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Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

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Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#281

Post by ryandrake »

newshorts wrote: post #275
sokoloff wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. $300K/yr with $10MM in the bank will absolutely feel rich. The reason people with $300K household incomes in Boston/NYC/Silicon Valley don't feel rich is because out of that $300K, they're buying housing and saving for retirement/college/rainy day. Take that away, and $300K spendable is a fairly luxurious lifestyle.

Disagree disagree. Live anywhere near Silicon Valley and tell me 300-400k/yr is rich. You'd be lucky to get a nicely located condo at that income level.

I live in the Bay Area, and $300-400k/yr is an unfathomable amount of money. Get a grip! You're talking about the top 1% of incomes in the country.

Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#282

Post by sah2ed »

callmeed wrote: post #39

IMO You need to look into both options until you get at least (a) a letter of intent for acquisition or (b) a term sheet from a VC. If you can, get both, then consider taking the VC money if you can get a significantly higher valuation and good terms. I recall a VC interview recently where he said (paraphrasing) not accepting cold emails and requiring an introduction is a filter that proves you know how to hustle and…

I think you were referring to Marc Andreessen's AMA with Stripe Atlas founders [0] which was as recent as July:

"Getting a warm introduction to a VC is a basic test of networking skills.

VCs are dying for interesting qualified referrals from people in their network—angel investors, other VCs, advisors, coaches and mentors, lawyers, and customers. All of those people love giving qualified referrals to their favorite VCs. VCs are some of the easiest people in the world to reach via their networks.

It turns out that the skill required to network into a VC is the same as the skill required to network into a customer, into a supplier, into a distribution partner, into the press, into an executive search firm.

And so if a founder can’t navigate a network into a VC firm, it is unlikely that founder has the skills to navigate the other networks required to succeed in building a company."

[0] https://stripe.com/blog/marc-andreessen-ama

Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#283

Post by viraptor »

chatmasta wrote: post #142
viraptor wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only get the image from cache if it's the same URL. You can still vary those between recipients.

But if it's a different URL for each recipient then google will fetch each individual URL, for each email. So every URL will be opened exactly once, by the google fetch that happens when the google server receives the email. The user will fetch the pixel from google cache. So how can you track open rates by pixel download when 100% of pixels are downloaded just one time? It probably depends on email clients. If a des…

Are you sure they download when Gmail receives the email? I'm pretty sure it's on first use.

Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#285

Post by conductr »

senatorobama wrote: post #278
CalChris wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For about 10 years. Less so for another 5. Then not at all.

I'm about 3 years into my career. Should I focus on developing my technical or interpersonal skills?

Not mutually exclusive. Do both

Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#286

Post by gnaritas »

There's nothing to think about, take the money, consider yourself lucky and don't chase a fantasy 400M that may never happen. The old adage is true, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Then you'll have the money to do the next thing if you're still hungry for it.

Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#289

Post by qaq »

xapata wrote: post #217
qaq wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure why not would you provide break down of how that would look with family:)? you can start by subtracting taxes

Let's say $100k post-tax to make it easy. - Housing $34k annually - Car $16k annually - Food $20k annually - Stuff $20k annually - Vacation $10k annually

A more realistic one Housing + utilities 50K Medical insurance + deductible exp. 16K Food 20K (will not be good food) Cell service/internet 2k So no car no vacation and around 1K/ month for stuff and all other expenses

Re: Ask HN: Sell my startup for $14M because I can't raise $2M?

#290

Post by perilunar »

kbenson wrote: post #89
zupreme wrote: post #47

Learn from my mistake. Unless you're already financially secure (meaning you could stop working and live your current lifestyle for several years) then my advice is to take the money while you can OR to leverage that valuation to pocket a few million $ (by selling equity). I'm doing great with my current startups now but several years ago I founded a very promising startup which almost immediately got many acquisitio…

Without any relevant startup experience to back it up my opinion, I concur. It's a hard pill to swallow, but unless you are working at the top of your software area with mostly theoretical bits that you've worked out, it's not really all that hard to copy most things in software (unless you have contracts in that give you an advantage, sort of like a mini monopoly). It's bad enough that a few years ago here people we…

> It's bad enough that a few years ago here people were complaining that they would do a Show HN submission, and find a few weeks after that someone had taken their mostly completed idea, assigned a whole team of cheap developers to it and executed on it not only faster, but better.

Is this still a problem? Don’t PG and others say not to be afraid of others stealing ideas, and that ideas are worth little, and that it’s all about the execution? Makes me wary of sharing my almost complete idea.

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