Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 198 posts

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#71

Post by andreshb »

You made money to live for a year, that's great!

Things you can do for 6-9 months (save at least 3 months as emergency fund) before you decide your next step and could possibly lead to either a new startup or new job:

- Entrepreneur in Residence or Mentor to an accelerator (not sure where you are)

- Mentor or Advisor to local seed stage startups

- Advisor to local angel group or fund to help in technical due diligence and general advise

- All of the above but in different countries (Happy to help in Latin America)

Your experience can help founders tremendously, as a former serial entrepreneur and an investor now I find that my experience in what NOT to do is very valuable to founders. In the process you might find a company you can join or your next idea, or perhaps find the investment side of things interesting and start a career there.

Here are some options that your experience brings:

- VP of Product / Product Manager at post-A companies: A PM is like a running a mini company, they need to know marketing, engineering, product and a bit of finance to make a product team work well.

- Founder Again: You have more money left than what most founders start out with, as an investor I like backing founders with failures in the past.

- Venture Partner / EIR: Depending on where you are there's usually funds / accelerators that can use people with technical background and startup experience to help portfolio companies and perhaps even bring some additional dealflow.

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#72

Post by Spooky23 »

Don't undercut yourself. The fact that you had a >$0 exit is a victory of sorts.

I guarantee you know a hell of a lot more about those things that you think you have shallow knowledge of. You also had the perspective of someone who did everything without the luxury of heading home and not worrying about it.

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#73

Post by eksurfus »

I've run a bootstrapped startup that's seen a lot of iterations in the last nine years. We started in the midwest, then transitioned two years ago to the valley when we were accepted to an accelerator. I deeply understand the opportunities and pitfalls of wearing a lot of hats. Because we have been continuously profitable, however, its been an excellent, stable learning opportunity. If you are potentially interested in joining a small team and either exploring (a) a leadership role based on your experience or (b) owning, driving and gaining expertise in a particular business area to gain specialty, I'm interested to connect (email in profile).

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#74

Post by davidbanham »

Hello! I've been in a very similar position. Both the lackluster acquisition and the failure.

I really feel it when you say you feel like you're the jack of all trades but master of none. I had the exact same anxiety about my skillset and it was really tough to figure out how I was employable.

The good news is your mix of skills are actually highly sought after. The ability to understand all facets of the business _including_ the hard technical stuff is actually fairly rare.

The work I do now sometimes looks like management consulting, sometimes looks like contract software development.

I help companies build out prototypes quickly. I help them transition their dev teams to new paradigms (microservices, etc). I help them review their codebases and see how they're stacking up against best practice. I advise nontechnical founders on how to hire technical staff and how to think about technical strategy in "CTO as a service" engagements.

There is demand out there for what you've got to offer. When you're ready, start networking again and focus on selling yourself. You'll find more buyers than you expect.

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#75

Post by ThrustVectoring »

SirLJ wrote: post #69
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be perfectly blunt about this: your trading system is probably the equity equivalent of picking up nickels off of train tracks. A year's worth of living expenses isn't enough to get average investment results, live off the gains, and not engage in high-risk behavior.

Let me be blunt as well: I have been doing this for years and it changed my life forever in a sense that my family will never have to worry about money and talking generations here... and it cost me almost nothing, but time to develop...

The typical investor cannot get above average results - the market as a whole is the sum total of everyone trying to beat the market.

People aren't as special as they think they are. Investment strategies are littered with the ruined portfolios of folks trying to "beat the market".

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#77

Post by powera »

First: ignore the people who say this is a successful start up. By your account it wasn't.

If your company had enough publicity, you might want to say it was a success publicly and join FaceGoogSoft. Otherwise, take another three months off (outside of SF/Silicon Valley) and look for options to try again.

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#78

Post by logicallee »

SirLJ wrote: post #69
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be perfectly blunt about this: your trading system is probably the equity equivalent of picking up nickels off of train tracks. A year's worth of living expenses isn't enough to get average investment results, live off the gains, and not engage in high-risk behavior.

Let me be blunt as well: I have been doing this for years and it changed my life forever in a sense that my family will never have to worry about money and talking generations here... and it cost me almost nothing, but time to develop...

I feel if you want to participate in this community you should have the courtesy to add a disclaimer to your comment that you run a trading school (the link in your profile) when you make comments like this.

Also, to me personally, it seems like you're kind of making up what you just said (to get people to go to your trading school). Can you post some proof that your family is set for "generations"? (For example can you show the order of magnitude of your accounts via an anonymous screenshot?)

By the way I don't share the view of others in this thread who say that your advice is "terrible", the only thing that bothers me is that you did not add a disclaimer and have an incentive to make up what you've written (to generate traffic to your school).

Thanks for understanding.

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#79

Post by gerdesj »

Take a glance down through the advice given so far, from "email me" to something involving firearms which sounds dangerous.

Now take a deep breath. For starters, you are not a failure - two companies before age 29 is pretty impressive.

You will probably never be happy as someone else's employee for long but that might be an idea for now - get the CV (resume) dusted down anyway.

For me, having two other partners has worked out rather well - two against one, as required. That does mean that you need two other people who you trust completely.

I suspect that you will do OK.

Re: Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

#80

Post by kfrzcode »

Failing has been replaced with learning in my lexicon.

Every day you're alive, present, and able to love is a success. Take your win and look around you. You have more wealth than than 99.50% of the world's population if you can make $40k USD a year and have no debt.

Take a trip to nature. Computers have taken over too many of our lives, and it's worth putting away the screen for an extended amount of time to listen to the planet.

Post reply on HN