{"id":2894,"date":"2024-03-25T12:17:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T12:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/?p=2894"},"modified":"2024-03-25T12:17:32","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T12:17:32","slug":"when-companies-get-bought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/2024\/03\/25\/when-companies-get-bought\/","title":{"rendered":"When companies get bought"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just in my inbox is an email from DeployHQ<\/a> – my favoured deployment tool since as long as I can remember – telling me that they’ve been bought by DeployBot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first reaction whenever this sort of transaction happens (a couple off the top of my head: GoDaddy buying ManageWP, WPEngine buying ACF, Atlassian buying Trello) – I don’t think “woo, superb, access to a whole bigger company who will support that product I use”. Instead I think “oh, ffs, I liked the small size, a vague sense of people caring \/ some kind of intimacy in support…”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know that it’s almost inevitable that there is An Exit – and I guess if it were me, and I owned a company that had built to a certain size, had a bigger partner sniffing around who then offered me (presumably) a nice sum to acquire the business – I’d do the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still: from out here it feels a bit …meh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess the two sources of meh-ness are support and pricing. I would imagine (hope) that there would be pressure on pricing to remain the same – in fact one would hope that an acquisition would apply downward pressure on pricing – after all, if all the things that are being sold to me as a customer (having a bigger company support the product, scale of infra etc) – are true, then one might hope that pricing would follow a downward trajectory… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But – support. It’s superb right now, and I think there is inherent fear that it’s gonna get crap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know what a company could do to help provide reassurance to customers – but I do know that support is often the first thing to go. Bots, low paid and not very knowledgeable staff, automated documentation searches – and not a real human – these are too often rolled out to save money, and they lead to an all round shitter experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s see what happens here… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just in my inbox is an email from DeployHQ – my favoured deployment tool since as long as I can remember – telling me that they’ve been bought by DeployBot. My first reaction whenever this sort of transaction happens (a couple off the top of my head: GoDaddy buying ManageWP, WPEngine buying ACF, Atlassian buying … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2895,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions\/2895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/variousbits.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}