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

I sold Baremetrics

baremetrics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 521 posts

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#241

Post by ceejayoz »

a13n wrote: post #225
ceejayoz wrote: post #3

I really appreciate the lack of “our incredible journey” platitudes in here.

Why? Building a company is a journey.

I'm referring to the trite overused cliches that often fill these sorts of blog posts.

https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2013/02/27/our-incredibl...

See also the recent example of https://www.slingbox.com/discontinued, which makes this funny pair of claims:

Q: Why is Slingbox being discontinued?

A: We’ve had to make room for new innovative products so that we can continue to serve our customers in the best way possible.

Q: Will Slingbox be releasing any new products?

A: No.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#242

Post by ericd »

falcolas wrote: post #69
twox2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's peanuts, but it's also REALITY. Few people get big windfalls working for startups as employees or even founders, but maybe you get a little bonus on top of your salary if there's an exit.

Few employees may get a windfall in reality, but it doesn’t make it easier to see (nor does it justify the founder’s choices). Those employees are just as responsible for the company’s success as the founder is; it sucks to see them get shafted while the founder walks away with “fuck you” money.

The founder walked away with the ability to buy one nice house or two crummy ones in Silicon Valley outright. The outrage!

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#243

Post by a_band »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #224

Jonathan Siegel is mentioned in the article (his company acquired Baremetrics). I dealt with Jonathan in the past, and I could only say good things about him - not just his business acumen, but his integrity and generosity. Years ago Jonathan was in a position where we needed to buy back his shares in a company in which he invested early. He could have asked for a much higher price, and instead he graciously agreed t…

I've had a similar experience with Jonathan. He's one of the most founder-friendly people in the VC industry.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#244

Post by gabereiser »

georgeecollins wrote: post #216
RedditKon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way, especially in regards to everyone opining on the investors taking a markdown. For context, it was General Catalyst and Bessemer. - General Catalyst: $2.5B+ in Assets Under Management - Bessemer: $4B in Assets Under Management DISCLAIMER: If you take venture capital, you should obviously always do it as a responsible fiduciary of both the company and the capital. With that said, I'm positive both…

I don't want to make any moral judgements against people making business decisions, in particular this founder for making the best deal possible. Good for him. However, no matter how much money General Catalyst or Bessemer made last year, I would not want to invest with them going forward. I get that this is only money on the margins, and they get a benefit from a write off. Still, how hard would they have had to fig…

Ideally all investors want their returns. In this case, it’s a drop in the bucket for their portfolio and they are incentivized for investing in seed rounds (with the hopes of it being an Uber or a Salesforce). It’s quite common. Trend investing is happening too, FOMO, all of that, but their goal is to take $400k seed and turn it into a $40m exit. If you diversify enough it will happen, not if.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#245

Post by [deleted] »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #172
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…

I'm not the most financially savvy person. And I am not an attentive follower of Baremetrics. But wouldn't the investors have been getting dividend returns quarterly all along since their investment was made?

[deleted]

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#246

Post by picodguyo »

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…

Very much disagree just because, FAANG or not, working for a large corporation is not for everyone. That said, I would never work under a solo founder for the reasons exemplified by this outcome.

I don't even like VCs and I feel like what was pulled here was pretty galling. How does someone rationalize calling up an early investor and telling them to eat their investment because...more money for me?

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#247

Post by randall »

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…

Everyone is weirdly mean to you when you sell. I sold to fb in 2018 (height of cambridge analytica.) Even ppl who are now my bffs were mean on HN. (they didn't know me at the time.)

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#248

Post by loceng »

georgeecollins wrote: post #216
RedditKon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way, especially in regards to everyone opining on the investors taking a markdown. For context, it was General Catalyst and Bessemer. - General Catalyst: $2.5B+ in Assets Under Management - Bessemer: $4B in Assets Under Management DISCLAIMER: If you take venture capital, you should obviously always do it as a responsible fiduciary of both the company and the capital. With that said, I'm positive both…

I don't want to make any moral judgements against people making business decisions, in particular this founder for making the best deal possible. Good for him. However, no matter how much money General Catalyst or Bessemer made last year, I would not want to invest with them going forward. I get that this is only money on the margins, and they get a benefit from a write off. Still, how hard would they have had to fig…

There's the time-opportunity cost - they can't afford to be perfectionists and squeeze 100% of what they potentially could from a situation, which is arguably undue stress as well - and will cause further externalized losses in what their other focuses are.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#249

Post by feral »

georgeecollins wrote: post #216
RedditKon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way, especially in regards to everyone opining on the investors taking a markdown. For context, it was General Catalyst and Bessemer. - General Catalyst: $2.5B+ in Assets Under Management - Bessemer: $4B in Assets Under Management DISCLAIMER: If you take venture capital, you should obviously always do it as a responsible fiduciary of both the company and the capital. With that said, I'm positive both…

I don't want to make any moral judgements against people making business decisions, in particular this founder for making the best deal possible. Good for him. However, no matter how much money General Catalyst or Bessemer made last year, I would not want to invest with them going forward. I get that this is only money on the margins, and they get a benefit from a write off. Still, how hard would they have had to fig…

I thought the VC was generous here. But there's some benefit to being generous.

How many future founders will read that blog?

If you were a founder, would it influence your choice of investor, to know if things don't work out, they will be magnanimous, rather than squeeze?

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#250

Post by CosmicShadow »

georgeecollins wrote: post #216
RedditKon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way, especially in regards to everyone opining on the investors taking a markdown. For context, it was General Catalyst and Bessemer. - General Catalyst: $2.5B+ in Assets Under Management - Bessemer: $4B in Assets Under Management DISCLAIMER: If you take venture capital, you should obviously always do it as a responsible fiduciary of both the company and the capital. With that said, I'm positive both…

I don't want to make any moral judgements against people making business decisions, in particular this founder for making the best deal possible. Good for him. However, no matter how much money General Catalyst or Bessemer made last year, I would not want to invest with them going forward. I get that this is only money on the margins, and they get a benefit from a write off. Still, how hard would they have had to fig…

If you make a million dollars an hour, how much time is justified in trying to capture a few hundred thousand dollars when you have limited resources? Oh, you also have to step on the face of a future golden boy to reach it on the shelf. You also have to divert your legal team of several $1000+/hr staff from million & billion dollar cases to this for a month or two. You then have to tell your investors that actually allow you to live that you made a really smart decision and returned them $50 instead of $500MM.

To any normal person or small business, that's a lot of money to be captured and ignoring it is mind boggling, but again for them it's not worth the time and effort. The relationship or good will is worth a lot more, not to mention whatever write off stuff they get and the opportunity cost of their team. There is nothing careless about this.

If you wouldn't work with a VC because they aren't a penny pincher then man you are really going to be in for a reaaaalll treat!

Post reply on HN