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I sold Baremetrics

baremetrics.com

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Re: I sold Baremetrics

#161

Post by imgabe »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #152
imgabe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's legally permissible, it's that it's within bounds of what all parties agreed to. If I agree to sell you my car for $5,000 then you show up with the money and give it to me and take the car, I don't get to change my mind later and get mad that you didn't give me more and call you immoral.

I don't get to change my mind later and get mad that you didn't give me more and call you immoral. But on the other hand, if you’d agreed to sell me your car at a price under what you might be able to get elsewhere—maybe because I was financially struggling and you were doing me a friendly favour—you’d probably be pretty miffed if I won the lottery and still demanded you stick to your offer…

If I were miffed, I could rescind the offer or ask for more. Just like the investors could have demanded their money back if they wanted too.

They chose not to, which would seem to indicate they weren't miffed. Nobody forced them to do anything. It's not immoral to ask someone for an accommodation and accept it.

The investors didn't give him the money as a friendly favor to help him it out. It was an investment. Presumably they make a lot of them and understand the risks involved in doing so. If you're going to get hurt feelings whenever one of your investments doesn't pay off, you're not cut out to be an investor.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#162

Post by arvidkahl »

skrebbel wrote: post #97

At the time I write this comment, half my screen is full of people calling Josh not so nice things. Folks, this is a founder who's openly sharing the kinds of things we usually keep hidden. I doubt there's been a startup exit in the last decade where a healthy skeptical HN'er couldn't find some wrongs being done, if the details had been available. It's extremely hard to get everything right, from every perspective. T…

I have sold a business as well, and I have to admit I am very surprised by this response, too. Not only does Josh divulge information that most founders are legally forbidden from ever revealing, he also was always extremely open about the journey of the business, even facilitating the [Open Startups](https://baremetrics.com/open-startups) page, where Baremetrics itself is listed.

What surprises me most is the lack of understanding of founder risk. Most negative comments are related to employees not walking away from this exit. It feels to me that many here seem to conflate the inner workings of heavily VC-backed businesses with a slowly and sustainably growing company like Baremetrics. I see a lot of assumptions all over the comments.

I appreciate the discussion, though. It's nice to see people sticking up for employees. But a sub-10-people SaaS that's ALMOST self-funded is not the same as a prospective unicorn.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#163

Post by dasil003 »

marcinzm wrote: post #62
nxmnxm99 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people on hacker news are angry about this cracks me up. The vast majority of folks here really are the crotchety programmers. Yes, a founder gets compensated significantly more than early employees. Massive shocker. If those early employees were talented enough, they’d be founders getting compensated. I don’t know when this dramatic shift happened to Americans to believe building a successful company i…

>I don’t know when this dramatic shift happened to Americans to believe building a successful company is mostly luck, but it’s depressing. Because it's true? Studies (Gompers, et. al. (2009)) indicate that a second time entrepreneur has a 30% chance of success versus a 20% for a first time one. So there's some skill in it but it mostly comes down to luck. edit: And if you're arguing skill then clearly the skill of th…

Anyone who believes startup outcomes are mostly luck doesn’t have what it takes to be a successful founder—you need to have the belief that you can shape the outcome. The idea that we reduce outcomes to two buckets, success and failure and then flip a coin is reductive and belies the decisions and effort that lead every human endeavor to its own unique outcome. Keep in mind corporate projects fail all the time too, we just don’t talk in these terms because people’s salaries and jobs aren’t on the line. Of course luck matters tremendously in terms of riding a series of waves to make a billion dollar company, but it was paved with hard and deliberate work every step of the way. The founders could have reacted and changed direction completely at any stage along the way, therefore these fixed percentage figures are meaningless. How hard did each of those founders work? How many pivots? What type of businesses? What skill sets did they bring?

And to your last point, who is saying it’s wrong for employees to get more stake? Of course it’s not wrong, but as an employee you have to negotiate that. People can’t just magically get what they feel they deserve because it would add up to way over 100%. Remember, the company exists because of the founder, doesn’t matter how much you think you contribute, because at the end of the day the company does not exist without them. If you can convince them to give you more then you should, and if you can’t you are free to start your own company. I do not see what is so unfair about this situation and I say that as instrumental #1 employee who got less than 1% for a 9-year effort building a moderately successful company. You don’t get what you deserve in life, you get what you negotiate.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#164

Post by marcinzm »

dasil003 wrote: post #163
marcinzm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t know when this dramatic shift happened to Americans to believe building a successful company is mostly luck, but it’s depressing. Because it's true? Studies (Gompers, et. al. (2009)) indicate that a second time entrepreneur has a 30% chance of success versus a 20% for a first time one. So there's some skill in it but it mostly comes down to luck. edit: And if you're arguing skill then clearly the skill of th…

Anyone who believes startup outcomes are mostly luck doesn’t have what it takes to be a successful founder—you need to have the belief that you can shape the outcome. The idea that we reduce outcomes to two buckets, success and failure and then flip a coin is reductive and belies the decisions and effort that lead every human endeavor to its own unique outcome. Keep in mind corporate projects fail all the time too, w…

> You don’t get what you deserve in life, you get what you negotiate.

And negotiation require knowledge. This thread is about being told to not discuss that knowledge publicly and to not acknowledge the real life implications of certain equity splits.

As I said in another comment, this is like saying employees should have negotiated better salaries and then firing them for discussing salaries.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#165

Post by falcolas »

intev wrote: post #115
falcolas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And without “the help”, most founders (OP included) won’t make it to the sale. You can’t scale without “the help”. You can’t grow your market without “the help”. To badly paraphrase someone: “The idea isn’t what’s valuable, the implementation is.” That implementation is probably >90% thanks to “the help”.

There's a sense of entitlement here that's not sitting well with me. Don't get me wrong, I think employees of a "startup" deserve to get some sort of payout during a liquidation event, but I think that payout should be directly proportional to how much risk was assumed. Did they take a full standard salary? (Doesn't have to be SV 100k+ salaries, but standard for whatever is paid in their area). Did they do more than…

There's a vast difference between a butcher in a meat processing facility and a trained professional software developer who is responsible for creating/supporting/etc your software.

As for entitlement, what entitles a founder to get ~50x the payout of their employees? Especially when they're also taking a SV level salary (not living in SV) and spending VC money.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#166

Post by [deleted] »

LandR wrote: post #79
elric wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Belgian, I can't help but look at these numbers in disbelief. 100-200k/annum for churning out code 40 hours a week? Where do I sign up for this? I'm the best paid employee I know, work insane hours, and I'm not even in that bracket. Addendum: it's very rare to make more than twice the average wage in Belgium as an employee. It's a different matter if you're self employed.

Same here in the UK. I know a couple of guys in the UK who are essentially just coding all day, in full time jobs, making £100k a year. BUt it's very rare IMO, I'm not even on 50% of that.

[deleted]

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#167

Post by falcolas »

koolherc wrote: post #139
falcolas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And without “the help”, most founders (OP included) won’t make it to the sale. You can’t scale without “the help”. You can’t grow your market without “the help”. To badly paraphrase someone: “The idea isn’t what’s valuable, the implementation is.” That implementation is probably >90% thanks to “the help”.

It's all good until founders understand that "we are just the help". They are the ones with the most risk, and they cannot simply walk away to a new job if they don't like how things are going. But a lot of founders put too much weight on early employees, require working as much as the founder, or require to take responsibility in things that far outreach what they were accepting to when signing a contract.

> They are the ones with the most risk, and they cannot simply walk away to a new job if they don't like how things are going

If a founder is spending VC money and paying themselves a SV grade salary, I would have trouble calling that a significant amount of risk.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#168

Post by jcims »

skrebbel wrote: post #97

At the time I write this comment, half my screen is full of people calling Josh not so nice things. Folks, this is a founder who's openly sharing the kinds of things we usually keep hidden. I doubt there's been a startup exit in the last decade where a healthy skeptical HN'er couldn't find some wrongs being done, if the details had been available. It's extremely hard to get everything right, from every perspective. T…

Same thing happens with GitLab somewhat regularly. I don't know of any company that operates with that level of transparency and somehow a select set of folks can't seem to control themselves when supplied with a reason to air their grievance.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#170

Post by abyssin »

vbsteven wrote: post #127
elric wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Belgian, I can't help but look at these numbers in disbelief. 100-200k/annum for churning out code 40 hours a week? Where do I sign up for this? I'm the best paid employee I know, work insane hours, and I'm not even in that bracket. Addendum: it's very rare to make more than twice the average wage in Belgium as an employee. It's a different matter if you're self employed.

As a Belgian myself: self-employment is the key here. It's not that hard to pull in 100-200K annually in the current belgian tech space, I've done it consistently for the past 5 years, with lots of periods where I did not work full time.

Did you have to specialize in some kind of technology or sector? Or is it simply because self-employment means paying less taxes?
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