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I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

mtlynch.io

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Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#81

Post by CodeWriter23 »

ignoramous wrote: post #49
alberth wrote: post #34

Broker commission: $88,900 Legal fees: $18,297 This equates to ~18% of total sale price. Most people don't realize how much get eaten up in deal/closing costs. Congrats to him for the successful exit. Reading his blog post over the years should be eye opening to anyone just how hard starting/running a business is.

> how hard starting/running a business is That it is, but here Michael is explicit that most of the pain [0] was from doing hardware, software, and e-commerce all at once. Surely, there are other relatively easier businesses in tech? [0] Reminds me of Avery Pennarun's A profitable, growing, useful, legal, well-loved... failure (2012), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754531

If it’s easy, everyone would do it.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#82

Post by berkanunal »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.

Congratulations. I have been following the retrospectives for more than 2 years now. I hope to keep enjoying your monthly posts.

My question is, did you change anything on your strategy after you were set on selling? Or the goal was still the same, optimize earnings?

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#83

Post by mtlynch »

influx wrote: post #13

Do you ever calculate your GOOG salary and multiply it by the number of years you've been bootstrapping and have any regrets?

Thanks for reading!

>Do you ever calculate your GOOG salary and multiply it by the number of years you've been bootstrapping and have any regrets?

I've definitely thought about the number, but no, honestly no regrets at this point.

I got an email from a Google recruiter a few weeks ago offering to rehire me back at my old level with no interview or interview for a higher level, and it wasn't tempting at all.

I miss things about Google, and there are things I hate about bootstrapping, but overall, I definitely prefer the autonomy of running my own company.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#88

Post by floating-io »

talldatethrow wrote: post #51
shooker435 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mindset assumes that the only measure of success is monetary. If he left Google to try and get richer than staying at Google, then sure, he probably lost. However, he kept trying again before job hunting or returning to big tech. This tells me the monetary factor was smaller than something else. You mention the underrated educational experience in your last sentence, but there's so much more than that. He was pr…

How is healthcare tied to employment? Isn't it available to buy on the open market?

Employer-offered plans tend to be extremely good value, so the vast majority take advantage of them.

I was paying The bigger problem, IMHO, is that quitting means changing your insurance, which isn't just a financial change. It can also end up requiring you to change medical providers, which is no small deal!

This adds massive friction and stress to the act of quitting/changing jobs, a major source of leverage on the employer's side.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that it's effectively an overly burdensome tax on new entrepreneurs. It's a reinforcement of the concept, "you have to have money to make money".

JMHO on the topic; for reference, I'm a new entrepreneur very early in the process. I'm just lucky enough to be able to risk the attempt.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#89

Post by axus »

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.

Hopefully your buyer gets a nice sales boost from this article!

Why wouldn't you go back to a corporation and try to make a software product there, as an employee?

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#90

Post by demondemidi »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #75
tills13 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy hell the pessimism in this thread over a life-changing amount of money for 99% of people. > should have stayed at Google You should feel privileged that you've never been "stuck" at a job that you don't find personally interesting and stimulating. Wasting your life to see the number in your bank account increase.

Half a million isn't really that much.

less then quarter mill after taxes.
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