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Talent Acquisitions

marco.org

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131–140 of 146 posts

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#131

Post by reinhardt »

tptacek wrote: post #33
smackfu wrote: post #8

>If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company. Nice words, but I doubt it matters. Sparrow got nothing but support for their entire company history. Every review was golden. Every user was a paid user. And they still sold out. (Or maybe Marco means pe…

This is a series of nonstatements. Obviously, Sparrow did not get so much support that Google's offer was unattractive. Post as many gold stars as you want: if Google is outbidding the user base, it's hard to blame the developer for accepting their offer.

Not that hard really. Not everyone sees life as bank savings optimization problem.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#132

Post by buro9 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #72
terhechte wrote: post #2

I'm the author of the popular Mac Instagram Client "InstaDesk" ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) and I can only confirm this. The reason why I started this whole thing was because I was fed up with working in corporations and not being able to control my life. Now I can enjoy the sun during the day, outside, sitting at a lake, and work late into the evening - or vice versa work at the lake. Even if a huge corporation…

> Money doesn't make me happy, freedom does. Guess what money buys? The only problem (in this context) is that it has to be a fairly large amount of money, and all in one chunk. Seriously, if Facebook offered you $10MM for instadesk, under the condition that you'd have to work for them for one year, you'd turn that down? No way. You'd be silly not to take it, because you could put in your one year and then be free fo…

I think that is false.

I think freedom is more like love... money can not buy it, you have to work at other things to get it. If you think money buys you freedom then you become a slave to money rather than a person living with freedom.

I've recently quit the corporate treadmill and am working on a startup. I've gone from an annual 6-figure (GBP) income from my day job and projects, to an £8k income from one actually profitable bootstrapped company.

I don't think I could go back to the corporate world, and whilst a VC firm is currently trying to court me I fear it's just a talent acquisition attempt. I'm not interested in any scenario that isn't me pushing my work forward.

The only thing I'm interested in is the freedom to work today on something that I care deeply for and believe in. My entire existence is focused on one this thing: This idea I have must come into being.

No money can stop me from doing this, and that is freedom to me. To, today, choose everything I do and how I do it. To be happy knowing I have no distractions just to put food on the table, to be able to dedicate myself to this.

Today I can truly say that there is no amount of money for which I'd enslave myself again. Perhaps there might be such a figure tomorrow, but today there isn't. I live day by day, and I think that tomorrow I will feel the same way.

One fear I had in the corporate world earning that large sum of money... "What if I never quit and follow my dream?", "What if I spent my whole life working to secure the ability to follow my dream and then my life ended?". If you can, go for the freedom today. Money isn't worth it, it's such a bad measure of success, status, happiness and worth.

That said, if you execute your dream well and others agree. Then I think that money comes.

So freedom may bring you money... but money won't bring you freedom.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#133

Post by terhechte »

egillie wrote: post #87
terhechte wrote: post #2

I'm the author of the popular Mac Instagram Client "InstaDesk" ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) and I can only confirm this. The reason why I started this whole thing was because I was fed up with working in corporations and not being able to control my life. Now I can enjoy the sun during the day, outside, sitting at a lake, and work late into the evening - or vice versa work at the lake. Even if a huge corporation…

I'm with you on that. I'm doing a start-up just so I can enjoy the sun during the day, and work at night when I can't do anything outside anyways! I feel like now that we've got it backwards. We're not farmers, we don't need to work in daylight anymore...

That's a really nice comparison. Never thought about it that way. It doesn't apply to all situations, but you're right in that many, many jobs could just as well be done during the night so that people can spend the day enjoying sunlight.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#134

Post by terhechte »

jarek wrote: post #89
terhechte wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sparrow's case, though, one has to say that it looks as if they had a sustainable business. After all, they were always in the top 30 of the App Stores. That should equivalent to a lot of money.

Apparently it wasn't enough lot of money to not make Google's offer interesting.

Or, maybe, the chance to have a huge influence on one of the major Google products.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#135

Post by ajross »

nitrogen wrote: post #125
wensing wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love a good pricing discussing so I wish I knew what you were saying when you say: The only way to make that stuff is to sell it as some kind of "cloud" service where you make your money on eyeballs elsewhere. And No one will buy this stuff at the $50/seat the developers would have to charge to avoid the Google and Facebook buyouts. Can you please re-state? For some reason I can't follow.

I'm not the OP, but I read those two statements something like this: 1. The minimum price to sustain development as standalone software is $50/seat. 2. Consumers will not pay $50/seat for this software. 3. Some businesses have been successful with cloud-based monetization. 4. Therefore, the best chance for success is to sell a cloud service, rather than standalone software.

That's exactly it. Though to be fair, I pulled the $50 number out of you-know-where. The point is more that the caramel-latte-priced software model only works for items with huge volume.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#136

Post by ams6110 »

amirmc wrote: post #90
bconway wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this something you can really plan out from the beginning? Yes, people build companies to flip all the time. Many/most of them don't make the front page of Hacker News.

Sure but it used to be that they were flipping a product/site . Users may have griped about the new management but the 'stuff' would still exist. Seems strange to me that people would consider setting out to flip themselves (but I can believe that it happens).

If there's money in it, and it's possible, people will do it.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#137

Post by hntester123 »

sigkill wrote: post #128
socratic wrote: post #107

Was the intent ever not to get talent acquired? I'm very confused by all of the anger at Google and Facebook for acquiring these companies. The companies look like they were designed to get talent acquired in the first place! They both have very small teams (2--5), Sparrow at least appears to have taken very small amounts of funding (just seed a year or two ago), and I can't name a consumer desktop application (espec…

> App Stores have made consumer software cost expectations too cheap. Not just that. Previously when you released a paid desktop app, you weren't expected to give out free upgrades to the user. With the App store model, if a user purchases your app at V1, and five years down the line you're making a V4, the user will probably still feel entitled to getting the "update" (note, I said update, not upgrade) for free.

What do you mean by update vs. upgrade? Update = bug fixes only vs. upgrade = more features? Or something else?

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#138

Post by hntester123 »

reinhardt wrote: post #130
blantonl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and I can't name a consumer desktop application (especially a really generic one like mail with tons of free competitors) that has become a major $1bn+ (or even $100m+) business in the last several years. Exactly. An "exit" can mean a lot of different things depending on the company, situation, financials etc.

Why does a 2-5 employee company have to get to be a $100M in the first place? It's pretty sad if this is indeed true.

reinhardt: I agree. I think the reason for this kind of thinking ("have to get to $100MM") is that developers are brainwashed (by all the TechCrunch-style hype about the few startups that make it very big) and forget common sense - that they can live very well indeed even if pulling in much less revenue than $100MM - hey, 1 to 5 mil or even 0.5 mil is enough for a pretty luxurious life for most people anywhere in the world, unless you want to buy yachts or something like that.

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#139

Post by hntester123 »

dasil003 wrote: post #57
gwillen wrote: post #39

If I think you are inclined to accept a talent acquisition if offered, I _will not use your product_. Why would I? It's insane for me to trust my data to someone who's going to throw it away to make a buck. If you accept a talent acquisition, you will -- and should -- have a devil of a time getting customers at your next venture, having thrown away the customers from your previous one. Tread lightly.

Sorry, but this is wishful thinking. Being acquihired is not going to affect any individual's future ventures in any meaningful way. You might scrutinize every new service's ownership before you click sign up, but you are not even a blip on the radar. It might be true that overtime this will erode customer's confidence in startups in general, but so will being shut down because the founders are starving. And it's not…

I agree with this statement of yours:

>Basically, the whole computer industry is one big case of buyer beware.

But not with this:

>If you really care about your data use open formats, open protocols and free software whenever you can.

Your first statement actually kind of contradicts your second - if we think of "buyer" as "user" even if the person has not bought the product - for the reason given below:

There's no guarantee that a particular free software will continue to be supported, just because it is free. Example: iText, the popular and widely-used Java PDF generation library. It was free and open source earlier but some time back got converted to a commercial for-pay product (except that, IIRC, you may be able to use it for free if you make your own product that uses it, free/open source as well).

Re: Talent Acquisitions

#140

Post by mikeash »

justauser wrote: post #117
mikeash wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if some company you really admire offers you a billion dollars and total freedom to do anything you want, anything at all, you'd turn it down? Why?

My work is my life and hence my 501c3. Either I'm fulfilled that I'm able to "do what I want" or I'm just a stick in the mud. I also don't plan to retire. We can substitute work/employment for anything that you value. Family? Religious/spiritual beliefs/non-beliefs? Are you saying you'll stand for some value/idea/principle...up to a certain price? Nothing is verboten?

I can understand not selling out if you don't like the conditions. But if the conditions allow you to do whatever you'd have done anyway, why not?
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