Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis
-
@SQLMartinis that's a good point on WARN. For those of you who aren't familiar it's a federal law stating that anytime a company lays off more than 50 people at one location, they must give 60 days notice. In practice they usually just give two months severance rather than have you work the full 60 days. I've been a part of layoffs where this applied, and most times the companies try to lie to you about how they are giving two months severance because they are so generous. They don't admit that they are only doing it because it's the law.
-
That's exactly what they did.
I would be shocked if they stick around. ZD purchased SW for an audience, that is dwindling due to the lack of support of their original tool suite.
totally speculating - but i bet Jay will be out in a year, he's been taking a backseat ride ever since goldman put in their people (they provided most recent funding rounds). It's clear goldman was really pulling the reigns when they put in that new CFO 18ish mos ago - which given the history of that excutive (google him) the mission was clear that they wanted to position the company for sale - i mean that $59M in series E funding has to be recouped somehow?
Also all the tools they developed were created with the sole purpose of being able to leverage the data they produce for more intelligent ad targeting (but as someone stated above the back end is so jacked like good luck with that).
They aren't thinking about, "what tools can we continue to support (inventory) or improve the lives of IT Pros" the attitude is definitely, "What tools can we produce to gather the data our vendors are most interested in." Honestly it's sad and disappointing. It's like the rockstar who became famous, and then forgot all their friends...
Anyway it's just the same song and dance as any start up failure... abandon your original mission and pivot towards the money train. Where really the money is in nurturing your original audience and purpose. Terrible.
All of this acquisition talk sent me on a bit of a wormhole, which is how i landed here. Really more of a stackoverflow lurker as i am not a straight up IT Pro - but am technical in nature. Can't wait to lurk here. I had no idea about the whole SAM removal... can't wait to explore that further...
-
@SQLMartinis said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
totally speculating - but i bet Jay will be out in a year, he's been taking a backseat ride ever since goldman put in their people (they provided most recent funding rounds).
We can't prove this, but it's essentially a known fact, that it was Goldman Sachs that forced the creation of MangoLassi. The totally insane decision to kick out all MPSs (e.g. anyone who does any private work for someone outside their main job or for a third party from their job) or make them pay $15K per year to be allowed to answer questions came just two weeks after GS put in their funding. So we've always "known" that it was GS, not SW themselves, that made that decision. So you can thank GS for this community!
-
@scottalanmiller Didn't ML exist long before GS "took over" at SW?
-
@SQLMartinis said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
It's clear goldman was really pulling the reigns when they put in that new CFO 18ish mos ago - which given the history of that excutive (google him) the mission was clear that they wanted to position the company for sale - i mean that $59M in series E funding has to be recouped somehow?
The funding round from GS was, again we can't prove this from lots of us come from start up and finance backgrounds and know what the majority case is, for the purpose of selling them company. Originally it was to get an IPO, but that failed with the famous "where did these numbers actually come from" question. So failing the IPO, a straight sale was the only option. So mostly, this would have been the plan from the beginning.
-
@Danp said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@scottalanmiller Didn't ML exist long before GS "took over" at SW?
Nope, wasn't even thought of until nearly two weeks after. There were no plans, names, ideas, expectations, company... nothing. One or two people would regularly bring up the idea and I would squash it as "having multiple communities hurts everyone as long as the existing one is good" for years, but that's just normal. But it was never anything more than someone saying it and the "big players" saying "nope" and that was that.
But days after GS took over we got the warning that we were all about to be kicked out of the community. And since we didn't know if it was going to be days or weeks, ML was suggested, designed, tested, and went into production all in 72 hours as there was no time for anything more.
-
@Danp http://whois.domaintools.com/mangolassi.it
2000 days, so almost 5.5 years.
-
@SQLMartinis said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
I had no idea about the whole SAM removal... can't wait to explore that further...
And the can of worms gets opened.....
-
@DustinB3403 said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@Danp http://whois.domaintools.com/mangolassi.it
2000 days, so almost 5.5 years.
Damn, that's awesome. You can also just use the REST API and see post number 1. It was made just hours before the "go live".
-
-
@scottalanmiller to ask, why isn't ML using LE for the site cert?
-
Spiceworks Acquired by GS...
4 Feb 2014
One day less than a month from that announcement, to ML being live. But GS didn't take the reigns for several days, and it took nearly a week from the "MSP kick out" announcement to ML being live. I think we were told on Wednesday, had the famous meeting on Friday, had the site up Sunday night, and were in production Monday morning.
-
@SQLMartinis said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
I had no idea about the whole SAM removal... can't wait to explore that further...
That did not happen until years after ML went live.
-
@DustinB3403 said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@scottalanmiller to ask, why isn't ML using LE for the site cert?
It looks like ML is using cloudflare cert which is also free.
-
@IRJ said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@DustinB3403 said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@scottalanmiller to ask, why isn't ML using LE for the site cert?
It looks like ML is using cloudflare cert which is also free.
Cloudflare proxy technically. No idea if the backend between Cloudflare and ML is https or not.
-
@JaredBusch said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@SQLMartinis said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
I had no idea about the whole SAM removal... can't wait to explore that further...
That did not happen until years after ML went live.
Just shy of four years.
-
-
@Nic said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
Updated info from Jay:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2228240-a-follow-up-to-last-week-s-news-your-questions-answeredI guess Jay had some negotiations to get to that point.
-
@dbeato said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
@Nic said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
Updated info from Jay:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2228240-a-follow-up-to-last-week-s-news-your-questions-answeredI guess Jay had some negotiations to get to that point.
Umm, not how it works. Negotiations were done before anything was ever announced.
IMO, Jay will not stick around long now. He is an entrepreneur, a startup guy, he will not stay and be corporate.
-
@JaredBusch said in Spiceworks Just Got Acquired by Publisher Ziff-Davis:
IMO, Jay will not stick around long now. He is an entrepreneur, a startup guy, he will not stay and be corporate.
Nor will they want him to. Nothing to do with Jay, just the nature of this kind of acquisition. Jay is a CEO, beyond being a startup guy, and ZD isn't going to want SW to have any CEO, let alone an established one. They are going to gut the management so that the expensive top end of the company just goes away. All of that expense is unneeded. Managing the SW portion of the ZD business will take just a few hours a year of their existing management's time. This is part of the value of any acquisition like this, and why ML was interested, that's a giant expense that kills SW's attempts at profits, but in a buyout can all just go away.
If you look at the core business that SW has, the community and helpdesk, you could run all of that with as few as two or three people, total. For real. But only if a parent company is handling billing, invoicing, legal, HR, etc. So take a company of 200-300 people and reduce the headcount by as much as 99% (literally if they wanted to) and it becomes crazy easy to make profits. Not that they will go that far, but they will get close I guarantee. But the first step is going to be eliminating all management roles that ZD can handle with existing positions.
