Take the Money and Run • Hacker News Board

Re: Take the Money and Run

#21

Post by NDizzle » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

nkohari wrote: post #19

giulianob wrote: post #16

When did you guys get acquired? I used AgileZen a couple of years ago at a large company and I'm curious if it was before or after the acquisition.

We joined Rally on April 1st, 2010.

Do you ever wonder if it's a long-con April fools joke? My wedding anniversary is that same day!

Re: Take the Money and Run

#22

Post by kross » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:27 PM UTC

Cliffhanger! Looking forward to the next installment. These types of posts do a great service to others, I read many before selling my first company. The structure of my deal was largely based on the lessons learned from others with which I read about in the blogs posted on HN.

Re: Take the Money and Run

#23

Post by exelius » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

Aah, so it sounds like one of the big reasons you sold was because of imposter syndrome? I don't mean that negatively -- I feel one of the things that comes with experience is you realize that nobody knows what they are doing. This dispels the impostor syndrome pretty quickly.

Once you think you know how a business or industry works, you develop patterns to solve it. This can sometimes work against you because it can blind you from the change happening as other people figure out different and possibly better ways to do things.

But I assume you already know all of this, and that's what's coming in part 2 :)

Re: Take the Money and Run

#24

Post by nkohari » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #6

I'm probably being petulant or don't understand American culture, but: > To avoid spending money, we'd been subsisting on a diet consisting largely of soup. [...] But now, we'd gradually started to feel like we might be able to afford to eat at restaurants again. No middle ground?

I was being hyperbolic -- we did eat quite a bit of soup because it was cheap, but we ate other things also. I didn't mean for the word largely to be taken literally.

Re: Take the Money and Run

#25

Post by sg_gabriel » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:29 PM UTC

nkohari wrote: post #18

sg_gabriel wrote: post #11

Hi Nate, thanks for sharing your story. I think it's interesting because my co-founder is also my wife. And it's an interesting dynamic to say the least. If you don't mind me asking, what are the roles that you play individually? Just curious ;) For myself, I'm the backend engineer and devops, while my wife does the design and front-end engineering.

Roughly speaking, with Zen (and now again with our new startup TaskTorch), I was in charge of the technical side of the business, and she was in charge of anything non-technical (finance, marketing, support, etc.) Niki is an industrial-organizational psychologist, so her viewpoint is completely different from mine as a software engineer. As a developer it can be hard for me to see past the software sometimes, and Nik…

Very cool! I can totally see where you are coming from. I also tend to get stuck in the minutiae of software sometimes, and it may be empirical data at best, but I feel that women are sometimes so much better at seeing things from the user's point of view, and have a better sense of empathy for the user.

I'm glad to see that you managed to have such a close and complimentary working relationship with ur SO. All the best for your new startup, and am looking forward to Chapter 2 of your blog post!

Re: Take the Money and Run

#26

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #6

I'm probably being petulant or don't understand American culture, but: > To avoid spending money, we'd been subsisting on a diet consisting largely of soup. [...] But now, we'd gradually started to feel like we might be able to afford to eat at restaurants again. No middle ground?

There's lots of middle ground, just within the quote you've selected. "I sometimes eat at restaurants" is a long way from "I eat at restaurants exclusively". It's kind of nice to be able to eat out occasionally.

Re: Take the Money and Run

#27

Post by maxerickson » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

adaml_623 wrote: post #20

maxerickson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just making an extrapolation from minimal information. You seem to be aware of this, so maybe the best way to describe your post is "being cute". Plenty of Americans barely know how to fry an egg, plenty of others cook everything they eat.

I think the question about food is valid since the article talks a bit about lifestyle in Ohio with all the snow and not leaving the house. HN also has lots of articles about nutrition and exercise, etc. So I think some of us would love to know if these guys were head down coding surviving on soup for months because they were in the zone.

Sure, but being slightly ironic about it, there is plenty of middle ground between asking for an expansion of what was meant there and making it a question about "American culture".

Re: Take the Money and Run

#28

Post by leftnode » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

I loved AgileZen when it was first launched and I was a huge champion of it at Quickoffice. Definitely helped keep us organized and on track. Thanks for the write up and behind the scenes details - can't wait for part 2.

Re: Take the Money and Run

#29

Post by bontoJR » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

Very nice story, I have just one question: why did you guys not look for fundings or apply to something like Y Combinator?

Also, I know there are a lot of other similar stories around the US. I would really like to find and ear something similar in an European country, in the hi-tech industry: a small startup doing a good job, with a tiny but prepared team, being lately acquired by a larger competitor. Is there any similar story based in the old-continent?

Re: Take the Money and Run

#30

Post by jkot » Fri, May 08, 2015, 2:42 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #6

I'm probably being petulant or don't understand American culture, but: > To avoid spending money, we'd been subsisting on a diet consisting largely of soup. [...] But now, we'd gradually started to feel like we might be able to afford to eat at restaurants again. No middle ground?

It is not American culture, just very small part of it.