Having been through this, merely contacting the potential acquirers, confidentially or not, gives the perception that the startup is or will be out of cash, anyway. Every remotely acquisitive company is getting several of these inbound missives every day and they always assume the startup is dying. I don't see much downside to a different tack at this point and, if anything, it may serve to jump-start the auction process.
Yes, I believe that's exactly what's happening. Investors as a whole are able to shape their own reality: If enough of them talk about valuations taking a southward turn or a "bubble popping," then it can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The opposite case is also true, of course.
I'm actually waiting for clarification on this...I think my team might've misinterpreted the quote, and if so, Amazon would be significantly cheaper. I'll update as soon as I know (most likely Monday).
Chute helps brands, retailers, and publishers ingest, manage, and display real-time visual content on their sites, social channels, in-venue, and even in their advertising. We provide a fully customizable cloud platform and a suite of brand and publisher friendly applications. We currently work with some of the world’s biggest brands, agencies, publishers, and developers, including NBC, Turner, Condé Nast, NY Times, Huffington Post, Hearst, the NBA, Nike, Starbucks, Live Nation, AEG, Universal Music Group, and nearly 4,000 others. http://www.getchute.com/
----
We're hunting for someone with a passion for well tested, clean front end code. We're building out lots of new pieces with a combination of Backbone and Marionette.js and looking for someone to help guide the future of these various apps. You should be comfortable with Jasmine and ideally you've worked on a production site using Backbone.
I don't know if this is what he was referring to, but I find this article inspirational, about what the NYPD has been doing to fight terrorism, while we New Yorkers continue living our lives. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/25/050725fa_fact2
Thanks for the question. Avatars.io is one service we offer as part of our broader API and family of media services - see getchute.com. While we will maintain a generous free tier, we will eventually charge for access to the underlying API. Avatars.io itself is not a standalone business but is, however, a great way for developers to get started with Chute.
This sounds like a huge coup for Square. And a little surprising that they could actually (or already) provide card processing at a better rate than Starbucks could negotiate on its own.
Our goal at Chute is to provide the complete infrastructure around handling media files. See our other products at picture.io, avatars.io, and even slidechute.com. We think photo and video assets require unique workflow and processing and we're focused on providing that.
