Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#21

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

VomisaCaasi wrote: post #9

I've been having that corporate vs self-funding dilemma for a while now. I am part designer, part entrepreneur, part programmer. I enjoy doing all these activities, and I do them with desire. I have an idea which would improve designers life and I think I might have figured out working business model. More importantly, it's very hard to get me doing something I find either illogical or immoral. I have been reading HN…

At least for me, the decision to not seek funding sort of answered itself. I didn't know who or how to ask for money, but I did know to program the tool I envisioned. Fast forward 3 years and I've got a moderately profitable business, and no investors. The work is fun, and no one tells me what to do.

I'm just always curious about others who seek the go the investor route. Do most of them actually get funding? If so, when? How? In most cases, I see people talk a lot about investors, but I very rarely see anyone actually get investment money. I'm skeptical that it even exists for the typical first-time entrepreneur.

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#22

Post by ahoyhere »

VomisaCaasi wrote: post #9

I've been having that corporate vs self-funding dilemma for a while now. I am part designer, part entrepreneur, part programmer. I enjoy doing all these activities, and I do them with desire. I have an idea which would improve designers life and I think I might have figured out working business model. More importantly, it's very hard to get me doing something I find either illogical or immoral. I have been reading HN…

If your business model includes charging your customers (designers) directly for a service that improves their ability to earn money, you can totally do it, if you just put enough elbow grease into it.

If you don't charge your primary audience, if you get into some whacky convoluted business model that doesn't involve charging them, you're almost surely going to fail. You reduce it from skill and effort (create value, charge directly) to depending largely on luck.

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#23

Post by Daniel_Newby »

It is not about the exit, it's about making the exit pay more than Sarbanes-Oxley and other laws cost. The sad fact is that, with present regulations, a $1M/year American company has a net present value of zero. In a sane economy, the VC could flip that in a heartbeat, but instead they are forced to blow up profitable companies so as to realize a tax deduction.

In fact, I suspect that VCs would prefer to take sub-Sarbox exits and ignore the 20x exits if they had the choice: 10 exits of $2M each has vastly lower risk than a single $20M exit.

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#24

Post by _delirium »

stcredzero wrote: post #11
_pius wrote: post #5

If you don't have a business model, it's definitely just about the exit. Or maybe the funding rounds.

I suspect that having a business model makes it much easier to also have real value to users.

Possibly, but I don't think it's necessary. Sometimes money-losing companies are offering their users real value, which in effect the VCs are subsidizing. That's pretty good for the users so long as the VCs are willing to keep subsidizing the services! There was a good deal of that in the first dot-com bubble, where basically everything was free due to huge piles of neverending investor dollars paying for it all.

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#25

Post by stcredzero »

_delirium wrote: post #24
stcredzero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that having a business model makes it much easier to also have real value to users.

Possibly, but I don't think it's necessary. Sometimes money-losing companies are offering their users real value, which in effect the VCs are subsidizing. That's pretty good for the users so long as the VCs are willing to keep subsidizing the services! There was a good deal of that in the first dot-com bubble, where basically everything was free due to huge piles of neverending investor dollars paying for it all.

there were plenty of companies that offered users great value that they massively under-charged for.

Out of curiosity, which were the ones that offered great value?

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#26

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

Great context for the article is a book I'm currently reading: Small Giants. Its about companies that could be large choose to stay small and intimate.

I'm not really a fan of the build a company that needs investment in large quantities to grow and eventually be sold. I'd much rather build something that is useful, makes good money, and lets me work with a great+small team. I'm currently fighting this battle with Cloudomatic. I don't really want to build a large vc backed business, but it looks like we have to in order to really achieve our long term goals.

Re: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

#27

Post by mpf62 »

MicahWedemeyer wrote: post #21
VomisaCaasi wrote: post #9

I've been having that corporate vs self-funding dilemma for a while now. I am part designer, part entrepreneur, part programmer. I enjoy doing all these activities, and I do them with desire. I have an idea which would improve designers life and I think I might have figured out working business model. More importantly, it's very hard to get me doing something I find either illogical or immoral. I have been reading HN…

At least for me, the decision to not seek funding sort of answered itself. I didn't know who or how to ask for money, but I did know to program the tool I envisioned. Fast forward 3 years and I've got a moderately profitable business, and no investors. The work is fun, and no one tells me what to do. I'm just always curious about others who seek the go the investor route. Do most of them actually get funding? If so,…

You seem to have found your destiny. Why do you even care what other people think/do? I would say: follow your path perseveringly and you will end up fine. Not having the urgent need to think about the "investor route" is a good thing. Everybody additionally involved is going to meddle one way or another.
Post reply on HN