It wasn’t an exit, but GitHub didn’t raise money until they got a $100MM investment at a $650MM pre-money valuation.
Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
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Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#12It wasn’t an exit, but GitHub didn’t raise money until they got a $100MM investment at a $650MM pre-money valuation.
Similar situation with Grammarly which bootstrapped for a very long time (9y) and then raised $100M: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/grammarly
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#13Pardot (B2B Marketing Automation SaaS) was afaik entirely bootstrapped and sold to ExactTarget (now SalesForce) for ~100M. https://www.saastr.com/a-real-life-saas-case-study-eloqua-ma...
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#14Does a floatation count? WiseTechGlobal in Australia floated for 1bn last year, market cap gone up 3x since. Completely bootstrapped AFAIK.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#15There's probably a bias here around bootstrapped founders exiting at lower valuations because the take home of 100% of 10M is easier to get than 5% of 200M. I made up the numbers here but I think many founders are happy to get that first or second base hit of change your life but not quite FU money safety net vs VC money forcing the bipolar choice between home run or strike out.
Are you saying 10M isn't fuck you money? Its not rich but with planning you can live middle class support a family and not work again.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#16If you don't count tech companies, plenty of non tech conglomerates, restaurants, even things like cosmetics and trading make it big on just their savings and bank loans.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#17ViralNova was just one dude with a couple freelance writers and sold for $$$.[1]
That was in 2014. In 2018 it is way more difficult to bootstrap an online content company (Would love to be proven wrong with an example though).
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/zealot-media-buys-scott-delon...
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#18There's probably a bias here around bootstrapped founders exiting at lower valuations because the take home of 100% of 10M is easier to get than 5% of 200M. I made up the numbers here but I think many founders are happy to get that first or second base hit of change your life but not quite FU money safety net vs VC money forcing the bipolar choice between home run or strike out.
Are you saying 10M isn't fuck you money? Its not rich but with planning you can live middle class support a family and not work again.
Give it a few hours. Sooner or later, someone will chime in saying that living on $400k a year is "basically poverty" in SF or Silicon Valley.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#19I believe that the biggest exit ever, remains Microsoft. It is said to have produced more than 10,000 millionaires in 1986 dollars in addition to the handful of billionaires. Now technically, since it took $1,000,000 VC funding in 1981 [1], it doesn't meet your criteria. On the other hand, because it was a profitable company with a high pre-money valuation, the founders + Ballmer kept control. Because the valuation was high and the investment small, the VC had little effect on how the money was distributed.
I say this because, never taking VC is not a great long term business goal. Accepting outside investment is a business decision and one that in Microsoft's case probably helped all their employees and certainly did not hurt them.
Re: Ask HN: Examples of large exits without VC Funding?
#20There's probably a bias here around bootstrapped founders exiting at lower valuations because the take home of 100% of 10M is easier to get than 5% of 200M. I made up the numbers here but I think many founders are happy to get that first or second base hit of change your life but not quite FU money safety net vs VC money forcing the bipolar choice between home run or strike out.
Are you saying 10M isn't fuck you money? Its not rich but with planning you can live middle class support a family and not work again.
Not really after capital gains taxes.
You've got enough to buy a house in SF, put your kids through college, and not have to work again, for let's say 50 years with a decent annual spend, if you put most of it into a retirement account.