Post
๐๐ฆ๐๐ซ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐
๐๐๐: ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐๐ ๐๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐จ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ ๐๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ฉโ๐ฌ ๐๐๐ช๐ฎ๐ข๐ฌ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง
In late 2021, our team of five engineers, scattered around the globe, signed the papers to shut down our startup, Gradio. For many founders, this would have been a moment of sadness or even bitter reflection.
But we were celebrating. We were getting acquired by Hugging Face!
We had been working very hard towards this acquisition, but for weeks, the acquisition had been blocked by a single investor. The more we pressed him, the more he buckled down, refusing to sign off on the acquisition. Until, unexpectedly, the investor conceded, allowing us to join Hugging Face.
For the first time since our acquisition, Iโm writing down the story in detail, hoping that it may shed some light into the obscure world of startup acquisitions and what decisions founders can make to improve their odds for a successful acquisition.
To understand how we got acquired by Hugging Face, you need to know why we started Gradio.
๐๐ง ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐ซ๐ญ
Two years before the acquisition, in early 2019, I was working on a research project at Stanford. It was the third year of my PhD, and my labmates and I had trained a machine learning model that could predict patient biomarkers (such as whether patients had certain diseases or an implanted pacemaker) from an ultrasound image of their heart โ as well as a cardiologist.
Naturally, cardiologists were skeptical... read the rest of the story here: https://twitter.com/abidlabs/status/1745533306492588303
In late 2021, our team of five engineers, scattered around the globe, signed the papers to shut down our startup, Gradio. For many founders, this would have been a moment of sadness or even bitter reflection.
But we were celebrating. We were getting acquired by Hugging Face!
We had been working very hard towards this acquisition, but for weeks, the acquisition had been blocked by a single investor. The more we pressed him, the more he buckled down, refusing to sign off on the acquisition. Until, unexpectedly, the investor conceded, allowing us to join Hugging Face.
For the first time since our acquisition, Iโm writing down the story in detail, hoping that it may shed some light into the obscure world of startup acquisitions and what decisions founders can make to improve their odds for a successful acquisition.
To understand how we got acquired by Hugging Face, you need to know why we started Gradio.
๐๐ง ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐ซ๐ญ
Two years before the acquisition, in early 2019, I was working on a research project at Stanford. It was the third year of my PhD, and my labmates and I had trained a machine learning model that could predict patient biomarkers (such as whether patients had certain diseases or an implanted pacemaker) from an ultrasound image of their heart โ as well as a cardiologist.
Naturally, cardiologists were skeptical... read the rest of the story here: https://twitter.com/abidlabs/status/1745533306492588303
