As you point out, the bicycle industry has been around for some time. Bicycle design and engineering has been improving for 100+ years.
Mission Bicycles are designed for a specific purpose, commuting in American cities. We optimized for:
- Ride feel: A frame geometry that put riders in an up-right position for comfort and visibility and made the bicycle very stable and responsive even at low speeds.
- Strength: Components and materials that are strong enough to last a life time even with the daily abuse of a city commute.
- Ease of use: Other than fixing an occasional flat, brake pad swap, or chain grease there is nothing on the bicycle to fidget with or break. We literally took everything off the bike that you don't need for a city commute which saves greatly on weight. A typical Mission Bicycle weighs in at 16lbs, which is important for when you need to cary it up a flight of stairs.
The bicycle features you mention (bottle cages, fenders, racks, etc.) were purposefully excluded from the bicycle's design to save on weight, maintenance, and cost.
Jason's point is broader than the business deal, he's making a critique of the Silicon Valley culture. While I have the utmost respect for the capabilities of the Mint team, I agree that it's disingenuous for the community to wrap itself in the flag of "We're in this for the revolution, not the money" and then be just so damn quick to take the money.
That said, Mint seems like the exception out here. Facebook and Twitter seem to be doing a great job keeping the champagne at bay.
Okay, I'm not in the Valley, but businesses are in business to do business - to make money for their shareholders. Arguing against that as a reasonable motivation is disingenuous. You can disagree with the business decision; that essentially amounts to "I think their expected value is >$170m and I'd take their risk profile". Fair enough. But if you're arguing it on any other basis than that, then you're substituting your morals for economics, and what's more, your morals for those of all the individual shareholders. Not cool.
Isn't it easiest to just assume that Facebook and Twitter haven't been bought because their equity holders think they make more money doing it their way? They've got a case too; as Twitter's paper valuation climbs past $1bn, the crew there get proved more and more correct.
Do you use Intuit software? Have you tried Mint? Everyone I've talked to that has a Mint account and has been forced to use Intuit software in the past is uniformly dismayed and confused by this acquisition.
Banker math surely proves Aaron would have to show real hubris to ignore Intuit's offer, but founders rightly run startups, not bankers. Intuit is a $9B twenty five year old company. Mint could have given them a run for their money. They took the payday instead.
Do you use Intuit software? Have you tried Mint? Everyone I've talked to that has a Mint account and has been forced to use Intuit software in the past is uniformly dismayed and confused by this acquisition.
See Figure 1 on page 8 -- only
30.4% of the entrepreneurs surveyed were in software or hardware start ups, the rest were in other 'high technology' industries such as energy and bio-tech. I would love to see the same questions asked of only web-software start up entrepreneurs, I bet the results (age, experience, etc.) would skew differently.
No - the Hacker News/PG convention of referring to 'startups' meaning only web software startups is misleading. The general use of the term is broader. Seeing the breakdown by category would be interesting though.
I didn't explain myself well enough. It's assumed that &th audiences of HN and Techcrunch skew very much towards software startups. Given that, it is wrong to assume this survey bears much weight towards the audience of these sites. Techrunch should have realized this and flagged it before publishing the article.
As you point out, the bicycle industry has been around for some time. Bicycle design and engineering has been improving for 100+ years.
Mission Bicycles are designed for a specific purpose, commuting in American cities. We optimized for:
- Ride feel: A frame geometry that put riders in an up-right position for comfort and visibility and made the bicycle very stable and responsive even at low speeds.
- Strength: Components and materials that are strong enough to last a life time even with the daily abuse of a city commute.
- Ease of use: Other than fixing an occasional flat, brake pad swap, or chain grease there is nothing on the bicycle to fidget with or break. We literally took everything off the bike that you don't need for a city commute which saves greatly on weight. A typical Mission Bicycle weighs in at 16lbs, which is important for when you need to cary it up a flight of stairs.
The bicycle features you mention (bottle cages, fenders, racks, etc.) were purposefully excluded from the bicycle's design to save on weight, maintenance, and cost.