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singron 12 hours ago [-]
I used to work at Clockwise and am (was?) a common shareholder. I'm happy that many employees got to get a job at Salesforce. I'm sure it was tough to swallow some pride and recommend Reclaim, who was our strongest competitor in the space (or at least the one we talked about the most). Reclaim was acquired by Dropbox a while ago, although Dropbox wanted them to continue to run and develop the product there.
I also applaud them for not selling the data (as promised in the ToS). There was always a strong commitment to that from day 1, but I'm glad to see that wasn't an option when times got harder. Calendar data sometimes has really sensitive stuff in it, and it would have been a massive betrayal to do anything but delete it after a shutdown.
If you are interested in a more detailed piece about a company struggling in this space, I recommend Rise's shutdown announcement last year. We read this at Clockwise and unfortunately felt it in our bones. There is an ironic Clockwise callout in the piece if you can spot it.
I'm obviously not part of the decision, but I'm sorry the shutoff for users is so soon. Also, please don't revoke your Clockwise app authorization before the shutoff, since that will prevent Clockwise from cleaning up your calendar. If you want to cleanly turn off Clockwise before the shutoff, you can go through the normal deactivation process at https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall.
It's a huge bummer for me too to have worked on something for years and then to have it suddenly vanish one day.
If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. If any die-hard users want to make a self-hosted tool, I'm happy to give some tips from my experience. I know at least one large company has an internal tool like Clockwise's autopilot/flexible meetings.
oystersareyum 12 hours ago [-]
> If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it.
Why is it so rough etc.?
edoceo 11 hours ago [-]
Starting a company, that can get PMF, raise funds and grow is like 2% success rate. Then exiting for upside is like 2% of that previous 2%.
The number of problems, the type of problems, the scale of the problems. Oof.
paxys 12 hours ago [-]
Salesforce has lost half its market cap in the last ~year. Spending time and money to acquire a calendar scheduler shows just how badly they have lost the plot.
I know this is an HN meme but can someone look at https://www.getclockwise.com/overview and explain why an internal team couldn't build this in a couple of weeks? And it's not like Salesforce is lacking engineers - they employ 83,000 (!!) people globally.
JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago [-]
> Salesforce has lost half its market cap in the last ~year
Presumably that's why their stock is down. If you want to have a record stock price you've got to be really unprofitable.
chronic20001 8 hours ago [-]
> They're also at record revenue [1].
I too have revenue of $1 billion but with $2 billion in expenses
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
“FY26 operating cash flow of $15.0 billion, up 15% Y/Y, and free cash flow of $14.4 billion, up 16% Y/Y. Returned $14.3 billion to shareholders, including $12.7 billion in share repurchases and $1.6 billion in dividends.”
Like, literally bullet pointed.
hallway_monitor 8 hours ago [-]
I mean wow, talk about making it up in volume, but hell I would take it.
apparent 11 hours ago [-]
Typically when a company is acquired and the product is swiftly shut down, the value sought was the team. Although Salesforce has plenty of engineers, they may not have a team that does what the Clockwise team does.
santoshalper 11 hours ago [-]
Or they may just think the clockwise team is great and is willing to pay a small premium to get them.
jacquesm 10 hours ago [-]
That means that for the acquirees that was the only option on the table so GP is likely right.
apparent 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the question is how much they paid and what other options the Clockwise team had. I wasn't going to speculate about that, since I've no idea.
9 hours ago [-]
bitwize 10 hours ago [-]
Because the features need to be planned by product people, broken down and turned to stories in JIRA. The dev teams need to get together and play planning poker to determine who gets what story and approximately how long it should take. They need to coordinate with the DevOps and security teams in order to ensure it complies with company requirements/best practices concerning authz/authn, o11y, etc.
The good news is the company is headed into a bright and glorious future of productivity. The CEO has been completely one-shotted, and over last weekend he vibe-coded together a companywide TODO app. The submit button glitches out of existence and it authenticates any company email address without even a password, but its existence means the CEO is a dev now just like you. Token and SLOC count KPIs will be implemented next quarter.
ares623 12 hours ago [-]
Is the Clockwise founder mates with anyone in Salesforce?
Eufrat 12 hours ago [-]
Probably. The Clockwise folks were from a startup that was bought out by Salesforce before they left to do this.
IMHO, the problem with Clockwise is that there was never a compelling product or a moat they could build with in the space. It was trivial for Google or anyone else to just implement similar enhancements.
tedivm 10 hours ago [-]
I interviewed with Clockwise years ago and was offered a position, but ultimately I decided to pass for this exact reason. This system is great, and I actually used it and loved it, but it was a feature rather than a product.
paxys 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, that would explain it.
11 hours ago [-]
moomoo11 12 hours ago [-]
Clockwise has thousands of companies using it already.
Buying the company gives them those customers. They shut it down presumably so they can do something with those customers they bought.
Making software is easy. Don’t kid yourself. If you’re a swe you’re an expense line item. Getting distribution is hard.
paxys 12 hours ago [-]
How does shutting the product down get them any customers?
"Hey you've been paying for this calendar thing for a while, but won't be able to any longer. Go use one of their competitors instead. BTW have you tried our CRM?"
mushufasa 11 hours ago [-]
To be fair, Salesforce IS a CRM and can offer people project/time/calendar/team collaboration features, even if it's not a DIRECT competitor to a modern wave of time management startups.
skeeter2020 8 hours ago [-]
You don't typically buy clients via acquisition and then cancel them before you convert them, though...
moomoo11 6 hours ago [-]
Because you might shift them to another product line?
I don't personally care about Salesforce and think they're a low/mediocre company, but having seen acquisitions at my last company we'd shut them down but roll them into our ecosystem.
Obviously there's churn, but that's why you spend MONTHS doing due diligence to figure out if the strategy is sound. For example, most of the customers of one product we acquired were already using our product for other things, or competitor platforms. So, we managed to roll a bunch of enterprise customers onto our platform.
Its not just LOOK AT ME I WROTE SOME CODE :D lol
Or they might just be buying out the team to help them build out something to address gaps in their product.
But it is not just "why can't they just make it themselves"
QuesnayJr 12 hours ago [-]
Just shutting it down seems like the worst way to keep the customers. They'd be better off rebranding it as Salesforce Clockwise and then slowly transitioning them.
I suspect it's more of an acquihire.
pmdr 14 hours ago [-]
> it has been our mission to help the world make time for what matters. We've built a business to be proud of
There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.
darth_avocado 13 hours ago [-]
Being proud and being acquired aren’t mutually exclusive things. You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially. They are proud of what they built and are also moving to a place where they can continue building more.
Continuing to struggle for money isn’t a requirement for building cool stuff.
kgwgk 9 hours ago [-]
> You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially.
Projects may not be financially viable but it seems the minimum for a business.
gip 13 hours ago [-]
> There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.
They probably don't have much choice and Salesfore needs people who have built and launched products (I don't have any info, just a guess).
CoastalCoder 13 hours ago [-]
> There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.
Worst. Isekai. Idea. Ever.
neuronexmachina 10 hours ago [-]
I had stepped out of the high-rise office into the blinding San Francisco sun, a freshly minted millionaire wrestling with the crushing guilt of sunsetting my own creation. We built a business to be proud of, I tried to tell myself, clutching the signed term sheet. There must be a lot of pride and meaning in this.
That’s when I heard the roar of the engine.
dmitrygr 14 hours ago [-]
They have families to feed. This might forever protect their families from any financial misfortune. Any sane person would do the same. I would.
josephg 13 hours ago [-]
Then don't lie! Maybe instead they could say:
> it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first.
There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.
skeeter2020 8 hours ago [-]
have you never seen an "our incredible journey" post before? that's NOT how they work!
nullorempty 13 hours ago [-]
Well, that might have never happened. And don't we all do it for our families primarily.
soopypoos 12 hours ago [-]
I do it for my bookie
sailingparrot 13 hours ago [-]
Warms my heart to learn their families will finally be able to afford nutritious meals, put clothes on their backs and maybe even afford a bike to go to school rather than walking 2h everyday. We need more uplifting stories like this one. Thank you salesforce.
Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.
darth_avocado 13 hours ago [-]
A valuable skill as entrepreneurs, is to know when to stop and move on. Recognizing what you built may not be viable financially long term or is no longer a fit for the market and then making adjustments is what good entrepreneurs do. Sometimes it means shutting shop, while other times it means getting acquired and refocusing on the path forward.
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
This is one of those things that sounds so good with a quick read, but for every example you give me of a smart entrepreneur who knew when to pull the plug I can gave you a gritty, determined one who stayed focus on the vision and built something successful. In this case did they ever have market fit or financial viablilty?
Bnjoroge 14 hours ago [-]
Sure but they dont have to act all insufferable about it lmao. Just say it was the best outcome not a bunch of bullshit
Animats 14 hours ago [-]
Salesforce seems to be doing a shutdown of many of their "pre-AI" products.[1]
I’m only interested in this because it is the first company I’ve seen try to completely wipe itself off the face of the earth in a little over a week. You won’t even be able to access your billing history after March 27 and there will be no support available after that date.
SoftTalker 8 hours ago [-]
A huge fuck you to their customer base. Talk about burning bridges to the ground.
keeganpoppen 12 hours ago [-]
sorry in advance to their employees as they go up against the value buzzsaw that is Salesforce as an acquirer. i have years of firsthand experience, and there was not a single win in my entire tenure there.
john_strinlai 13 hours ago [-]
seems like a rather short time frame considering they are just deleting the data, links, calendar events, past invoices, etc.?
hopefully no one paying for their service decided to take a 1 week vacation starting tomorrow.
samothrace 13 hours ago [-]
I think this is the first time I've seen a cookies pop-up that only offered an "Allow All" option and nothing else. Accept our cookies or go away, I guess.
dinamic 13 hours ago [-]
Why would a company acquire the other one just to shut it down?
pjc50 13 hours ago [-]
Other than directly cancelling a competing product, it's usually to acquire the staff. Bit like the football transfer market, but you can buy Marcus Rashford separately without having to buy the whole of Man U.
dozerly 12 hours ago [-]
Yea, until they leave as soon as they can because working at Salesforce is nothing like a startup
These acquihires seem so ineffective to me unless the acquiring company is truly attractive to the acquirees talent.
apparent 11 hours ago [-]
That's what the vesting period is for, to ensure the team sticks around for long enough that the acquirer can figure out who is most valuable and make it attractive for them to stay.
skeeter2020 7 hours ago [-]
optimist's view: if you have faith in SF longer term it's a great time to get your options priced!
apparent 6 hours ago [-]
I've definitely heard stories of people who wanted to sell their stock after being acquired, couldn't because of vesting/lockup, and were glad because it went up a lot in the meantime.
tuananh 4 hours ago [-]
> buy Marcus Rashford
that would strengthen Man Utd :D
anthonySs 12 hours ago [-]
i wish i had insights into the minds of the MBAs that make decisions like this
bix6 7 hours ago [-]
Has anyone used reclaim? I’ve been meaning to try it.
bombcar 14 hours ago [-]
Interesting tool, but it seems to be more of a feature than a product.
plasticsoprano 13 hours ago [-]
speaking of, Dropbox bought a similar product a couple of years ago https://reclaim.ai/
fsckboy 12 hours ago [-]
speaking of, Reclaim is the company TFA recommends Clockwise customers migrate to
throwaway0q5347 13 hours ago [-]
Now a feature of Salesforce :)
shakna 13 hours ago [-]
> Any Smart Hold events created by Clockwise (such as Focus Time, Travel Time, Meeting Breaks, and Personal Calendar synced events) will be removed from your calendar. Flexible Meetings will stop moving and the green Clockwise sparkle will be removed.
Doesn't really sound like it.
pmarreck 11 hours ago [-]
Hope they enjoy working on Java code... Forever... With 3 month release cycles, no CD... LOL
I also applaud them for not selling the data (as promised in the ToS). There was always a strong commitment to that from day 1, but I'm glad to see that wasn't an option when times got harder. Calendar data sometimes has really sensitive stuff in it, and it would have been a massive betrayal to do anything but delete it after a shutdown.
If you are interested in a more detailed piece about a company struggling in this space, I recommend Rise's shutdown announcement last year. We read this at Clockwise and unfortunately felt it in our bones. There is an ironic Clockwise callout in the piece if you can spot it.
https://www.risecalendar.com/blog/sunsetting-rise
I'm obviously not part of the decision, but I'm sorry the shutoff for users is so soon. Also, please don't revoke your Clockwise app authorization before the shutoff, since that will prevent Clockwise from cleaning up your calendar. If you want to cleanly turn off Clockwise before the shutoff, you can go through the normal deactivation process at https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall.
It's a huge bummer for me too to have worked on something for years and then to have it suddenly vanish one day.
If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. If any die-hard users want to make a self-hosted tool, I'm happy to give some tips from my experience. I know at least one large company has an internal tool like Clockwise's autopilot/flexible meetings.
Why is it so rough etc.?
The number of problems, the type of problems, the scale of the problems. Oof.
I know this is an HN meme but can someone look at https://www.getclockwise.com/overview and explain why an internal team couldn't build this in a couple of weeks? And it's not like Salesforce is lacking engineers - they employ 83,000 (!!) people globally.
They're also at record revenue [1].
[1] https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Sales...
I too have revenue of $1 billion but with $2 billion in expenses
Like, literally bullet pointed.
The good news is the company is headed into a bright and glorious future of productivity. The CEO has been completely one-shotted, and over last weekend he vibe-coded together a companywide TODO app. The submit button glitches out of existence and it authenticates any company email address without even a password, but its existence means the CEO is a dev now just like you. Token and SLOC count KPIs will be implemented next quarter.
IMHO, the problem with Clockwise is that there was never a compelling product or a moat they could build with in the space. It was trivial for Google or anyone else to just implement similar enhancements.
Buying the company gives them those customers. They shut it down presumably so they can do something with those customers they bought.
Making software is easy. Don’t kid yourself. If you’re a swe you’re an expense line item. Getting distribution is hard.
"Hey you've been paying for this calendar thing for a while, but won't be able to any longer. Go use one of their competitors instead. BTW have you tried our CRM?"
I don't personally care about Salesforce and think they're a low/mediocre company, but having seen acquisitions at my last company we'd shut them down but roll them into our ecosystem.
Obviously there's churn, but that's why you spend MONTHS doing due diligence to figure out if the strategy is sound. For example, most of the customers of one product we acquired were already using our product for other things, or competitor platforms. So, we managed to roll a bunch of enterprise customers onto our platform.
Its not just LOOK AT ME I WROTE SOME CODE :D lol
Or they might just be buying out the team to help them build out something to address gaps in their product.
But it is not just "why can't they just make it themselves"
I suspect it's more of an acquihire.
There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.
Continuing to struggle for money isn’t a requirement for building cool stuff.
Projects may not be financially viable but it seems the minimum for a business.
They probably don't have much choice and Salesfore needs people who have built and launched products (I don't have any info, just a guess).
Worst. Isekai. Idea. Ever.
That’s when I heard the roar of the engine.
> it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first.
There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.
Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/controlled-demolition-salesfo...
hopefully no one paying for their service decided to take a 1 week vacation starting tomorrow.
These acquihires seem so ineffective to me unless the acquiring company is truly attractive to the acquirees talent.
that would strengthen Man Utd :D
Doesn't really sound like it.