I don't begrudge this author his wealth or his page views. But this piece isn't the least bit serious. Ten times out of ten, he'd take his buyout over again. The only thing that concerns me is that somebody might actually take this post to heart and destroy his or her chances of joining the ranks of the author should the right opportunity present itself.
An acquisition is always a failure
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Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#12Pretty easy position to take once you've already earned your own "fuck you" money. I do sometimes wonder why these sorts of acquisitions remain so prevalent though when minus a few notable exceptions the life cycle tends to consist of a company paying many millions or even a cool billion for some tech in a stack they don't even use (only to kill it soon after) plus a handful of employees that tend to stick around bar…
I'd wager that most acquisitions work out fine, you just rarely hear about it, because "this is a sensible acquisition that is highly likely to work out fine" is not usually newsworthy.
On the one hand I'm sure you are right and this is partly confirmation bias. On the other hand I've seen a few acquisitions first hand (though never as a founder) and they were universally disastrous due mostly to poor culture fit which I suspect is common given the differences in how small and large companies operate (as noted in the original post). So that also colors my negative opinion.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#13No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…
Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?
Cuz he wants to get rich or die trying.
To which I would say: Seriously dude, why didn't you go into iBanking if you're so shit hot and what you really care about is stacks on stacks on stacks.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#14No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…
Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?
In reality it is an option, but given the artificially constrained "world" we're dealing with in this article, it made sense to skip that to make a point. Also, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, it might not make sense, depending on your liquidity needs. It's one thing to own a big chunk of a company which is actually very valuable, but quite another when you do not have access to that money in order to actually, ya know, do stuff.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#15Jake is brilliant, but this isn't always the case: What about Google's acquisition of Android? What about Apple's acquisition of NeXT? What about Microsoft buying 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products? What about Lenovo's acquisition of the ThinkPad?
These are wins for the buyer, not as clearly for the seller. Of course, if the seller sold voluntarily then it seems silly to argue that it wasn't what they wanted.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#16I'm going to guess that Jake will take a lot of flak here for this article, but the truth is: I agree with him, for a certain version of "success". There are folks who will pursue money, and then an acquisition looks like a nice validation and exit. Great. No prob there. But there are a bunch of folks who are satisfied when they are building , and any other mode feels like something is missing in life. My advice to t…
You can keep building when you have $10M in the bank. You can build a lot of things, not just websites. You can build a hotel. There's so much out there to do. Working on the same thing my whole life sounds miserable.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#17I recently sold my company and I agree with Jake.
What most commenters don't understand, in my opinion, is that real entrepreneurs don't start their company to get rich. If getting rich is your priority, become an investment banker (If you really want to code, make some automatic trading algorithms and financial models for investment bankers.)
In that regard, selling your company is, very often, a failure.
In my experience, the worst is to have to give up your values. As a young entrepreneurs, I started my first company 10 years ago with not only a strong vision for my product, but also an quite idealistic goal for the values of my company and my team. We wanted to be different. We wanted to do things as we thought it was right to do. And nobody could tell us what we had to do. It was such a strong feeling. It drove the success of the company. Ten years later, we got acquired by a large corporation that is not better or worse than you normal large corporation. And we had to give up all that. That's failure.
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#18even neglecting the money aspect entirely, this is bullshit. as a hacker, i want to build things. not "implement a vision", just build something that is useful to someone. if some larger company sees the thing i built and says "wow, this is exactly what we need to fill this gap in our product/service/lineup" and acquires my creation (with or without including me to continue developing it), i would consider that a resounding success.
as a real world example, does anyone think the keyhole vision was somehow killed by becoming google earth?
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?
In reality it is an option, but given the artificially constrained "world" we're dealing with in this article, it made sense to skip that to make a point. Also, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, it might not make sense, depending on your liquidity needs. It's one thing to own a big chunk of a company which is actually very valuable, but quite another when you do not have access to that money in order to…
It's one thing to own a big chunk of a company which is actually very valuable, but quite another when you do not have access to that money in order to actually, ya know, do stuff
Further illustration of exactly the sort of strange mindset I'm talking about. This mindset where a business does not exist to make a profit, oh no, but to be sold to others for a profit.
The origin of business is to turn profits for the invested via the operations of the business. It gets more complicated in large corporations, but if I start a strawberry jelly business and make & sell strawberry jelly, I directly profit on the operations of that business. Because that is what businesses are for!
Now I suppose if you start a business that is unprofitable and will never be profitable, then you better take whatever buyout you can get and run, making sure to leave someone else holding the bag. But hopefully that is not the businesses you folks are trying to start, else this is just the set for another remake of "The Producers".
Re: An acquisition is always a failure
#20No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…
maybe I just want to cash out, fly to Scotland, and spend the rest of my life looking for a 6' tall, redheaded supermodel with a Scottish accent to marry
Having lived in Scotland, I can confidently advise you that you are better off conducting that particular search in London. Your critique of the article was spot on, though.