41–50 of 176 posts
What the hell is he talking about? Is the summary of that article something like "this one VC didn't buy shares from me but then I got rich so fuck the haters 99% of you are going to be rich too" or something? The article is like a word salad.
Would love to see a series of good curves: (1) of all startup's started by people who working in the industry, quit FT jobs to do startup or put in serious moonlighting hours in startup; total earnings - opportunity cost, annualized: (total income from startup - opportunity cost of hours worked on startup) / years spent Maybe this data-set should be split further into bins of founders whose last title prior to startu…
The middle is quite narrow, it's good money for a relatively large number of people but it is still a very small fraction of the total number that 'went for it'.
Still, better to try and fail than never to have tried, worst case you'll learn more in 3 years than you'd otherwise learn in your whole career.
At the time he attempted to sell his shares, Twitch had raised $42 million, and had been valued at around $100 million several months earlier [1]. He is complaining about the gall of VCs not to buy his shares at a price that would imply a valuation of less than $194 million (and presumably not that far below). I do not believe that this is a good attitude for entrepreneurs to internalize. [1] https://www.pehub.com/20…
His sentiment is worth much more than the raw numbers. Raising a round is a very very hard thing to do. As an entrepreneur, you look around and all you see are the 1% in the media. On the other hand, the fundraise feels like you go door to door getting your idea shot down by everyone you talk to. The passion and tenacity to fight through this negativity is what Justin is trying to elicit.
This is the key line:
> I tried to sell some of my shares in a secondary transaction at less than a fifth of that price – and I was turned down by every VC I asked.
So, he eventually actually made more on those shares, about 80% more and lucked out. But there is no way of knowing what would have happened in an alternatively universe where some VC would have bought a chunk of stock from Justin. Maybe then this deal would have never happened. You don't get to play twice, but it's nice that it all worked out so well for him.
At the time he attempted to sell his shares, Twitch had raised $42 million, and had been valued at around $100 million several months earlier [1]. He is complaining about the gall of VCs not to buy his shares at a price that would imply a valuation of less than $194 million (and presumably not that far below). I do not believe that this is a good attitude for entrepreneurs to internalize. [1] https://www.pehub.com/20…
WTF? The Twitch case is nothing like what 99% of entrepreneurs face.
$42M? Try having $42 in the bank and then saying "haters gonna hate".
Would love to see a series of good curves: (1) of all startup's started by people who working in the industry, quit FT jobs to do startup or put in serious moonlighting hours in startup; total earnings - opportunity cost, annualized: (total income from startup - opportunity cost of hours worked on startup) / years spent Maybe this data-set should be split further into bins of founders whose last title prior to startu…
I think that would make for very depressing reading. It would be comparable to making a documentary about everybody who ever played the lottery. For the most part you'll see people that lost. Year after year after year. And then there would be the lottery winners. A couple of them. The middle is quite narrow, it's good money for a relatively large number of people but it is still a very small fraction of the total nu…
Why the hell is this so negative ? He is very clear "This is for all the founders who know they have built something that people want, but the rest of the world hasn’t recognized it yet." It must be tough as a founder to prove yourself and others that there is an certain value to his/her business. Isn't a good exit is what an investor's or founder's option ?
Edit: it's not so great for Hacker News though.
At the time he attempted to sell his shares, Twitch had raised $42 million, and had been valued at around $100 million several months earlier [1]. He is complaining about the gall of VCs not to buy his shares at a price that would imply a valuation of less than $194 million (and presumably not that far below). I do not believe that this is a good attitude for entrepreneurs to internalize. [1] https://www.pehub.com/20…
His sentiment is worth much more than the raw numbers. Raising a round is a very very hard thing to do. As an entrepreneur, you look around and all you see are the 1% in the media. On the other hand, the fundraise feels like you go door to door getting your idea shot down by everyone you talk to. The passion and tenacity to fight through this negativity is what Justin is trying to elicit.
[1] http://www.si.com/vault/2004/11/15/8191994/getting-by-on-146...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a high single-event number. Do the numbers sustain across the year? MLB and NBA have over 100 events per year (considering all the days games as one daily "event")
Mm, League has events maybe 20 or so weeks of the year (matches mainly on weekends), for probably 8 of those we see very high numbers. But Twitch also hosts other stuff - SC2, Hearthstone, and CS:GO also draw large crowds. Dota 2 also, but Valve does have their own streaming platform for that.
If you include people watching in the client itself it is a bit closer but still Twitch would be double or more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitch is surely an example of the 1% now, but he's saying that you may not be at that point yet and still have a great startup, regardless of what you are valued at, at this moment.
Right. He's saying that Twitch is a 1%-er now, but even 9 months before their deal they were in the 99%, aka VCs are clueless sometimes.
Certainly raising $42M and having an over-$100M valuation already put them in the top 1%, right?