I used to work at Clockwise and am (was?) a common shareholder. I'm happy that many employees got to get a job at Salesforce. I'm sure it was tough to swallow some pride and recommend Reclaim, who was our strongest competitor in the space (or at least the one we talked about the most). Reclaim was acquired by Dropbox a while ago, although Dropbox wanted them to continue to run and develop the product there.
I also applaud them for not selling the data (as promised in the ToS). There was always a strong commitment to that from day 1, but I'm glad to see that wasn't an option when times got harder. Calendar data sometimes has really sensitive stuff in it, and it would have been a massive betrayal to do anything but delete it after a shutdown.
If you are interested in a more detailed piece about a company struggling in this space, I recommend Rise's shutdown announcement last year. We read this at Clockwise and unfortunately felt it in our bones. There is an ironic Clockwise callout in the piece if you can spot it.
I'm obviously not part of the decision, but I'm sorry the shutoff for users is so soon. Also, please don't revoke your Clockwise app authorization before the shutoff, since that will prevent Clockwise from cleaning up your calendar. If you want to cleanly turn off Clockwise before the shutoff, you can go through the normal deactivation process at https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall.
It's a huge bummer for me too to have worked on something for years and then to have it suddenly vanish one day.
If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. If any die-hard users want to make a self-hosted tool, I'm happy to give some tips from my experience. I know at least one large company has an internal tool like Clockwise's autopilot/flexible meetings.
Salesforce has lost half its market cap in the last ~year. Spending time and money to acquire a calendar scheduler shows just how badly they have lost the plot.
I know this is an HN meme but can someone look at https://www.getclockwise.com/overview and explain why an internal team couldn't build this in a couple of weeks? And it's not like Salesforce is lacking engineers - they employ 83,000 (!!) people globally.
Because the features need to be planned by product people, broken down and turned to stories in JIRA. The dev teams need to get together and play planning poker to determine who gets what story and approximately how long it should take. They need to coordinate with the DevOps and security teams in order to ensure it complies with company requirements/best practices concerning authz/authn, o11y, etc.
The good news is the company is headed into a bright and glorious future of productivity. The CEO has been completely one-shotted, and over last weekend he vibe-coded together a companywide TODO app. The submit button glitches out of existence and it authenticates any company email address without even a password, but its existence means the CEO is a dev now just like you. Token and SLOC count KPIs will be implemented next quarter.
Typically when a company is acquired and the product is swiftly shut down, the value sought was the team. Although Salesforce has plenty of engineers, they may not have a team that does what the Clockwise team does.
Probably. The Clockwise folks were from a startup that was bought out by Salesforce before they left to do this.
IMHO, the problem with Clockwise is that there was never a compelling product or a moat they could build with in the space. It was trivial for Google or anyone else to just implement similar enhancements.
I interviewed with Clockwise years ago and was offered a position, but ultimately I decided to pass for this exact reason. This system is great, and I actually used it and loved it, but it was a feature rather than a product.
How does shutting the product down get them any customers?
"Hey you've been paying for this calendar thing for a while, but won't be able to any longer. Go use one of their competitors instead. BTW have you tried our CRM?"
To be fair, Salesforce IS a CRM and can offer people project/time/calendar/team collaboration features, even if it's not a DIRECT competitor to a modern wave of time management startups.
Just shutting it down seems like the worst way to keep the customers. They'd be better off rebranding it as Salesforce Clockwise and then slowly transitioning them.
Being proud and being acquired aren’t mutually exclusive things. You can be proud of projects that are not viable financially. They are proud of what they built and are also moving to a place where they can continue building more.
Continuing to struggle for money isn’t a requirement for building cool stuff.
I had stepped out of the high-rise office into the blinding San Francisco sun, a freshly minted millionaire wrestling with the crushing guilt of sunsetting my own creation. We built a business to be proud of, I tried to tell myself, clutching the signed term sheet. There must be a lot of pride and meaning in this.
> it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first.
There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.
Warms my heart to learn their families will finally be able to afford nutritious meals, put clothes on their backs and maybe even afford a bike to go to school rather than walking 2h everyday. We need more uplifting stories like this one. Thank you salesforce.
Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.
A valuable skill as entrepreneurs, is to know when to stop and move on. Recognizing what you built may not be viable financially long term or is no longer a fit for the market and then making adjustments is what good entrepreneurs do. Sometimes it means shutting shop, while other times it means getting acquired and refocusing on the path forward.
sorry in advance to their employees as they go up against the value buzzsaw that is Salesforce as an acquirer. i have years of firsthand experience, and there was not a single win in my entire tenure there.
I think this is the first time I've seen a cookies pop-up that only offered an "Allow All" option and nothing else. Accept our cookies or go away, I guess.
Other than directly cancelling a competing product, it's usually to acquire the staff. Bit like the football transfer market, but you can buy Marcus Rashford separately without having to buy the whole of Man U.
That's what the vesting period is for, to ensure the team sticks around for long enough that the acquirer can figure out who is most valuable and make it attractive for them to stay.
> Any Smart Hold events created by Clockwise (such as Focus Time, Travel Time, Meeting Breaks, and Personal Calendar synced events) will be removed from your calendar. Flexible Meetings will stop moving and the green Clockwise sparkle will be removed.
I also applaud them for not selling the data (as promised in the ToS). There was always a strong commitment to that from day 1, but I'm glad to see that wasn't an option when times got harder. Calendar data sometimes has really sensitive stuff in it, and it would have been a massive betrayal to do anything but delete it after a shutdown.
If you are interested in a more detailed piece about a company struggling in this space, I recommend Rise's shutdown announcement last year. We read this at Clockwise and unfortunately felt it in our bones. There is an ironic Clockwise callout in the piece if you can spot it.
https://www.risecalendar.com/blog/sunsetting-rise
I'm obviously not part of the decision, but I'm sorry the shutoff for users is so soon. Also, please don't revoke your Clockwise app authorization before the shutoff, since that will prevent Clockwise from cleaning up your calendar. If you want to cleanly turn off Clockwise before the shutoff, you can go through the normal deactivation process at https://www.getclockwise.com/uninstall.
It's a huge bummer for me too to have worked on something for years and then to have it suddenly vanish one day.
If you are looking to start a new company in this space, I'll gladly offer my services to talk you out of it. If any die-hard users want to make a self-hosted tool, I'm happy to give some tips from my experience. I know at least one large company has an internal tool like Clockwise's autopilot/flexible meetings.
Why is it so rough etc.?
The number of problems, the type of problems, the scale of the problems. Oof.
I know this is an HN meme but can someone look at https://www.getclockwise.com/overview and explain why an internal team couldn't build this in a couple of weeks? And it's not like Salesforce is lacking engineers - they employ 83,000 (!!) people globally.
They're also at record revenue [1].
[1] https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2026/Sales...
The good news is the company is headed into a bright and glorious future of productivity. The CEO has been completely one-shotted, and over last weekend he vibe-coded together a companywide TODO app. The submit button glitches out of existence and it authenticates any company email address without even a password, but its existence means the CEO is a dev now just like you. Token and SLOC count KPIs will be implemented next quarter.
IMHO, the problem with Clockwise is that there was never a compelling product or a moat they could build with in the space. It was trivial for Google or anyone else to just implement similar enhancements.
Buying the company gives them those customers. They shut it down presumably so they can do something with those customers they bought.
Making software is easy. Don’t kid yourself. If you’re a swe you’re an expense line item. Getting distribution is hard.
"Hey you've been paying for this calendar thing for a while, but won't be able to any longer. Go use one of their competitors instead. BTW have you tried our CRM?"
I suspect it's more of an acquihire.
There must be a lot of pride and meaning in being run over by Saleforce's money truck.
Continuing to struggle for money isn’t a requirement for building cool stuff.
They probably don't have much choice and Salesfore needs people who have built and launched products (I don't have any info, just a guess).
Worst. Isekai. Idea. Ever.
That’s when I heard the roar of the engine.
> it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first.
There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.
Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/controlled-demolition-salesfo...
hopefully no one paying for their service decided to take a 1 week vacation starting tomorrow.
These acquihires seem so ineffective to me unless the acquiring company is truly attractive to the acquirees talent.
Doesn't really sound like it.