This is an interesting contrast to the article by A Smart Bear about why he 'sold out': http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html
Fuck you, Money
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Re: Fuck you, Money
#12Very good, well written article. Can someone with a wide breadth of experience like pg comment on whether the equation of rapacious greed with likelihood of getting fuck-you money out of the startup game is actually correct empirically?
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Re: Fuck you, Money
#13The phrase is a disgrace to the idea it conveys.
I disagree. The phrase nakedly demonstrates it's about financial freedom - the freedom from ever having to worry about money every again. It's when you don't need your paycheck that you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. People who depend on their paycheck can't do that.
Re: Fuck you, Money
#14> So, will you sell out for fuck-you money?
I'm not sure if the writer is serious in his use of "sell out". I think it very funny. If you sell your company for a mere $10M you're a "sell out" but if you want more and more then you're the real thing.
Re: Fuck you, Money
#15the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. I'm not sure the OP has grasped the complete psychology of FU money. Surely the value of FU money is not to allow one to stop working, it is in the emotional pay-off for the security it represen…
FU money also empowers you to work on riskier and riskier ventures without as much pressure to succeed as the first success presented.
Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together.
Re: Fuck you, Money
#16I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph:
> Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?
I'm sorry, but that's just offensive. The fact that you can't imagine a "wage-slave" contemplating these questions is probably closely linked to why you can't imagine a successful startup founder getting off the treadmill either. If you were willing to take your $4.2M or whatever and be happy, you'd also be able to understand that you can live a good life without that kind of money too. (Free hint: it's not the 48-inch TV that makes your life fulfilling.)
Re: Fuck you, Money
#17A somewhat irresponsible and hypothetical goad.
A truly bankrupt sense of self-worth would be refusing 15MM for a germ of a business. It’s one thing to entertain delusions of grandeur, but to rationalize it by concluding you’re an interchangeable cog who fell backward into a successful startup is disheartening. The rapacious quality you speak of would not preclude the acceptance of an exit; rather, it would fuel it.
Re: Fuck you, Money
#18I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph: > Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No…
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Re: Fuck you, Money
#19The phrase is a disgrace to the idea it conveys.
I disagree. The phrase nakedly demonstrates it's about financial freedom - the freedom from ever having to worry about money every again. It's when you don't need your paycheck that you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. People who depend on their paycheck can't do that.
> you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off.
As said. A disgrace.
Re: Fuck you, Money
#20I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph: > Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No…
I think perhaps you're interpreting what he wrote too harshly.
I took it to mean that once you have FU money, you have to confront these questions because there's nothing left for you to worry about. Much of our time and mental effort is spent dealing with and worrying about survival. (Not survival in the hunter-gatherer sense, but making sure you have enough money in the next few days/weeks/months/years to live on.) When you worry about that every day, it's easier to not think about the big stuff. When only the big stuff is left, it's hard not to think about it.