To avoid further cardiac anomalies maybe change the title a bit?
On Shutting Down
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Re: On Shutting Down
#12Oh man, for a few seconds when I saw "Shutting Down (ycombinator.com)" on my aggregator, I thought HN was shutting down! And then I was like, "Oh, April Fools.. wait, it is December". Man, that scare woke me up more than this coffee sitting next to me would.
I was scared that tech pedants would need to find a new place to bicker.
Re: On Shutting Down
#13I think that "On Shutting Down" may have been a better choice of title here
Good edit. Hadn’t thought of that. Changed.
Re: On Shutting Down
#14What to do when a company has found a market, reached sustainability with regard to its employees and customers, yet probably will not be providing the anticipated return for its investors? I'd like to hear about ways this has been bridged. Have there been any SV "exits" to a ESOP? Unfortunately, an ESOP requires at a minimum 30+ people to be legitimate exit option and quite a bit of administrative attention and expe…
The company can continue to operate, but that'll probably depend on the equity structure. Not a lot of incentive for founders and key employees to stay-on and manage a "lifestyle" business if they only hold a minority stake in the company. In that scenario, I think the investor-owners would probably want to recoup some/all of their investment quickly in a sale to a competitor rather than slowly over-time by milking and growing cashflow.
Re: On Shutting Down
#15The worst thing is to keep beating up the dead horse. At least in the gaming industry, you can clearly see some companies "milking" the brand of games, Bethesda and Blizzard have been doing nothing else recently IMHO. But as long as it sells I guess the company is still satisfied with chosen politics, even though it's profit over quality.
Re: On Shutting Down
#16The worst thing is to keep beating up the dead horse. At least in the gaming industry, you can clearly see some companies "milking" the brand of games, Bethesda and Blizzard have been doing nothing else recently IMHO. But as long as it sells I guess the company is still satisfied with chosen politics, even though it's profit over quality.
It's always profit first, in any given public company.
Re: On Shutting Down
#17What to do when a company has found a market, reached sustainability with regard to its employees and customers, yet probably will not be providing the anticipated return for its investors? I'd like to hear about ways this has been bridged. Have there been any SV "exits" to a ESOP? Unfortunately, an ESOP requires at a minimum 30+ people to be legitimate exit option and quite a bit of administrative attention and expe…
I enjoyed this as an option and would love to see more companies doing things like this: https://wistia.com/learn/culture/taking-on-debt-to-grow-our-...
Re: On Shutting Down
#18I think that "On Shutting Down" may have been a better choice of title here
It's still honestly confusing, the first thing I did after reading the title is look at the url to see who's shutting down...
Re: On Shutting Down
#19What to do when a company has found a market, reached sustainability with regard to its employees and customers, yet probably will not be providing the anticipated return for its investors? I'd like to hear about ways this has been bridged. Have there been any SV "exits" to a ESOP? Unfortunately, an ESOP requires at a minimum 30+ people to be legitimate exit option and quite a bit of administrative attention and expe…
The dreaded "zombie". Profitable enough that the investors can't pull the plug by force. Not growing enough that anyone will make any money out of it. It is my observation that because of "natural attrition" often both the management and employees tend to get replaced with B-players over time. The investors lose interest, their money is gone, their incentive to care a whit is gone, so they apply their attention where it has the chance to make a difference.