The founder of Vancouver startup Acrylic Software “likes” Facebook Inc. so much that he’s leaving Canada to work for the social media giant at its headquarters in San Francisco.
In a blog posting, Dustin MacDonaldsaid he and his Acrylic developmentstaff (which reportedly consists of two people) are joining theFacebook design team. But he alsopointed out that “our products andservices have not been acquired by Facebook.”
Four-year-old Acrylic developed the iOS apps Wallet (for securestorageof passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive data) and Pulp(an RSS feed reader). MacDonald’s blog states that although those twoapps will remain available for download in their current form, “thereare no plans for further development on them.”
MacDonald said in his blog that after visiting Facebook last year, herealized the two firms were “a natural fit.” The lure of being part ofa huge entity like Facebook, which has undeniably changed the entireWeb landscape, sounds like it proved too strong for MacDonald toignore.
“Simply put, there’s an opportunity at Facebook to have a big impact inmany people’s lives. More importantly, Facebook is full of extremelytalented people who will be able to help realize its full potential inthe years to come,” he wrote.
Buyingtalent, not products
No financial terms were included in MacDonald’s blog posting.
Will this be the last we hear of Acrylic Software and its products?Probably. As Nestor Arellano pointed out in anITBusiness.ca blogearlier this year, Google and Twitter have both used startupacquisitions as a strategy solely to pick up talent, but notintellectual property. Arellano wrote:
“Take the case of Summify, the Vancouver-based social summarizing toolpurchased by Twitter…When Twitter bought the company they actuallybought the team behind it. Co-founders Mircea Pasoi and Christian Stratand three engineers were reported to be on their way to San Franciscotowork at Twitter’s head office. We’ve heard no complaints from thecompany’s founders. Summify investors are happy about the purchased.But basically, Summify has been blown off the map. The company used tohave an iPhone app, but now Summify is no longer available in the AppStore. Summify also stopped accepting new users soon after theacquisition announcement.”