How not to get acquired • Hacker News Board

Re: How not to get acquired

#21

Post by startupstella » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

whit537 wrote: post #19

startupstella wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep I'm the only woman who was at FeeFighters and I respect Ayn Rand but I've never said anything about objectivism publicly...in fact, I would never recommend any philosophy for entrepreneurs as it is in fact, against my philosophy. So maybe you're getting me confused with someone else?

Can you shed any light on the future of FeeFighters and Samurai? How can users get their data out?

Alas, I cannot although I wish I could. I was not interested in working for a big company post-acquisition...hence the name "startup stella." I do hope the guys respond as we always respected the HN community and depended on it greatly. Whatever happened, hopefully the situation can be rectified.

Re: How not to get acquired

#22

Post by heretohelp » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #13

I heard a FeeFighters employee speak last year and she recommended objectivism (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) as a good philosophy for entrepreneurs, saying it worked for FeeFighters. When I heard they sold, I assumed that the deal was bad for FeeFighters customers because FeeFighters staff were so compassionless due to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right.

I'm always surprised when I'm reminded that people actually take Objectivism seriously. Especially with Peikoff at the reins.

Then I become unceasingly depressed for a few days.

Re: How not to get acquired

#23

Post by whit537 » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

niketdesai wrote: post #17

I appreciate the Author's attempt to empathize with the founders/team on the acquisition results. It's not an obligation for customers to consider anything beyond what they were promised and pay for - so kudos there. That said, the difference between the startup and big co. is so vast that there will never be a single person to be blamed for botched acquisitions. In fact, both parties are at fault - not for initiatin…

Fair enough. In the previous blog post that I quoted, I was thinking in terms of fine-grained things: "A specific human is responsible for the way issues are cross-linked in GitHub. Another specific human is responsible for the slide-out transition on the Tumblr HTML theme editor." You're right that for something as complex as an acquisition, there's unlikely to be a single GroupOn Effer. To open up corporations is a much more nuanced task than simply identifying a scapegoat as part of crisis management.

It was probably unhelpful to oversimplify about GroupOn Fucker. Sorry. :-(

Re: How not to get acquired

#24

Post by whit537 » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:43 PM UTC

heretohelp wrote: post #22

1123581321 wrote: post #13

I heard a FeeFighters employee speak last year and she recommended objectivism (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) as a good philosophy for entrepreneurs, saying it worked for FeeFighters. When I heard they sold, I assumed that the deal was bad for FeeFighters customers because FeeFighters staff were so compassionless due to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right.

I'm always surprised when I'm reminded that people actually take Objectivism seriously. Especially with Peikoff at the reins. Then I become unceasingly depressed for a few days.

That Louis C. K. bit helps me out in such situations. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

"And then when you ran out of money, you'd just go, 'Well, I can't do any more things now.'"

Re: How not to get acquired

#25

Post by tocomment » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:49 PM UTC

whit537 wrote: post #3

tocomment wrote: post #2

Could he use Stripe instead?

That's who I switched to.

So problem solved? (BTW I liked your lightening talk at Pycon)

Re: How not to get acquired

#26

Post by dmix » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:52 PM UTC

whit537 wrote: post #14

1123581321 wrote: post #13

I heard a FeeFighters employee speak last year and she recommended objectivism (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) as a good philosophy for entrepreneurs, saying it worked for FeeFighters. When I heard they sold, I assumed that the deal was bad for FeeFighters customers because FeeFighters staff were so compassionless due to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right.

:-( "I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'" http://xkcd.com/1049/

I'm sure there are plenty of good ideas and lessons from reading the bible. Doesn't mean you have to live up to every word of it without common sense.

Re: How not to get acquired

#27

Post by stonemetal » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:56 PM UTC

whit537 wrote: post #15

1123581321 wrote: post #13

I heard a FeeFighters employee speak last year and she recommended objectivism (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) as a good philosophy for entrepreneurs, saying it worked for FeeFighters. When I heard they sold, I assumed that the deal was bad for FeeFighters customers because FeeFighters staff were so compassionless due to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right.

Stella Fayman? https://twitter.com/#!/startupstella http://startupstella.com/ http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/ She's the only woman on their About page: https://samurai.feefighters.com/about But maybe that's getting too personal.

Not necessarily op could be someone who resolves s\he to she. Not realizing that someone would take it literally, or knowing that there is only one she there.

Re: How not to get acquired

#28

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:59 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #26

whit537 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:-( "I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'" http://xkcd.com/1049/

I'm sure there are plenty of good ideas and lessons from reading the bible. Doesn't mean you have to live up to every word of it without common sense.

I haven't seen any that weren't stolen from somewhere else and weren't no-brainers to begin with.

Re: How not to get acquired

#29

Post by travisp » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 7:06 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #13

I heard a FeeFighters employee speak last year and she recommended objectivism (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) as a good philosophy for entrepreneurs, saying it worked for FeeFighters. When I heard they sold, I assumed that the deal was bad for FeeFighters customers because FeeFighters staff were so compassionless due to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it seems that I was right.

This seems like an unfair attack (edit: especially as below it seems it's not even accurate). As an example of what a company actually run by someone who advocates that philosophy looks like, take a look at BB&T, which avoided much of the subprime lending crisis. The bank refused to underwrite seemingly profitable mortgages that they thought might be harmful to customers (since property values couldn't go up forever), even though Countrywide, Bank of America, and others underwrote negative amortization mortgages. In the long run, the CEO understood he could be more profitable by entering into mutually beneficial deals.

“We knew that we would be setting up a lot of young people to get in trouble if we made negative amortization mortgages,” Allison said in a recent interview. “I’m never going to make a decision that I believe is bad for my clients, even if I can make a profit in the short-term, because it will always come back to haunt me.”

Sources:

On avoiding ARMs: http://www.aier.org/article/7594-restoring-trust-banking

On being run by an Objectivist and guiding the bank by Ayn Rand's philosophy: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/business/02bbt.html?pagewa...

Re: How not to get acquired

#30

Post by polyfractal » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

whit537 wrote: post #8

mvkel wrote: post #6

The lesson learned here isn't that FeeFighters fucked up their acquisition. It's that you should be especially wary building businesses that depend almost entirely on another startup. Put another way, you should only use services that are pretty obviously going to stay around and aren't just a few years old with no solid track record. A service may be perfect for your business to hook into, but is it really realistic…

Yeah, no kidding. I ended up with a merchant account with fusty old FirstData out of the ordeal. I look at FirstData and their portal, www.mymerchantoffice.com, in a whole new light now. It may suck, but I can expect it to suck consistently for years to come. It also feels now like I should be vaulting cards with multiple vendors to avoid a single point of failure. As mentioned I went with Stripe, who are similarly g…

Braintree is pretty great, I like working with their API and customer service (always ready and willing to talk on the phone, which is great).

Avoid Authorize.Net like the plague. Horrifically bad XML API that will make you want to claw your eyes out.