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Founder Friendly

avc.com

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Re: Founder Friendly

#31

Post by logicallee »

ckastner wrote: post #30
logicallee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked you consider a tiny little $0.8t company like Apple to be a "huge moneymaker". Last year alone, which "hasn't been kind", just the top 25 oil companies made $2.6t in revenue¹: so what you call 19 days of revenue they made every 36 hours; in the year they made enough to buy Apple at its current market cap with its staggeringly high P/E multiple of 17.91, in its entirety 3.2 times. Just because everyone tal…

The point was that popularity can be a misleading metric. Twitter might be ubiquitous (a household name, as you said), but just like Iron Man, its popularity is not proportional to its financial success.

Fair enough.

Re: Founder Friendly

#32

Post by tim333 »

mbesto wrote: post #7
thesausageking wrote: post #6

For those wondering about the allusion to Hatching Twitter, it describes in detail how, when Ev was CEO, Fred and the board told him he was doing a fantastic job and while secretly meeting with Jack and coming up with a plan to push Ev out and bring in Dick Costolo as CEO (with Jack under him). Here's a quote from the book after Ev was told he was out with a vicious quote from Fred: Williams, stunned, picked up the p…

> Other portfolio investments of Fred's have followed a similar pattern of having the original CEO pushed out once they get to a certain level of success. And honestly, they should. Managing a company through 50, 100, 150, 500 and 1,000+ employee milestones requires very different leadership skillsets. There are very few founders who (1) understand this (2) are willing to party ways with their company (3) can navigat…

>original CEO pushed out... honestly, they should...

I'm not convinced. If you look at the big ones like Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, they kept their founder until big except Apple where they kicked him out, went pretty much broke and then got him back and then recovered.

There are also many examples where the founder was kicked out and the company tanked but it would be hard to distinguish cause and effect there - maybe they were fired because the company was doomed. I find it hard to think of any where they achieved great success by firing the founder(s).

Managing a large company is a skillset but you can hire for or learn that.

Having the vision and drive to start and build a company is also a skillset, and one that's much harder to hire a replacement for.

By the way The Hard Thing suggests hiring experienced people to help the CEO, not replace them.

Re: Founder Friendly

#33

Post by elmar »

falala1 wrote: post #8
thesausageking wrote: post #6

For those wondering about the allusion to Hatching Twitter, it describes in detail how, when Ev was CEO, Fred and the board told him he was doing a fantastic job and while secretly meeting with Jack and coming up with a plan to push Ev out and bring in Dick Costolo as CEO (with Jack under him). Here's a quote from the book after Ev was told he was out with a vicious quote from Fred: Williams, stunned, picked up the p…

This is a great example of how a company was undone by greedy VCs. A little history lesson. The founders of Twitter really believed in a vibrant ecosystem for Twitter. They gave the developer community a slew of APIs, gracious quotas, and support. The ecosystem thrived and created dozens of major companies that made Twitter truly useful. The user numbers grew as well because those very same companies marketed their n…

Paul Graham - Founder Control (2010)

http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html

Re: Founder Friendly

#34

Post by discombobulate »

discombobulate wrote: post #26
thesausageking wrote: post #6

For those wondering about the allusion to Hatching Twitter, it describes in detail how, when Ev was CEO, Fred and the board told him he was doing a fantastic job and while secretly meeting with Jack and coming up with a plan to push Ev out and bring in Dick Costolo as CEO (with Jack under him). Here's a quote from the book after Ev was told he was out with a vicious quote from Fred: Williams, stunned, picked up the p…

He's there to make the business work. It's not a charity.

Fred didn't have to write the post.

& who can say for sure if what was written in Hatching Twitter is correct?

Everyone on HN is SO sceptical of everything, & then as soon as something negative is written about a VC you jump on them like a pack of hyenas.

Re: Founder Friendly

#36

Post by elmar »

elmar wrote: post #33
falala1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of how a company was undone by greedy VCs. A little history lesson. The founders of Twitter really believed in a vibrant ecosystem for Twitter. They gave the developer community a slew of APIs, gracious quotas, and support. The ecosystem thrived and created dozens of major companies that made Twitter truly useful. The user numbers grew as well because those very same companies marketed their n…

Paul Graham - Founder Control (2010) http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html

Create a board that reflects the ownership of the company (2007)

http://venturehacks.com/articles/board-structure

Re: Founder Friendly

#37

Post by _lex »

This is the principal agent problem in private, illiquid companies.

There are issues with founders, employees and VCs, where each invest in "the company" with an expectation of different payoff schedules, and each is not at all looking out for the best interests of the others.

So this is really a fight for the high ground - who gets to set payoff schedules: the founder, or the VC? Who gets to set strategic direction? And who's just along for the ride? [Note that the employee is not really in the running here, and that since they aren't allowed to set any rules, they should be as ruthless in extracting value (pay, career development & benefits) from companies as VCs and founders would be in extracting & securing their payoffs.]

In the end, these people aren't your friends, and any friendliness is simply another form of currency, which they can chose to invalidate at any time. Like Benchmark Bucks.

Re: Founder Friendly

#38

Post by chrisco255 »

evgen wrote: post #29
logicallee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked you consider a tiny little $0.8t company like Apple to be a "huge moneymaker". Last year alone, which "hasn't been kind", just the top 25 oil companies made $2.6t in revenue¹: so what you call 19 days of revenue they made every 36 hours; in the year they made enough to buy Apple at its current market cap with its staggeringly high P/E multiple of 17.91, in its entirety 3.2 times. Just because everyone tal…

If we get to lump all of big oil into one pool do we do the same for all of tech? The largest oil company, ExxonMobile, had only $3.5b more in revenue last year than Apple. Then again, you don't get to buy things with revenue, you need profit to pay for expensive baubles. Apple made as much profit in their "weak" (Q3) quarter of 2016 as Exxon made all year.

Don't you think you're comparing Apples to Exxons?
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