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I sold Baremetrics

baremetrics.com

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Re: I sold Baremetrics

#191

Post by codegeek »

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 run a bootstrapped SAAS. I really and truly understand where Josh is coming from. I have fully sympathy for him and whatever actions he took for his best interest after a gruelling 7 years. I am really grateful that he has shared the numbers so openly. Josh, you don't know me but please go and do whatever the F you want to do and don't listen to what others say. You deserve it!! It is disappointing to see comments like "what did employees get" ? Employees get salary and as long as they are happy working for the company and company takes care of their well being, they are not entitled to any additional founder benefits. Not all companies are unicorn where "early" employees get a big piece of the pie.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#194

Post by cam0 »

remote_phone wrote: post #118
gadders wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder usually carries the majority of the risk as well.

It sounds like he put in no money of his own. He would not have made $3.7M without the hard work of his employees. And yet when it came down to it, he took almost all the money for himself.

Those jobs that the employees chose to take would not have existed without Josh actually starting the business. He created something. He took the initiative to be a builder and took the risk and responsibility that comes along with that. The investors wrote a check that amounts to peanuts for them. The employees put in their 8hr days and collected a regular paycheck. The founder is the person who deserves the payout here.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#195

Post by cambalache »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #68
ianhawes wrote: post #34

>What I walk away with: $3,700,000 in cash >practically speaking, never need to work again Yikes, does someone want to tell him?

I'm with OP - $3.7M seems like a lot, but it really isn't enough to retire on. I assume he'll need to pay taxes on that, a 20% long-term capital gains tax. Brings it down to about $3M. Being generous and giving him 3.5% return (real return) a year in fixed income, that's only $105,000 a year in income, which he'll need to pay taxes on as well. He'll net out around $85k a year.

I dont know how to tell you this, but 99% of the world population (and I am pretty sure at least 85-90% of Americans) WONT retire with anything even close to $3.7 MM.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#196

Post by [deleted] »

caffeine wrote: post #66
pc86 wrote: post #12

I know there's a trope about the naive founder getting screwed by shifty-eyed VC sharks, but it really sounds like Josh screwed his investors and employees here. > I wanted them to at least get their money back, but ultimately, for the $4m purchase price to work, we’d need to ask them to walk on their [$800,000] investment. He clearly didn't want it very badly, then. Nearly $3 million wasn't enough? That's about $420…

Why are you making moral judgements on a business decision? The investors didn't HAVE to take a write down, they chose to. The early employees didn't HAVE to join this company, they chose to. Why do you deem it immoral for a founder to do what is best for himself within the bounds of the agreements he has made? This kind of calling-out is common in HN and quite distasteful. Comments like this all amount to saying "X…

[deleted]

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#197

Post by codegeek »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #61
pc86 wrote: post #12

I know there's a trope about the naive founder getting screwed by shifty-eyed VC sharks, but it really sounds like Josh screwed his investors and employees here. > I wanted them to at least get their money back, but ultimately, for the $4m purchase price to work, we’d need to ask them to walk on their [$800,000] investment. He clearly didn't want it very badly, then. Nearly $3 million wasn't enough? That's about $420…

Not making any other assumptions here, but I think this is a great example of something that's become more and more obvious to HNers over the past few years: from a financial perspective, if you have an opportunity to join a FAANG vs a startup, it pretty much almost always makes financial sense (usually much more sense) to join the FAANG. And since it usually makes a LOT more financial sense, it can often make a lot…

not everyone works at a startup or small company to cash out someday. Lot of people just get a regular job at these companies just like they would at a large company. There is no expectation of any additional payout because they are employees who get decent salary, benefits and are happy to go home with a work life balance. If you want founder benefits, you have to be willing to work like a founder and most people don't want to do that contrary to what HN crowd may think or believe.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#198

Post by Jochim »

user5994461 wrote: post #178
jcims wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GitLab is a poster child of why companies don't publish any details. Deleted the production database and customer data? You could apologize and move on. There should have been backups to restore from but clearly there weren't. The gitlab way: Go in great details about how there is no automated backup and the last one that was done manually 3 months ago doesn't work... and how there was no testing/staging environment…

I think it's a good approach, it:

1) Works as a club for developers to get the time they need to improve processes and code. "Do you want to be responsible for the HN article about the incident this will cause?" would give most managers pause.

3) Gives customers the confidence that you'll let them know when issues that might affect their experience or data are occurring.

4) Proves to customers that you can fix these issues when they come up.

5) Makes people wonder what's going on in your competitors that they're not hearing.

On the other hand you don't get to pretend the sun shines out your ass, but that's disingenuous and most people will see through it anyway, you only trick the people that also want to go along with you.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#199

Post by user5994461 »

pier25 wrote: post #143

> But they were incredibly gracious and both agreed to write off their investment. So the investors just accepted to lose $800k while the founder was getting $3.7M? Can someone explain the logic here?

They are investment funds that manage billions of dollars. They invested 800k hoping to make 80-800M out of it.

It's pretty obvious the business didn't pan out as well as intended. It's not really worth their time anymore.

Still. They could have caused troubles and tried to recoup their $800k out of the $4M. They were nice not to.

The money will be written as a loss and go through some accounting/tax trick to minimize the effective loss.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#200

Post by karimf »

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…

Relevant tweet from the author:

https://twitter.com/shpigford/status/1326162432989990912

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