51–60 of 135 posts
I get so annoyed when I see people pick apart an acquisition. I saw this same behavior for Gowalla, and then Mint before it. "They didn't make any money. They sold too early." They remind me of people that would be sitting at the finish line of a marathon telling the last people to cross "Boy, your time really sucked." If you are one of the few entrepreneurs that has come far along enough to get to a sale - for any a…
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In case anyone is missing what has happened here, this is why people hate on private equity/VC. As far as I can tell, Loopt wasn't doing very well. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... They had an attempt to revive the company to compete with Groupon last year that many here thought was stupid and died an early death ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2696412 ) Michael Moritz (Sequoia partne…
Buddy exits like this one and the Hunch exit are very demoralising. They make startups look like some sort of game. As you indicated, Loopt was clearly dying ( http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... ) and yet people still got rich off of it. Product + Hype -> Big Exit is starting to seem like a perfectly legitimate business plan nowadays.
Sam and Chris are both brilliant guys and great BRANDS. Not Steve Jobs great-- but great nonetheless. Guys like this attract A-players and attract PR. Could Sam and his group have $43M in impact for the buyer? Surely.
Listen, success is just a big multiplication formula. If your "leadership brand" number is high enough, you just about can't lose. But that holds true for any other number in the formula (product awesomeness, timing, marketing, business model, etc).
In case anyone is missing what has happened here, this is why people hate on private equity/VC. As far as I can tell, Loopt wasn't doing very well. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... They had an attempt to revive the company to compete with Groupon last year that many here thought was stupid and died an early death ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2696412 ) Michael Moritz (Sequoia partne…
raising debt to pay a dividend back to investors is more common than not amongst the LBO funds. it makes sense if you have a steady and decent income stream, it is a bit like drawing down on equity in your house in order to take a holiday, except the rates are much better (when people complain about this, I am not really sure what they want to be done about it) the VCs of silicon valley are very far away from the Wal…
Oh, I just want people to stop pretending this is a meritocracy.
I think Loopt made an error in partnering exclusively with carriers. I remember when I was in the UK and heard of loopt the first tifme. I visited the site and was told to put in a US number. It was there they lost it. I am really looking forward to what Sam has up his sleeves now that he is free.
Everyone seems to forget that before iPhone, and later Android, you had no choice but to partner with carriers - there was no other way to distribute your application.
Even in Europe, where the phone ecosystem is different, access to location required carrier support, and nearly no handsets had the ability to locate themselves without network assistance.
Loopt made mistakes, many of which were mine, but that wasn't one of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Buddy exits like this one and the Hunch exit are very demoralising. They make startups look like some sort of game. As you indicated, Loopt was clearly dying ( http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... ) and yet people still got rich off of it. Product + Hype -> Big Exit is starting to seem like a perfectly legitimate business plan nowadays.
I think calling this a "buddy exit" isn't really fair. Same with Hunch. That's like calling Next selling to Apple a "buddy exit". If Square went south, what kind of exit could they command based on Jack and his team? If Facebook was dying, what would Zuck and his team be worth? Sam and Chris are both brilliant guys and great BRANDS. Not Steve Jobs great-- but great nonetheless. Guys like this attract A-players and at…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Buddy exits like this one and the Hunch exit are very demoralising. They make startups look like some sort of game. As you indicated, Loopt was clearly dying ( http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=loopt.com&cmpt=... ) and yet people still got rich off of it. Product + Hype -> Big Exit is starting to seem like a perfectly legitimate business plan nowadays.
I think calling this a "buddy exit" isn't really fair. Same with Hunch. That's like calling Next selling to Apple a "buddy exit". If Square went south, what kind of exit could they command based on Jack and his team? If Facebook was dying, what would Zuck and his team be worth? Sam and Chris are both brilliant guys and great BRANDS. Not Steve Jobs great-- but great nonetheless. Guys like this attract A-players and at…
what do you mean by impact? how can this even be measured?
"If your "leadership brand" number is high enough, you just about can't lose. "
again, what does leadership brand mean? And what does it have to do with building a business that earns money/makes profit (revenue - expenses). Just because something/someone has market or exchange value, doesn't mean they have use value. If the goal is to sucker some large corporation out of a small chunk of cash (small for the large corp) be upfront about it. But saying there's some higher form of value that 'brands' bring that has nothing to do with building profitable businesses is disingenuous. Steve Jobs built companies that earned money (from business operations, not financial market operations). HUGE difference.
I am very curious how YC makes out in a deal like this - when there is 17M of capital invested after them in A and B rounds if there was any sort of liquidity preference you can pretty much guarantee YC didn't see a dime. (especially since 9M of this was retention for employees which makes me think that the employees weren't going to make anything from their equity/shares)
This is why pg talks about looking at founders before their ideas.