I started using Gumroad to sell zines that teach you how to program by creating generative art (https://gumroad.com/l/splashofcode). I love their product and I enjoyed reading this post about their journey. I'm also excited that they plan to open source the product, providing a perfect alternative if they were ever to be sold or shut down.
Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
251–260 of 380 posts
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#252Why would KPCB sell back their stake for $1? Why not just hang on to the stock just in case it turned around? The explanation that they didn't want the overhead of appointing a board member sounds strange. If you don't like the company, send a junior person who can learn board membering in an unimportant firm.
Sounds like they wanted the tax benefit of marking a loss on the investment.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#253Hey, #1 on Hacker News! I don't think that's happened since...I launched Gumroad back in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614 Thanks HN for being a part of my journey!
Gumroad is really cool, bought lots of tutorials on 3d modelling, photoshop, texturing etc.. Maybe 100 or so. The platform does not get in the way and has useful ui.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
"lifestyle business" is really just a small business that works, is self-sustaining, and not overly bloated to attempt to make obscene amounts of $$$. I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.
Most businesses should strive to be self-sustaining. And if they make obscene amounts of money, all the power to them. What I dislike is A) the view from startup land that there are only two types of new businesses, "startups" and everything else ("lifestyle") B) and the "everything else" category is somehow inferior or even some sort of hobby or vanity project. Sahil used the term to describe his own company, and at…
There's a legit distinction, though, between startups and other businesses - startups are designed to grow fast. [0] That doesn't mean they're better, but you have to know the difference or you're going to get yourself in trouble. Is a quarter-horse better than a camel? Yes, if you're trying to win a quarter-mile race; not so much if you're trying to survive in the desert.
I think some of the disdain comes from legit growth startups trying to distance themselves from one-man "startups" that could be better categorized as micro-ISVs or side projects.
But there's definitely no shame to running a successful lifestyle business. The 37signals guys have been great at shifting that perspective.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#255> The next year was not fun: I shrunk the company from twenty employees to five. We struggled to find a new tenant for our $25,000/month office and focused all of our remaining resources on launching a premium service. Ouch. Even at 20 employees, $25k a month is insane when you have no profit. I'm sure it was a pretty office, the kind that attracts good developers in a competitive market.
I thought the same thing. There are tons of people all over the world, or even spread out in America, that want to work on an interesting idea with interesting people. The office really does not matter.
It feels like so much of the VC funding goes to creating buzz and cool-factor (cool office, free lunch, potential lucrative exit), which can obviously be great marketing, but it really limits your runway and obviously the control you have over your idea.
Still insane to me that more companies do not embrace remote work.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
"lifestyle business" is really just a small business that works, is self-sustaining, and not overly bloated to attempt to make obscene amounts of $$$. I feel like this is exactly what most companies should strive for. They'll make better decisions that way.
Most businesses should strive to be self-sustaining. And if they make obscene amounts of money, all the power to them. What I dislike is A) the view from startup land that there are only two types of new businesses, "startups" and everything else ("lifestyle") B) and the "everything else" category is somehow inferior or even some sort of hobby or vanity project. Sahil used the term to describe his own company, and at…
Gumroad took 10.35MM in investment to build a company that does 780k/yr (65k/mo*12mo) in profit. The numbers don't work out to call that a success.
If he bootstrapped and reached 780k/mo after 8 years of work that would be a successful lifestyle business and he should be absolutely proud.
I'm absolutely not trying to be judgmental as I've succeeded and failed at businesses myself.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#257I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs more money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I had to run a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking. There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, wh…
He's talking about switching from vc rocketship to bootstrapped. In that context the pejorative makes sense: he's describing how he felt at the time. Furthes, he ran this "lifestyle" business with outside investors. He's written a nuanced, heartfelt essay, and this comment seems to have missed all of that to nitpick on a word.
Agree the essay was a great read. I didn't see anything to suggest the OP missed that fact so much as had a reaction to a specific part of the essay and wished to discuss it.
Being a part of the SV startup ecosystem myself, I also see the term "lifestyle business" used as a soft-perjorative for "not ambitious enough".
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#258I was basically alone. I didn’t have a team, nor an office. And San Francisco was full of startups raising gobs more money, building amazing teams, and shipping great products. Some of my friends became billionaires. Meanwhile, I had to run a “measly” lifestyle business. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to keep the ship from sinking. There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, wh…
I also found it illuminating how quickly the investors wanted to just dump the entire thing, which would have almost certainly left all the businesses in the lurch, like we see with so many companies these days, especially in the valley.
People seem to forget that the VCs are hidden from the blowback of those cut-and-run decisions, so it's easy for them to make those flippant recommendations. It is the executives who will be publicly shamed for cutting and running and that reputation will follow them and likely catch up to them.
Good on Sahil for sticking it through and getting out of the bubble and realizing that chasing money is not the path to happiness.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#259Ouch, number 2 employee at Pinterest - a $10 billion company that’s about to go public this year. He probably would have been worth an easy 100-200 million.
who gives a fuck. i wish people would say this more, especially on this site. stop worshiping money. why am i saying this here, on what is a 50% get rich quick scheme site? i dont know... i somehow enjoy the downvotes. if you offered me 200 million to throw away a couple years of my life at pintrest, the thrill of saying "no" would far outweigh the benefit of being a sellout. only do stuff that is cool on its merits if you can possibly manage to. im sure almost no one here agrees with that but i find it cathartic to shout it at deaf ears.
Re: Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had some interactions with @shl on Twitter where he seemed a bit full of himself (a few years ago - I didn't realize he was so young, so that probably had a lot to do with it). However, he could, and most would, have cut and run and found the next opportunity. Not doing so probably cost him millions of dollars; that's pretty authentic in my book.
Why does his behavior on Twitter, good or bad, need mentioning here? What does it have to do with the article? It feels like the new normal is for absolutely everyone to be in everyone else's good books. I'm sure a TON of people in the wild think they had bad interactions with you, online or offline. Does that really matter? Can one reduce you to any one of those singular opinions? Is one not allowed to make a mistak…
I was trying to contrast the experience I had years ago with the voice of the post, which suggested far more maturity and authenticity than my previous personal experience.
> What does it have to do with the article?
Simply a personal anecdote which I think was consistent with the message Sahil was expressing in the post: he was young, he was overconfident, and he had a lot of growth required. I would like to think that the flip side of that message, that he has grown and hasn't taken the easy way out, was something I was trying to validate, and I was providing the context for that. I wasn't trying to say he wasn't allowed to make a mistake or persecute him for his behavior; I apologize if that's what I communicated.