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brainless | on: Conductor is joining Meta
I really fail to understand what is going on here.

There is literally no moat in most software expect the users a product has acquired. The number of slightly different solution to an existing product is wild. And this is getting crazier. I build for the fun of it now. Completely lost any sight of $ goals.

I am building agents, have own gui framework, own server orchestration, and now looking at deploying multi-app servers using unikernels. I build for my niche audience and make them happy - I am going via my existing clients who are in the property management domain. Non technical folks who have to handle everything from inspection to finance. My ideal type of folks.

I am sure by the time I build my end to end agent/orchestration/deployment/management system, I will have some customers and many more clones. Slightly different clones. This is the future. Why would anyone acquire anything?

They need my prompts, not my tech.

sksum | parent | next
Companies acquire talent ;Companies acquire products with a fast-growing usage base ;Companies acquire products that can help them beat competition in a fraction of the time it would take to build internally (in decreasing order of "real value" and increasing order of self-deception)

I feel its less about the tech and more about the stage Meta and Conductor are in, right now

brainless | root | parent | next
These were true in pre-LLM era. Cursor is a good example. Big numbers but what is the value in a year?

Sure they had a lot of growth but when there are a 100 alternatives, each offering something a bit different, then user bleed is natural.

Meta, Google and all big co will spend more $ short-term to buy and they will continue to bleed till the new playbook sets in the minds of execs.

sksum | root | parent
talent it is then;

both acquihires and products will get cheaper, could the new playbook be the OG marketplace ?

potamic | root | parent
In this case they're shutting down the product, so it's definitely not for the product or for the user base.
chrisgarand | root | parent
That's not necessarily true. They can be using it to jumpstart their own desktop app.

I don't see a Muse desktop app, this gives them something they can spin up in a few weeks, not months, with native cloud integration. I'd guess we're going to see a product competing with OpenAi/Anthropic (as far as standalone apps are concerned) by January.

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altmanaltman | parent
I mean okay but you're looking at two very different things. At your description, it makes no sense to acquire your business. But Conductor is not building for a niche audience and is a radically different beast. Even before this acquisition they raised over 20 mil. You're using very naive thinking when you're talking about value here, its not as simple as why buy a company when someone can vibecode it. This is particularly funny because its usually AI labs that are following through with some of the biggest buys lately.
brainless | root | parent
Why do you think how I am building is not going to be the norm? Software is going the way of plumbing. Pick a tiny niche, build highly customized workflows and sell to them. Global products finding audience across 100 countries is no longer working.

Raising money was not an indicator of value before LLMs but it helped a lot. I have been tech lead of a couple US based seed-funded startups and I definitely see the value.

But most software has no intrinsic hard engineering these days. A few do. Companies raise money because they feel they will grow into a large user-base. Then, either make money or get acquired. Where is "value" here? Its VC-speak all the way.

Privately funded AI labs in the US are buying, yes. I highly doubt this trend will go on when the return on investment starts fading. There is momentum in executives. The "value" is how they used to see things. Takes time to update.