Startups bought: Winamp self-destroying the Great wall and cultural conflict

A few days ago, we reported on the decline of Flickr after Yahoo's takeover. Similarly, there are too many entrepreneurial stars to be spoiled by big companies buying.

Today we come to another story. Winamp's story.

In the late 1990, every music geek had a Winamp software, its camel logo appeared around the world, and the acquisition of large sums of money followed it. But in 1999, when AOL bought Winamp at 80 million to 100 million dollars, it almost immediately lost its innovative edge.

2012,winamp's 15 anniversary has been low-key, and the internet seems to have forgotten its "really whips" llama ' ass. The slogan once made Winamp sound like a digital music revolution, and it did get a chance.

"Without the mismanagement of AOL's acquisition of Winamp, there is no itunes at all today." "Winamp's first general manager and first employee, Rob Lord, said.

Winamp's earliest developer, Justin Frankel, agrees. In an interview with BetaNews, he said: "I always hope that they wake up at that time is killing Winamp, so hurry to find a better way." But AOL always seems to be limited to infighting and nothing to do. ”

In early 2004, the Rolling Stone magazine called Nullsoft's founder Frankel "the Most dangerous geek in the world", but the dangerous geek couldn't adapt to a company like AOL. The same year, Frankel resigned, wrote a few lines on his website: "For me, programming is a form of self-expression, but the company is holding me to the most effective way to express myself." I was not accepted as an individual, so I had to leave. But the text was subsequently deleted.

Today, Winamp is still updating, with AOL releasing its first Android version in 2010 and a Mac version in 2011. The magic is that, for so long, AOL can still earn enough decent income from it. The company declined to release official data

Former employees revealed that Winamp now has a yearly income of 6 million dollars. Winamp still has millions of users around the world, with only a small percentage of Native American users.

However, Winamp has missed the golden years of the app, how did it squander the opportunity it had gained in the online music business?

This is the story every entrepreneur should read-after reading, you need to ask: if you really love your entrepreneurial projects and teams, do you actually want to sell? This is also the story that every big company should read-after reading, you need to ask: what is the purpose of buying every good start-up company and team? How to treat them kindly? Are you wasting your money?

The following review winmap from the rise to acquisitions to a ruined feature, from the US Science and technology information website ArsTechnica, which was compiled by Tiger sniffing and abridged.

Rapid rise

Like most startups, Winamp is created to solve an "annoying problem." 20 years ago, compressed music had just become a mainstream application, and it was quite difficult to organize and play them. Frankel has been developing the software that it wants to use. "Winamp provides a good, enjoyable way to listen to MP3 on a computer. This is certainly not the first MP3 player, but the previous MP3 player is hard for me to use. ”

Before Winamp, there was not much software to cover Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. In the 1990 's, few players were able to provide basic playlists, a small amount of visualization and custom skin features, and were not as close and efficient as Winamp software. Even today, the Mac version of Winamp is only 4.2MB, while itunes's Mac installation version is up to 170MB.

April 21, 1997, Winamp released, the full name is the Windows Advanced Multimedia products. The following year, when its parent company Nullsoft was formally incorporated, the Winamp software had been copied for 10 dollars. You think nobody pays?

"The year before the takeover, we kept signing a 10-dollar cheque, earning 100,000 dollars a month!" Rob Lord said. Before joining Nullsoft in May 1999, Lord was a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was involved in the creation of the world's first legitimate online music library.

Lord said that when he joined Nullsoft, Frankel was 18 years old (born 1978). They work for parents in Frankel California, and Frankel's father, Charles Frankel, is the company's legal advisor and CFO.

Winamp founder Justin Frankel

"My title is the online strategic director, although we don't know what this means," he said. "There was a lot of strategic and tactical decisions around everything, but there was no programming," he said. Frankel is the only Winamp programmer and the only one who can access the source code. I'm advising on product features from a business level-I launched the first monetization of the Internet. "The Lord's job is to find out how to make money for the company. Like most 1990-year entrepreneurial projects, the plan includes banner ads and possible collaborations with other entrepreneurial projects.

Prostitution and cultural conflict

Find a Buyer

In the first 2 years before the Lord joined the Nullsoft, Winamp's users surged from 1.5 million to 60 million, and then the takeover proposals came.

Few companies have a direct desire to buy, but they ask: "Do you have a future development plan?" Soon, Nullsoft's net worth rose to 100 million dollars, such a bid is too hard to resist.

In June 1999, Nullsoft and another streaming media player, spinner, were bought by AOL at $400 million a price. Frankel got an AOL stock of $60 million worth at the time, and his father, old Frankel, got 1.5 million dollars worth of shares.

The Lord said Nullsoft was "bought in the frenzy of sweet Peaks", and in the six months after January 2000, AOL merged with Time Warner.

AOL merged two projects, allowing Nullsoft to move to the warehouse-converted office in San Francisco's spinner.

Everyone involved in the deal is looking forward to the next big move.

"The general logic is that spinner has established a service and has an experienced management team." Spinner, vice president Mclntyre said. "Winamp has a product and platform that can produce meaningful user applications. ”

AOL didn't tell either of us, and it bought both. Josh Felser recalls. Felser was co-founder and president of spinner in 1997-1999, and subsequently became AOL's vice-president, responsible for spinner and Nullsoft. Now he is a freestyle capital venture capitalist. "AOL binds us together, and I am responsible for two brands." Obviously our culture is different, but there was no sign of conflict. ”

At first, Winamp was still growing. "In the late 1990, Winamp.com had a hundreds of millions of visit in one months," he said. "Mclntyre said. "We just push the ads. This is a lucrative business, though not so sexy, but still profitable business. “

But the problem soon became apparent.

Cultural conflict

Spinner and Nullsoft's corporate culture cannot be integrated. Worse still, because it was acquired at the same time, it was sometimes unclear who was responsible. The Nullsoft team sent four people to the acquisition, completely surrounded by spinner. Spinner's people had already been working in their old warehouses in Portrero, and when Nullsoft's team came, they put up a huge tent with a waterproof cloth to cut themselves off from the spinner.

With a lot of money, the confident Nullsoft is dominated by the Lord and Frankel and oversees the acquisitions, and the recruits include the Chamath Palihapitiya responsible for product and business development. Seven years later, Chamath Palihapitiya became a Facebook executive and became one of the Golden Warriors ' bosses.

"On my first day at work, I saw that huge tent." Chamath Palihapitiya recalls.

"That's what a modified sweatshop looks like. Overhead is a large number of bright lights. Nullsoft people get a lot of waterproof cloth, so the place where they work is always dim. I always wonder: what are they anything under that cloth?

But the friction with spinner is more than a waterproof cloth. The first question broke out. At the time, AOL Management announced that, although Nullsoft had a large user base, spinner had a more orthodox corporate leadership and was a more mature company, so spinner was granted financial and managerial authority over two departments.

"There was a big conflict at the time of the budget, and Rob Lord flew into a rage over spinner's control and gave spinner more than Winamp, but Winamp was bigger than spinner," he said. Josh Felse admits to ARS.

"Winamp from 15 million in 1999 to 60 million in 2001," said Rob Lord. " We are in an office with spinner, they have 40 to 60 people, we only have four people. We are 10 times times the number of users and they are growing faster than they are. That's a weird situation. Is that we guide everything.