Did anyone ever offer $170 million for 37 signals? I can guess that the answer is 'No' just by knowing that it wasn't sold.
The Next Generation Bends Over
111–120 of 216 posts
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#112Please. $170 million is "fuck you" money. Aaron and I'm guessing many of the top founders/executives made enough money to never ever have to work again. Fake revolutions are cute and all, but think of how awesome it would be to never ever have to work for the man again. They can do anything they want...for profit, not for profit, TBD (Y Combinator). This wasn't some BS talent acquisition; this was an absolute shitloa…
They didn't have to work for the proverbial Man before they got rich, really. I would surmise that one of the reasons they started Mint was to avoid having to work for what most people consider to be the Man (e.g., typical corporate jobs). Not the only reason, but I imagine it wasn't last on the list. Talented, ambitious people have this option available, even without being "fuck you" rich, by joining companies that…
Eh even when you're doing a startup you're still working for your investor :).
Ha I never said their families would starve. My point was most people are beholden to many debts, people and obligations that prevent them from doing X.
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Fuck You money" is such a myth. More on this soon in another post.
I think what we don't know here is the dream/ambition of the founders. Maybe their dreams were too expensive to chase or they otherwise didn't feel equipped to chase them. Fuck you money (for a lot of people) isn't "go buy a Caribbean island" money. It's "I can finally build the company I WANTED to build" money. (anticipating response of "Why not just build the company you're passionate about to begin with?") Some co…
I always thought that "fuck you" money meant never having to work again, and thus being able to say "fuck you" to a nasty boss, followed by "I quit".
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Many lottery winners are actually less happier a year after winning the lottery than before. Many also wish they had never won. Of course, this could be psychological due to them not having done anything to earn the money.
Right on, here's a story to further make your point: Teenage lottery millionaire who won £1.9m broke at 22 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208498/Teenage-lott...
It seems logical that pissing away all of one's £1.9m prize money would make one unhappy.
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#115Please. $170 million is "fuck you" money. Aaron and I'm guessing many of the top founders/executives made enough money to never ever have to work again. Fake revolutions are cute and all, but think of how awesome it would be to never ever have to work for the man again. They can do anything they want...for profit, not for profit, TBD (Y Combinator). This wasn't some BS talent acquisition; this was an absolute shitloa…
It is sort of fuck you money, but honestly I'm more pissed off that a shitty company now owns one of my favorite webapps. Mint is now going to die. I also think something must have been going terribly wrong. The exit was tiny considering the huge amount of money that was invested.
> Mint is now going to die.
Doesn't always work that way (NeXT, Apple).
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what we don't know here is the dream/ambition of the founders. Maybe their dreams were too expensive to chase or they otherwise didn't feel equipped to chase them. Fuck you money (for a lot of people) isn't "go buy a Caribbean island" money. It's "I can finally build the company I WANTED to build" money. (anticipating response of "Why not just build the company you're passionate about to begin with?") Some co…
I always thought that "fuck you" money meant never having to work again, and thus being able to say "fuck you" to a nasty boss, followed by "I quit".
That's what it does mean.
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your relationship with your friends will change because of something like that, it is very very nice of you to want to share the wealth, but someone that has a sense of honour themselves will either have to refuse your offer or they will accept and it will hurt their sense about themselves. That depends very much on the way you bring it. Indeed, if you offer to pay off their debts, of course it will hurt their ego. B…
I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. Especially if you say 'here's 50 grand, I don't need it', as though 50 grand should be peanuts to them too. The asymmetry of the situation is what cau…
> I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is.
> By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you.
I don't refute the fact that it's a tricky situation, but I think you and the OP might be talking about different situations.
There is a big difference between a fairly well payed programmer that needs to pay $20k of student loans and might take a while to do so but still live comfortably, and someone who is unemployed, the bank just repossessed his car and his family is about to be thrown out of their house due to unpaid mortgage.
There were a few years when I was growing up when my parents' business was going under (and bleeding money like nobody's business) and things looked very bad.
They managed to get out of that by their own eventually (at a significant cost, not just financially), but a lot of people don't.
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#118Is it me, or is 37 signals being disingenuous. They rail against people who take VC money. At the same time they take money from an investment firm. They they say that their taking money was okay because they wanted the advice of the investor: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests... Other people taking money to get access to investor advice is bad and a disease. They rant against startups that…
We say don't take money up front. Money up front is the sin: You're entering into a financial arrangement when you have no leverage. It's the worst possible time to do business. Re: Eyeballs... Our problem with action for eyeballs is when you have nothing to sell the brains behind the eyeballs. Just building an audience with nothing to sell (beyond ads) is what we rail against. But building an audience that could als…
Eyeballs... Our problem with action for eyeballs is when you have nothing to sell the brains behind the eyeballs. Just building an audience with nothing to sell (beyond ads) is what we rail against. But building an audience that could also be your customers is something we encourage.
Sorry, Jason, I think you're being disingenuous again.
Did you come up with the idea of writing Getting Real and then try to market it and sell it to web developers? Or did you gather the content of your book from your blog posts, bundle it into Getting Real and up sell it to your readers?
Did you start out with the idea of having a job board on a popular blog? Or, did you have a popular web developers blog, and then decide to monetize those eyeballs by selling to people looking for developers on your job board?
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't have to work for the proverbial Man before they got rich, really. I would surmise that one of the reasons they started Mint was to avoid having to work for what most people consider to be the Man (e.g., typical corporate jobs). Not the only reason, but I imagine it wasn't last on the list. Talented, ambitious people have this option available, even without being "fuck you" rich, by joining companies that…
Eh even when you're doing a startup you're still working for your investor :). Ha I never said their families would starve. My point was most people are beholden to many debts, people and obligations that prevent them from doing X.
Well, if you have investors outside of the founders. ;-)
But, depending on the investor, I can't imagine they're quite like working for The Man, who conjures up really unhappy images of cube farms and dress codes. I guess I can't really gauge the investors of Mint; maybe they were that bad.
And when people say they have their family to worry about, and I ask them to elaborate, starvation is brought up in many cases. Maybe it is just hyperbole in an attempt to preempt my probing.
But this opens up another probably off-topic discussion on the bounds of beholdenness, and how much of that is self-fulfilling.
Re: The Next Generation Bends Over
#120Please. $170 million is "fuck you" money. Aaron and I'm guessing many of the top founders/executives made enough money to never ever have to work again. Fake revolutions are cute and all, but think of how awesome it would be to never ever have to work for the man again. They can do anything they want...for profit, not for profit, TBD (Y Combinator). This wasn't some BS talent acquisition; this was an absolute shitloa…
"Fuck You money" is such a myth. More on this soon in another post.
I was amused to see this comment on HN, a site run by Paul Graham.