The Downfall of Brydge: iPad Keyboard Company Folds, Leaving Customer Orders Unfulfilled (9to5mac.com) 19
Supported by conversations with nearly a dozen former employees, 9to5Mac details the downfall of Brydge -- "a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: According to nearly a dozen former Brydge employees who spoke to 9to5Mac, Brydge has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs within the past year after at least two failed acquisitions. As it stands today, Brydge employees have not been paid salaries since January. Customers who pre-ordered the company's most recent product have been left in the dark since then as well. Its website went completely offline earlier this year, and its social media accounts have been silent since then as well. Those former Brydge employees largely attribute the company's failure to mismanagement during growth, misleading statements from its two co-CEOs, and an overall hostile working environment that led to a high turnover rate.
Don't try to outcompete giant monopolies (Score:2, Insightful)
is the lesson of this "downfall".
Don't make Apple accessories: when Apple decides to make its own, it'll steamroll your business flat.
Don't make stuff that Amazon may decide to make and/or sell: when they do, they're gigantic size and ability to drive prices down will steamroll your business flat.
Don't offer any online service that Google can copy and outcompete you out of existence. Or if you must, make your company appealing enough to be swallowed up by the Google collective. But making it on your own? Fu
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Here, let me sum up your business "advice":
"Hey entrepreneur, try not to be stupid like 80% of start-up CEOs and do a good job predicting the future. Think you manage that?"
You want to protect your products in the 21st Century? Do it like actual smart people and secure a fucking patent/copyright/trademark. There's a reason Shark investors ask that question first.
All that other shit, requires a crystal ball.
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Good luck patenting a keyboard and trackball. Bryde was making commodity hardware and was doomed the minute Apple decided to make the same commodity hardware.
As for patents, if you think getting a patent is enough to stop giant corporations with a large team of high-power attorneys from poaching your ideas, you're naive beyond belief. Here [wsj.com] for example is the story of a company that had patents and got thoroughly shafted by Apple anyway.
I'm not saying you absolutely can't compete with Apple, Google or Micros
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Good luck patenting a keyboard and trackball. Bryde was making commodity hardware and was doomed the minute Apple decided to make the same commodity hardware.
As for patents, if you think getting a patent is enough to stop giant corporations with a large team of high-power attorneys from poaching your ideas, you're naive beyond belief. Here [wsj.com] for example is the story of a company that had patents and got thoroughly shafted by Apple anyway.
I'm not saying you absolutely can't compete with Apple, Google or Microsoft. I'm saying the likelihood of your company succeeding at that in the long run are infinitesimally small. The only company I know of that pulled it off is Citrix, by virtue of investing in better attorneys than Microsoft, before they pivoted to the ultra-lucrative business of big data and cloud services.
Oh, you mean the company that tried to say they invented blood oxygen sensing with an LED; technology that has been around for at least 30 years before the Apple Watch?
Riiight.
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That is why I sit at home in my one bedroom smoggy apartment wondering why my daughter no longer calls me and I wait for socialism and the government to fix my life.
Your apartment is smoggy because you don't bother to buy a home air purifier.
Your daughter doesn't call because she's tired of hearing you rant about socialism and the government!
There! Fixed that for you. . .
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in finest slashdot you guys didn't even bother reading tfa. wtf u all talking about? :o)
they indeed had patents, and apple had nothing to do with their demise, quite the contrary it appears. the two ceos were just hot air balloons, they did have a bit of bad luck with product placement but it was basically their greed what screwed up their own company. nothing to see here.
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in finest slashdot you guys didn't even bother reading tfa. wtf u all talking about? :o)
they indeed had patents, and apple had nothing to do with their demise, quite the contrary it appears. the two ceos were just hot air balloons, they did have a bit of bad luck with product placement but it was basically their greed what screwed up their own company. nothing to see here.
Haters gotta Hate.
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tbh i'm an apple hater myself, but i like to rant with a minimal notion of what i'm ranting about! :o)
2 CEO's? burned a lot of cash in the c-suite! (Score:3)
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I see you're missing the point of the whole exercise.
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Yep.
The clue was in the phrase "at least two failed acquisitions" - the company directors were obviously only interested in a quick buck.
(Let's hope they're now in debt after screwing their employees, but I bet they still made out like thieves)
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The clue was in the phrase "at least two failed acquisitions" - the company directors were obviously only interested in a quick buck.
That is the standard start-up playbook, after all...
I had a Brydge iPad keyboard... (Score:2)
I actually liked it quite a lot as I recall. But when form factors changed again, I finally let go of the keyboard entirely. I wonder how much of the keyboard market is dodgy old technical people like me that refused to adjust for a long time...
Same deal with waytools (Score:1)
Never heard of them. (Score:2)
Are they even a popular company?