What I learned selling my company • Hacker News Board

Re: What I learned selling my company

#101

Post by lazide » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 9:09 PM UTC

guappa wrote: post #100

lazide wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people want to get rich quick/easy, so it’s quite hard to actually do so (there is a lot of competition). It’s dumb to want to get rich unnecessarily hard (‘overpaying’ in effort for the actual outcome). Somewhere in the middle is a good trade off. A big part of being a founder is finding the right people to contribute to make it a success. There are a lot of freeloader/non-effective types, everywhere. Big corp…

The problem with founders is that, in my experience, they usually can't tell who's good and who's just being useless for 12 hours in a row at the office. So they use "hours" as their metrics to decide who's the best.

How did that work out for them?

Re: What I learned selling my company

#102

Post by fairity » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:44 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #16

fairity wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One major disadvantage of 2-4 is that other people tend to hear about it I don’t doubt this, but I’m curious: why do you see the publicity as a disadvantage?

Why on earth would you want to let someone know that you had a big payout? It's none of anybody else's business how much money I have and if nobody knows you can walk downtown in peace, go to restaurants, hang out with your same friends, and still have lovely ski or yacht holidays in peace. The Bay Area and Seattle have quite a few "unknown" billionares. For example if you had less than 5% of Microsoft when it IPOd y…

> Why on earth would you want to let someone know that you had a big payout?

One reason is that it can help attract talent & useful connections. If you're a known billionaire, I imagine it's pretty easy to get a meeting with anyone, which could lead to educational & enriching conversations that you otherwise wouldn't have access to.

I'm curious if there's information from ppl who've experienced this type of publicity, where they thoughtfully evaluate the pros & cons, and evaluate how they net out.

Re: What I learned selling my company

#103

Post by ska » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #27

aidos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to diminish your point, but you’ve described the UK housing market where that’s exactly how it works.

Sounds like the US and UK housing markets, as well as startup M&A, suffer from similar problems. In a free market, you should be able to market what you’re selling until the moment it’s officially sold.

> In a free market, you should be able to market what you’re selling until the moment it’s officially sold.

That's not what free market means. In a free market (which this is an okayish example of) buyers and sellers are free to set their own terms, rather than having them externally imposed. So you are free to try and negotiate a lack of exclusivity, it's just that likely nobody will take you up on it.

SEC oversite and similar mechanisms, by comparison, is an external imposition on the market.

Ironically, what you seem be suggesting (exclusivity terms "not allowed") could only be enforced by regulation, therefore making the market less free.

Re: What I learned selling my company

#104

Post by cj » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:57 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #103

cj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the US and UK housing markets, as well as startup M&A, suffer from similar problems. In a free market, you should be able to market what you’re selling until the moment it’s officially sold.

> In a free market, you should be able to market what you’re selling until the moment it’s officially sold. That's not what free market means. In a free market (which this is an okayish example of) buyers and sellers are free to set their own terms, rather than having them externally imposed. So you are free to try and negotiate a lack of exclusivity, it's just that likely nobody will take you up on it. SEC oversite…

I agree. Free market was a poor choice of words