Blackboard to Buy Rival Angel Learning for $95 million | Hacker News Reader

Blackboard to Buy Rival Angel Learning for $95 million

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17 pointspaulgb12 comments

I gagged a little when I read the line about money for R & D. Blackboard and its ilk are some of the worst examples of UI design anywhere. This merger is only going to mean more difficulty for their customers.

As I left my school the IT dept just updated to the latest version of Blackboard. It had a few more gradients and a warning sign saying "we no longer supported Firefox 3 (OSX)".

It's true; as a recent graduate, I can tell you that Blackboard (still) looks and feels like a rush job from 1995.

I'm not an expert on the markets, but one thing that has amazed me is that Blackboard has maintained a P/E ratio in the hundreds for quite some time. Today, BBBB's P/E ratio is 367: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ABBBB Seriously. Three-hundred-sixty-seven. Am I missing something? Are they really set up for that much growth, especially with a product like that?

Interesting. I worked in the .edu space before my current company–including working with Blackboard a bit when they were young.

I still think there's a ton of room for new startups in this space–these companies (Angel and BB) are still, as far as I know, very mired in old/web1.0 technologies and methodologies.

The biggest problem is the sales cycle in education is painfully long. It takes months to get a deal started, approved and then paid.

I'm not sure if the solution is to go with a cheaper SaaS solution that requires less approval, but I definitely hope to see some YC companies in this space soon (I have an idea for one but no time at the moment).

I agree that the sales cycle is long, but that could only be the start of bigger problems.

From what I've seen in the news and discussions on e-learning, the biggest problem facing startups is being sued by blackboard

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2006/08/blackboard_...

just for fun:

http://www.google.com/search?q=blackboard+patent+suits.

Please show me otherwise if I'm wrong.

No, you're definitely not wrong ... I'm curious what PG's thoughts are on this.

Does YC consider things like potential patent litigation when choosing startups? Have they ever faced issues like this after funding a startup?

PG's thoughts _were_ that this is a bad idea because 90% of the problems being solved in this area of software aren't technical but rather bureaucratic.

At least, that's what he said to me and my co-applicant to explain our rejection in the first YC round back in the day. Perhaps he was just being nice, though.

Mutual friends of mine applied to YC with an app to compete with Blackboard.

This is definitely validation that they should continue to work on their idea!

If they do they need to be careful blackboard likes to sue their competitors

fyi

Blackboard's #6,988,138 patent has begun the process of being overturned by the PTO (not yet finalized), but they have a revised patent #7,493,396.

I agree with buugs: Blackboard has been suing left and right - they even tried to sue the PTO.

Colleges should be investing more in the open source Sakai project. Which has already produced an extremely functional and completely open learning management system. Sakai is by higher-ed for higher-ed.

omg Blackboard should die

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