"Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success. I’m really happy for them."
I personally think that you need to give it a shot and try to monetize your product but if after some time you find out that this is a harder and thougher nut to crack than you thought - you better rally some bigger force behind you, pivot, sell or just give up.
The guy at sparrow decided to sell and this is a very legitimate exit strategy.
Yes, legitimate exit strategy, but it's a win-loose story. I don't think that win-loose stories are success stories.
Winners:
a) Sparrow guys.
b) Google. They just killed another e-mail client without their ads.
Losers:
a) Current users. E-mail client is just another tool, when you descide, you decide for life. Now all Sparrow users must abandon it after some time, unvoluntarily.
b) Other indie developers. People will step-by-step be waging vary carefully of using and paying for indie software.
c) Sparrow guys after some year. Now they are doomed to work to the end of their lives for big corporation. No one will give them a dime if they ever want to work independently again. This might be not a big loss of course, if you like working for somebody else.
Now they are doomed to work to the end of their lives for big corporation. No one will give them a dime if they ever want to work independently again.
In my experience, ($700M sale to Google in particular) that's just not true. It's quite typical for acquisitions to include either earn-out provisions (you must work for the acquirer for N years or you forfeit some of the purchase price) or retention bonuses (work for N years to earn an additional $X million).
Every investor expects these outcomes; nobody would be surprised or put off to hear that the Sparrow guys are locked up for N years, and nobody I know who invests would view them as damaged goods as a result.
As for Sparrow users being the losers; there are lots of fish (future email clients) in the sea. The popularity of Sparrow is evidence of a market need. Whether any email client author can make real money meeting that need is another question.
I think (b) and (c) are overly dramatic here. Doomed to work to the end of their lives for a big corporation? These are the guys that just sold their 5 person company for $25M.
I don't think people will stop buying indie software on account of this either. The Internet likes to make big news out of these kinds of things, but forgets just as quickly.
Yes, indeed - I tend to agree with you. I think people are over dramatizing this sale probably because they were tied emotionally. This is a good thing actually, it means that there is still a huge opportunity for email clients and people are more likely to switch if a good client emerge. (I know I would).
I also think that this sale is not a bad thing necessarly. It won't stop us from spending more money on software, on the contrary. I think that if there are more exits available for indie developers, more developers might opt to go the indie route in the future knowing they might have a chance at getting acquired and thus having more developers launching great software.
Again, I don't think the Sparrow team made a mistake and I applaud them for selling their company and joining a 'corporate', if that is what they wanted to do - good for them. I'll surely buy more software from them in the future.
(I'll probably get downvoted to the ground like my other comments on that thread for having somewhat different views from the mob).
"Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success. I’m really happy for them."
I personally think that you need to give it a shot and try to monetize your product but if after some time you find out that this is a harder and thougher nut to crack than you thought - you better rally some bigger force behind you, pivot, sell or just give up.
The guy at sparrow decided to sell and this is a very legitimate exit strategy.