Once the Letter of Intent was signed, meaning that Apple would be buying the company unless something fraudulent came up, all of us at Astarte were in a very complex situation. We were accustomed to telling anyone and everyone about what we were working on, what our product roadmap looked like, and generally blowing our own horns whenever possible.
But after the meeting with Steve, we essentially had to stop talking to our customers, the media, and our dealers. Not literally, but we had to be very careful about what we said and how we said it. It also meant that there was no point in continuing to work on the products that we knew would be dropped. For example, we had recently announced that we would be porting DVDirector to Windows, which had generated considerable interest. Obviously Apple wasn’t going to be selling a Windows application. So whenever anyone would call to inquire about it, I had to come up with some lame-ass response about how the project had been ‘pushed back’. Or when the ad sales people from the magazines called to discuss extending our ad contracts, or the trade show people called to sign us up for the upcoming shows, or resellers called to have us do some on-site demos or training…it was very tricky. In many cases we simply had to ‘pretend’ that things were going ahead as before. In hindsight, I’m sure some of the people we dealt with on a regular basis must have thought we’d gone looney.
In the meantime, we were all consumed with getting things organized for the acquisition…
…cover the training session at Intelligent Media…
…the seemingly endless wait before the deal could be made public…
…dealing with Astarte customers and resellers…
…
Hi,
I would love to hear more about that meeting with Steve. How was that going. You recently wrote that you got prepared for that meeting. Now this one is after the meeting,
Andreas – I’m not writing in any logical order, so I hope you can bear with me; that stuff will be covered, sooner or later.
I think it’s interesting that you couldn’t say anything. I mean, obviously you couldn’t say “we’re being bought by Apple!” until the deal was totally sealed, but I’d think that a “we can’t currently commit to any future predictions as our ownership may change” would be OK.
I guess that’s the corporate world, though.
Saying anything along those lines would be the same as telling all, because many people would then be able to guess at the truth.
the silence i can deal with, we do it all the time. but it’s that deflating feeling on knowing your venture is changing hands at that you need to stall folks until the deal is done. then all the stuff you had planned to do, snuffed. and then, after the transfer, you wonder if the next group will be as nice and dedicated to your baby as you were. lucky you, you moved eventually.
btw, just went through all this myself.