<story><title>Google Acquires North</title><url>https://blog.google/products/hardware/focus-helpful-devices-google-acquires-north/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peeters</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure &amp;quot;promising startup&amp;quot; describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well.  Everything I&amp;#x27;ve heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government.  Tales from past employees are not flattering.  Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders and the employees, if Google acquires the latter.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;kitchener&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;hg11tl&amp;#x2F;a_vision_fades_alphabet_buying_canadian_smart&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;kitchener&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;hg11tl&amp;#x2F;a_vision_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>DiabloD3</author><text>Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again.&lt;p&gt;Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things.&lt;p&gt;People don&amp;#x27;t want an agile foundation, they want a hundred year foundation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>macNchz</author><text>I lived across the street from their Brooklyn store from when it opened in 2018 to when it closed last winter (in anticipation of &amp;quot;relaunching&amp;quot; for the new glasses they were planning this year).&lt;p&gt;They rented an expensive glassy corner storefront ($50k&amp;#x2F;month I heard at the time) and built it out to a very high standard, but there was &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; anyone inside shopping. The store employees just stood around looking at their phones all day looking super bored.&lt;p&gt;I also found it bizarre that they didn&amp;#x27;t seem to be making any effort to use the space as a marketing tool beyond it&amp;#x27;s mere presence...I anticipated when they opened that there would be VIP&amp;#x2F;media&amp;#x2F;influencer events on a regular basis, but they seemingly just opened in the mornings and closed at night. Having been involved in opening some retail stores, &amp;quot;if you build it they will come&amp;quot; was certainly never part of our strategy.&lt;p&gt;There never seemed to be any attempt to attract customers or make the store more inviting at all...they didn&amp;#x27;t even have a listing on Google Maps for months after they opened. Seeing this stagnant shop every single day I spent a lot of time thinking about what must be going on inside this outwardly &amp;quot;promising startup&amp;quot; to make such an investment only to let it languish. Seems like my suspicions weren&amp;#x27;t misplaced!</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Acquires North</title><url>https://blog.google/products/hardware/focus-helpful-devices-google-acquires-north/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>peeters</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure &amp;quot;promising startup&amp;quot; describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well.  Everything I&amp;#x27;ve heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government.  Tales from past employees are not flattering.  Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders and the employees, if Google acquires the latter.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;kitchener&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;hg11tl&amp;#x2F;a_vision_fades_alphabet_buying_canadian_smart&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;kitchener&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;hg11tl&amp;#x2F;a_vision_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>DiabloD3</author><text>Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again.&lt;p&gt;Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things.&lt;p&gt;People don&amp;#x27;t want an agile foundation, they want a hundred year foundation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ornornor</author><text>&amp;gt; mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government&lt;p&gt;This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I’ve worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won’t ever go anywhere.&lt;p&gt;You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as possible (for a fee of course). You can then apply for more credits to pay off these SRED consultants fees, as I understand it... While producing little to no commercial value, and coast on these for years.</text></comment>