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I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

mtlynch.io

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Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#251

Post by demondemidi »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #140
demondemidi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US there is the affordable care act from ~2013, where anyone can purchase insurance from a pooled market subsidized by the government up to a certain income (50k I think). But that is also impacted by the state you live in, as the states negotiate the contracts paid by federal dollars (I know it's effed up). So the ACA is cheaper on the west coast than it is in Alabama. Today, a "gold" policy for a single man…

> I now pay $120 for me and my wife for a plan that is better than the $1000 plan through the ACA in Oregon because I'm no longer self employed. Look at box 12 code DD on your W-2. That is the total amount you are paying for your health insurance (it’s just that your employer is paying it directly). It’s still counted in the cost of employing you though, obviously. Assuming you have a silver or gold level plan, total…

It is much lower than what I would pay on ACA.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#252

Post by lukan »

neycoda wrote: post #204
codegeek wrote: post #100

"When you sell a business at TinyPilot’s scale, there’s no deposit. You can invest hundreds of hours into preparing reports for due diligence, reveal all your confidential business secrets, and spend thousands of dollars negotiating legal documents and still walk away with nothing if the buyer backs out." Great write up overall but as someone who has bought a couple of businesses, it is not just the seller who loses…

They don't walk away with nothing. All of the documents they made and experience they got from the first proposal can be used for other proposals. I hate how people see all of that effort as wasted just because they didn't get they want from it. They're taking for granted all of things they gained from it which will be used in the future (at the very minimum, education and experience, which could be monetized).

Do you want to work for free for me? It won't be for nothing, you will be paid with experience!

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#253

Post by bredren »

I had my SaaS rejected by FE international, wrote them back and told them they were wrong and to take another look. They did, took it on and we sold it within 90 days on similar terms.

It may have turned out better for this founder that they didn’t go with FE, but I urge people to not always take a single no for an answer.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#254

Post by csomar »

Aurornis wrote: post #202
dheera wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Common fallacy is to imagine that the exact same deal at the same price would have happened without a broker. > Without a broker you may not find a buyer at all. This only applies if your business isn't super profitable and you're looking to get rid of it. If you have a wildly successful business and you enjoy running it, you don't need to find a buyer, you can wait until one comes along.

Waiting for a buyer to show up with an offer is almost never optimal. A lot of sharks will show up and try to talk you down to low prices. Even if the business is wildly successful, a broker is going to help you shop for competitive offers and get the best price on the open market. And if your business is wildly successful and you enjoy running it, hiring a broker will let you focus more on running the business. Tryi…

> Even if the business is wildly successful, a broker is going to help you shop for competitive offers and get the best price on the open market.

Exactly. I once went with a broker (not the US, so lots of options not to) because the broker (despite his fees) will come out on top of other options. I guess, in that case, the broker did earn his commission fully.

I think most people have a negative idea of brokers because in some jurisdiction they can make it difficult for P2P to happen. This makes the brokers a defacto monopoly on the market; and they usually all follow each other on the rates.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#256

Post by lawn »

consumer451 wrote: post #227
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half a million dollars would be a life-changing amount to the vast majority of the American population.

I would be very curious how life changing that would be for the average HN user.

It's pretty close to my FIRE number. Of course, I don't live in an expensive city.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#258

Post by xvector »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #141
hiddencost wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming he was a senior SWE, he would have made around $400k / yr staying at Google. I suppose if he can parlay this outcome into an L7 role at Google, E.G, then in another 6 years he would break even (compared to staying at L5)

$400k for Senior is an outlier. According to Levels.fyi - and my personal contacts - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... Median TC - something just-south of $300k TC (not salary) is more likely. Furthermore, the higher you go, a greater proportion comes as RSUs, not cash - even if it was $400k TC, a good chunk of that is money you literally can't spend for a couple of years.

Oh dude, Levels is so out of date! Don't actually use it for serious negotiation. Levels systemically removes "outlier" offers, and people with good offers don't post until they leave 2 years later. So there's a huge lagging+dampening factor when you use Levels. It should be more of a "minimum offer" calibration.

$500k for senior (L5) is kind of the expected offer these days. If you are interviewing at FAANG you are doing a huge disservice by using Levels and settling for $300k when you can pretty easily get $500k.

I joined a FAANG a couple years ago at $550k TC or so at 4 YoE for senior. It's grown to about $950k due to stock growth. I'm not sure what you mean by "I can't touch the money for a few years," I get a portion of it every few months.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#259

Post by xvector »

Aurornis wrote: post #187
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400k for Senior is an outlier. According to Levels.fyi - and my personal contacts - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-fra... Median TC - something just-south of $300k TC (not salary) is more likely. Furthermore, the higher you go, a greater proportion comes as RSUs, not cash - even if it was $400k TC, a good chunk of that is money you literally can't spend for a couple of years.

RSUs aren't really a big deal due to the way it vests. But you're right that the TC of the average Google (or even FAANG) job has become somewhat mythical on the internet lately. I'm in a Slack where people have been asking about offers and TC for a long time. There are a lot of disappointed people who think they're walking into $500-600K job offers only to realize that they're "only" getting $300K from multiple comp…

As a counterpoint, $500k+ is definitely achievable if you're interviewing as an L5 at a FAANG. It has been for a few years, actually. Of course you'll need to negotiate, maybe have a few counteroffers, but it's doable.

I get being disappointed about $300k. Many companies are offering that for non-seniors (Google L4 equivalent) now. I distinctly recall TikTok offering well north of $300k cash for just 2 YoE a few years ago, and Meta offers have risen similarly.

I'd also be pretty sad if I interviewed elsewhere as an L5 and got offered less than what I made as a 2 YoE L4 (and many years ago, prior to inflation at that.)

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#260

Post by m463 »

I have a tinypilot kvm. It's a nice network kvm that's pretty easy to get going. For example, it does 1920x1080 resolution immediately. I would use it more often, but it is loud - louder than the servers I hook it to.

I switched to pikvm which has a little less polish, but you can put together much cheaper. It is even more hackable. For example, connect to 4-port kvms that have RS232 and you can run 4 systems.

tinypilot seems to have some serial or order number that you need to download an update. pikvm seems to reserve some features for hardware they sell (for example, they don't seem to want to support HD resolution, even though you can just move an edid file and support 1080p at less than 60hz).

Both of them are or at least started as raspberry pi kvms with an HDMI-in digitizer (either csi or usb) and hardware hacks to use the usb power port to emulate usb devices (keyboard/mouse/drive)

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