pg, please, please get the people building awesome tools to become ridiculously profitable like Wufoo! I so wanted to use 280 North but I was scared they would get bought and vanish. My fear came true. EDIT: Half true. No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them.
Congrats to the 280 Norths, YC, and their other investors. Let's all join hands and pray that Motorola allows development on Cappuccino et al to remain public.
At it's core, YCombinator is a Venture Capital firm. A very different one, but still — they give money, advice and connections for equity in hopes of a return on their investment. You make returns on your investment by companies getting acquired (other methods are extremely rare).
I can't see why a VC firm would argue against a huge exit that makes everyone a ton of money and leaves the founders working on the same product they built and love.
I know, I know, I know. I don't begrudge anyone their well-deserved rewards in this exit. I just don't like seeing awesome stuff go away, which is what I fear will happen here.
IIRC pg has somewhere said that it would be in YC's interest for their startups to become massively profitable (and IPO or whatever), instead of getting bought out early. That is, YC's slice of $20 million is a fantastic outcome for YC... but a slice of $200 million etc would be even better.
This led into a discussion that YC's policy is to just do what is in the startup's interest - if they want an exit, then YC will support that. And after slaving your guts out, pretty soon $20 million in the hand is starting to look pretty dang good! pg mentioned that instead of trying to calculate exactly what is in YC's interest, with so many startups going, the simplest approach is just to do what's in the startup's interest. I think everyone - including pg and future candidates - also feel a lot more comfortable with this approach.
But I have to say: $20 million! That's freakin awesome! It's presumptuous of me, but I feel really proud of you guys. Go go go! And thanks also for posting a figure; that's usually secret.
There are plenty of other awesome tools out there. The valley has a tendency to idolize certain people unnecessarily, this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Worst of all the attention that one development tool or team gets, reduces the attention that other teams get. As a competitor (former competitor?), I sincerely congratulate 280North, but to suggest that they're the only ones building awesome tools is the furthest from the truth.
Edit: No reason to down-vote this. No animosity should be read here. I was just saying there are other cool development tools. I congratulate 280North.
There are plenty of other awesome tools out there. The valley has a tendency to idolize certain people unnecessarily, this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No offense dude, but I've tried using both noloh and Atlas, and you really can't compare the two.
Correct, you can't compare the two. NOLOH is a development platform, Atlas is an IDE. If you're comparing NOLOH to Cappuccino, that's a different story.
Furthermore, I don't recall ever interacting with you in our IRC room, or through support, thus I'm a little suspect as to your development claim, I also don't see you as ever signing up for a sandbox or a download.
NOLOH has received significant praise from developers, and non-developers alike. We've had people with no programming background create complex applications with little help.
In any event, nowhere in my post was I promoting NOLOH, I was simply suggesting that there are in fact other tools, aside from NOLOH, that are pretty awesome. As a developer of one, we make it our business to see what else is out there.
Out of curiosity, why would you expect to know whether a given developer was using your technology using the criteria you list?
As an example, I've been using Microsoft technology for the better part of 20 years now, and I've never sent them an email. I'm sure there are chat rooms for their stuff, but honestly I can't come up with a reason why any grownup would ever enter one.
My suspicion is that the developers you see on the support forums are not the best ones. The ones that simply get it immediately and start running are the ones you'll never hear from.
Sorry, didn't mean that as criticism. I just meant you can't really compare the two products/audiences/business models/etc, because they're different (Atlas never targeted "people with no programming background creating complex applications", they targeted Objectie-C developers). NOLOH is awesome, but in a different way than Atlas was.
Coming from someone who knows absolutely zero on NOLOH, do yourself a favor and change the name. It's horrible. Unreadable, loud, unprounouncable nerd-cronym that doesn't make me care to know what your product is. Just my two cents.
"There are other cool development tools" is a pretty empty statement. Not only is it completely subjective, but it doesn't even make a subjective claim that has any bearing on anything. So what if there are other tools you personally feel are cool? What does that imply for Cappucino developers?
My interpretation of the original poster's comment was that they were suggesting that it was a shame that 280North was bought, rather than becoming profitable, thus possibly ending the development of a cool development tool.
To me the post sounded as if the poster was suggesting they're were no other cool development tools that were on-par with Cappuccino, thus we should all mourn if they stopped developing. The poster if you recall was not a Cappuccino developer.
It's in my opinion, and I'm sure in many others, that there are many other cool development tools, some of which are on-par, if not better in various ways than Cappuccino, many of which don't get the attention or appreciation they should get.
I think that's one of the reasons why VC (from a good 'name') is useful, it gets you press, lots of it. Instantly you're news worthy because the press somehow sees you as 'validated', which means they're no longer going out on a limb in writing about you, everybody will be writing about you so they can't be seen as missing the boat.
I'm really interested to know some names. I haven't seen anything that allows you to abstract completely away from this multiple language/multiple framework nonsense that web development is mostly (at the most basic level, having to deal with html+css+javascript+frameworks).
There are a lot that do a part of it, but none I've seen that are complete and are not plugins. And what about something that comes anywhere near atlas/interface builder+nib2cib?
I'm genuinely interested. Now, I need a backup plan in case atlas never comes out alive. :)
I am working on JaxScript, which will be the first XML-based abstraction framework for HTML/CSS/JS/DOM. First tech preview version within about a month. http://www.jaxscript.com
If there are many superior tools that don't get the attention they deserve, it doesn't help the situation to hide them behind vague terms like "cool development tools."
I stand by what I said: Merely stating that there are "other cool tools" is empty. Somebody else may as well respond, "Nah, other tools suck." Since we're not talking about anything in reality, nobody will be right or wrong, and nobody benefits from reading any of it.
I really don't know of any comparable tools that are on par with Cappuccino. There's SproutCore, but at least last time I checked, it seemed to be the lesser in every way except not being dependent on that beast called Objective-J.
There are numerous tools that are on par with Cappuccino in terms of functionality. However, I don't want to create a never ending discussion thread on the new HN, I don't have enough karma or patience to deal with it. I was simply stating a point.
You can disagree with it, but I refuse to start any discussion with you. It's obvious from your tone and content that you don't intend to actually have a meaningful discussion.
It's not that I disagree with you. It's that you haven't said anything of substance, and I hoped you would. Your comments have merely been dismissive (first toward Cappuccino and now toward me personally). I always appreciate helpful comments even if I disagree with them.
I've recently been reinvestigating these Web app frameworks for a new project and not finding much that I loved, so I really did hope you had some useful insights. But oh well, I guess.
Very well, I'll create a list later tonight listing the most notable ones, along with their features and benefits. I'm sorry for misinterpreting your response.
List and details are getting pretty long. Seems that I should turn this into a blog post. I'm pretty exhausted so won't be able to finish it tonight. I'll make sure to post before the week is up.
To me the post sounded as if the poster was suggesting they're were no other cool development tools that were on-par with Cappuccino
I didn't know of any but I haven't searched extensively (I was keeping it in mind for a future project). I just know that people on HN had given it universal praise, and HN can be a tough crowd.
I'm all in favor of a diversity of awesome development tools. Even though I use Ruby, I would be sad if Python went away. I use Lisp, but I would be sad if Haskell went away. I use emacs but would be sad if vim went away.
I'm dying to see that list of yours. I hadn't heard of noloh before but thank you for bringing it to my attention. Just remember, if you want your dev tools to be successful, you need to get people talking about them. Best of luck!
No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them.
I don't get it: what could they do with them? 280North's main product is Atlas, a development platform that creates applications that run on Motorola's Droids, but on an OS that's not developed at Motorola... someone please convince me this isn't a desperate attempt for Motorola to appear somehow competitive.
I don't get why Apple didn't buy them. If anything, 280 North's strongest suit is Objective-J, which borrows heavily from Cocoa (obviously) and that should make iOS developers feel at home especially with Atlas's x(n)ib files.
But, yeah, I don't know why Motorola? It does seem desperate, but it's a good buy nonetheless cuz Capuccino is pure js (it's a superset of js after all) goodness.
Read point six in Steve's "Thoughts on Flash". Apple isn't interested in actively developing web platforms because, as Jobs said,
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. [...] This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool.
Isn't it ironic that the original iPhone vision was for everything to be a web app?
Apple was probably on to something, but realized that there was no money to be made. Motorola, on the other hand, wasn't making money on software anyway. So this approach could be good for them.
I think it's indicative of either (a) Apple's willingness to quickly realize they were wrong, or (b) their willingness mislead to downplay a delayed but vital feature. Personally, I enjoy the latter.
Motorola bought Metrowerks, makers of CodeWarrior/PowerPlant, back in the day, then spun it off as part of Freescale. They do have an interest in dev tools.
I also wondered about the future of Cappuccino. The current version is LGPL licensed, but they may rerelease future versions under a different license.
"We believe 280 North will be instrumental in helping us continue to foster the Android ecosystem with innovative web-based technologies and applications."
Ironic, since cappuccino is an implementation of Apple's Cocoa frameworks in javascript. Are we going to see a lot of Objective-j running on droids now?
What do you mean are we? Objective-j does run on Android (aka, Droids as people are beginning to refer to them thanks to Verizon's marketing)... it runs on anything. It lives inside of the web browser. The "j" in Objective-J stands for JavaScript :)
Any half-decent browser will run Objective-J applications. Motorola's move has nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with the people. As someone commented earlier, Motorola just gained one hell of a web team.
I think its everything to do with the technology. Web apps are a huge part of the future for mobile devices - this gives them a huge in. Frameworks are really important strategically - they can optimize Cappuccino for their devices and even add functionality specific to their devices.
Yeah, I know droid != android. But since I was thinking about motorola I said droid by accident.
What I guess I'm asking is will motorola really use 280 North's tech for web based projects that any phone could access? Or will they be presented as bundled apps that appear to be native Android apps but really written in Objective-J using cappuccino?
In light of the recent Oracle lawsuit and Apple's general litigious nature, I asked myself the same.
The OpenStep specification is, well, open as far as I know, and nobody ever bothered GNUStep, who even seemed to extend from the OpenStep roots into Cocoa territory, but when it's Motorola, and not just a random bunch of hackers…
Still, congratulations to the 280 North guys. That seems like a neat bundle of money.
I'm so incredibly happy for these guys. Deciding to use Cappuccino has been one of the best technical decisions I've ever made. It's an incredibly fun and impressive framework. But what really made using Cappuccino so rewarding was interacting with Ross, Francisco and Tom. The 280North guys have consistently gone out of their way to help me out, and it's very obvious that they are incredibly talented developers. They have also managed to create a great and very active community in a very short period of time, and are just very nice, great people. They deserve this like none other. Congrats guys and looking forward to where you go from here!
Congratulations, great news for guys that worked hard on it. May I ask what is the reasoning/breakdown of $20 million valuation? For example id Software was sold for, rumor has it, 105 million dollars - only 5X the amount, while they generated over $2+ Billion in revenue with their products over time.
That price seems very low for an incredible brand franchise and IP rights to Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein, Rage -- only $105mm? An article I picked up on it indicates they had 105 developers at the time of acquisition.
I would bet that rumor is false, or that there was some sort of extreme extenuating circumstances that we're not privy to.
I thought the $105m was new debt raised? I could be wrong as I'm not used to look at these forms, but I thought the story went that it was AT LEAST $105m because that was the ADDITIONAL raised. I might borrow 100k for a house, doesn't mean I only spent 100k for the house.
But, as I say, I could be wrong - I'm not an American so I haven't seen these forms too much :-)
My reading is that they raised $105 million via convertible notes and promissory notes "in connection with the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Id Software, Inc.". Traskjd has it right--this might mean they spent $105M on id, or it might mean they only needed to borrow $105M of whatever they spent.
What matters is not how much revenue you generated over time in the past, but how much you are generating right now and what the expectation is of future revenues.
If you get down to just numbers, the 'standard' way of valuing any enterprise is to calculate the current value of their future cashflow. This is why (many) V.C.s ask you for a revenue projection. It is debatable whether this is the right way of doing things; in the case of most startups it may be the wrong way, but if id Software was making, say, only 10M/year at the point they got bought, and left alone, if their cashflow would have stayed the same or stagnated, 105 million would be 10.5x their yearly profits which is decent.
I love how people think they can just "calculate the value of their future cashflow"...isn't this what we are preached to stay away from now? (i.e. Steve Blank's idea on "business model > business plan")
I've paid for the beta program. It's $20 and that goes toward your purchase of the final product anyway.
I wouldn't worry about it too much though, because it's not really Beta quality. I wouldn't even call it Alpha. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing them one bit. I love it and am incredibly impressed with what they've accomplished!
Hopefully this will give them the resources to finish it!
"There are other advantages to basing things in Objective-J as well: advancements in the Cappuccino frameworks don’t wait for the slow emergence of new standards, developers only deal with one language, and Cappuccino comes with useful language features simply not available in JavaScript."
Isn't that backwards? New features come out in Javascript and I have to wait until they're incorporated into Objective-J to use them?
Objective-C knowledge helps, but if you have little programming knowledge and need to learn either Javascript or Objective-C, I think Cappuccino makes it really easy for you to rapidly get a non-trivial web application working because they've just done a really good job of abstracting out a lot of the annoying-to-implement parts of a desktop-like application. I didn't know either Objective-C or Javascript when I started work on Mockingbird, and it took me about a week to learn enough to have a prototype running that had canvas (and VML) drawing, drag and drop links, and undo/redo support.
Thanks. That's awesome - gomockingbird.com is a great site, and if you did that in a week that's a compelling case for Cappuccino, although... I find it surprising you studied CS at Harvard and worked as a Software Development Intern at Apple and never used either Objective-C or Javascript.
Makes sense ;) Was there any reason why you went with Cappuccino instead of, say, SproutCore or Coherence or Dashcode? Or even GWT? Have you looked at Apple's PastryKit/iAD? It's _very_ similar to Cocoa development, just without the ObjC notation.
I spent a lot of time looking at different frameworks, but in the end, it's pretty hard to judge them without diving in and actually making an app in it. So I have some knowledge of the Cappuccino competitors from my initial research, but obviously nothing as in-depth as my knowledge of Cappuccino, so take anything I say about the other frameworks bearing that in mind. Also this initial research was done around May of 2009.
The main selling points that drew me to Cappuccino at the time were 1) there was a live app using it (280Slides) that demonstrated doing a lot of the things I wanted to do with Mockingbird, 2) Even if there weren't tons of docs at the time, Cocoa documentation is very extensive and applicable, 3) Because it pretty much implements the Cocoa API, I knew I was getting an API that had been used successfully in tons of applications, 4) The promise of Atlas, 5) it made my app decent looking without my having to try very hard (though my co-founder Sheena did end up customizing the Mockingbird look and feel a lot), and most importantly (at least when picking a framework when you don't have time to get more than superficial knowledge of it) - 6) after spending some time in the IRC channel/asking a few questions on the mailing list, the creators and other members of the community were extremely helpful and welcoming, the 280North guys seemed to have a very good sense of where they wanted the framework to go and ideas for awesome features they wanted to implement, and because they were such good developers, I was pretty well convinced that they would actually ship their promises (and they have - Atlas, automatic mage spriting and app flattening options were all things that didn't really exist when I picked Cappuccino).
As for the other frameworks (and there were a ton, but I'll just talk about the ones you mention):
GWT - I didn't like the compile step, and I've done some Java and I don't prefer it. Also, bigger communities like GWT's have their pros and cons - you probably have more resources you can Google for, but it's not always as easy to just ping one of the core devs and get personalized help/get him to help you write your patch.
SproutCore - probably the closest competitor to Cappuccino back then. In this case, Atlas was a selling point for Cappuccino, and I thought Cappuccino apps looked nicer by default. I also don't remember seeing any impressive SproutCore apps in 2009 other than MobileMe, but I might be misremembering.
PastryKit didn't exist in the summer of 2009.
I believe Dashcode emerged as more of a web application creator with version 3.0, which was fairly recent. If not, I may have simply not looked much into it.
Funny you should ask that because the internet is just now taking a big lurch forward with Canvas and everything in HTML5. Would Objective-J quickly adopt new features in Javascript or stay closer to developments in Objective-C?
Since everything gets compiled down to Javascript in the end (and Objective-J doesn't feature 100% browser compat either) I don't see how they can offer anything not possible with Javascript to begin with. Actually that's a question? I don't understand how it is different than, for example, CoffeeScript - but I would be happy if you could explain how it is.
It's very similar to CoffeeScript. It is a strict superset of JavaScript, so all valid JavaScript remains valid Objective-J.
You also shouldn't confuse the language (Objective-J) with the Cappuccino framework. Objective-J is just about providing certain language level features on top of JavaScript, the same way Objective-C implements features on top of C. It's also 100% cross browser, so I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Cappuccino is a full fledged framework for building apps which run in a browser. I'd argue that it's the best, but my opinion would hardly be unbiased. It does in fact implement an API for using Canvas (which also works in IE). Though, that isn't a JavaScript feature. And pretty much nothing in HTML5 is present in 50% of the browsers out there.
But if you don't like a particular part of the abstraction layer provided by Objective-J/Cappuccino, you're definitely free to use raw JavaScript. Just like in Objective-C you're free to use structs, function pointers, and C-style arrays.
Wow that was fast! Congrats guys. I expected Apple to snatch Atlas for Objective-J and it would make sense for iOS Objective-C devs to jump ship easily.
But, man this is a great deal for Motorola. These guys did two startups worth of work atleast and 280 Slides alone is a startup itself :)
Apple threw their lot in with Sproutcore, the other cocoa-inspired (though not Obj-C inspired) thick client framework by hiring the lead developer (who's now departed) and implementing MobileMe with it.
I am well aware of SproutCore, but Capuccino is more cleaner than Sproutcore in that you just write Obj-J, not worry about HTML, CSS. The Capuccino framework works well because it's exactly like iOS kit and the native app export option is way better than Adobe AiR - no flash, all JS!
I wish SproutCore dev could be faster - it's god awfully slow with dev server and preview. But, that's not a big problem for now.
Exactly. Motorola doesn't have a great track record at successfully integrating software companies that it acquires. It feels like where software goes to die.
Based on the Motorola guy's comment, I can't help speculating that they will retarget their system to parse Objective-C, implement Cocoa Touch, and emit something that can be run on Android phones -- maybe Javascript. If there were an easy way to port iPhone apps to Android, Android would have a lot more apps.
From a technical perspective, this isn't likely the purpose of the acquisition. Cappuccino does relatively nothing in terms of making headway in parsing Objective-C, implementing a (native) Cocoa Touch or integration with the Dalvik VM system except by way of a browser.
Not to say that the 280North guys aren't capable of that but Cappuccino certainly isn't geared toward that type of goal.
Just to clarify, it's not an 80x return or even close. I think you may have gotten that by taking the money in ($250k) and looking at the exit price ($20mln).
The truth is that if the round was priced, then the investors took call it 25% of the company, meaning the post-money was $1mln and thus at a $20 mln exit there was a 20x return... which of course is still pretty good.
pg, please, please get the people building awesome tools to become ridiculously profitable like Wufoo! I so wanted to use 280 North but I was scared they would get bought and vanish. My fear came true. EDIT: Half true. No word yet on what Motorola is going to do with them.
Congrats to the 280 Norths, YC, and their other investors. Let's all join hands and pray that Motorola allows development on Cappuccino et al to remain public.