrating "our incredible journey," followed by an announcement that they are soon shuttering their product. Or hyping the partnership with their parent company, and then within a year later they shutter anyway.

What about companies that do that but are just forgotten? That never received an entry on the Tumblr (https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com)? But are still worth remembering, even if their brand is long-gone?

I nominate Realm (YC S11), the mobile database / ORM solution, which was bought by MongoDB in 2019 with little HN fanfare (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737949). The product has now been clunkily rebranded to "MongoDB Atlas Device SDK" and still exists, though presumably much less popular as first-party Swift Data on iOS and Firebase on Android gain in usage. But the even bigger loss imo is the Realm Academy, which used to be a massive treasure trove of resources on mobile development across multiple platforms. Realm would find outside developers to give tech talks, preserving them in one spot, and providing transcripts long before Apple did for WWDC: https://academy.realm.io

Prior to the MongoDB acquisition, we would regularly see technical presentations from realm.io posted to HN. Now, the Academy is no more. Rest in Rebrand, Realm.

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