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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

#291

Post by elevatedastalt »

apitman wrote: post #236
nmog wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the broker has a fixed % commission, so the broker is definitely incentivized to seek a larger deal.

GP may be referring to freakonomics. One of the things the authors point out is that it can actually be better for real estate brokers to crank out lots of sales rather than spend a lot of effort finding good deals for the seller.

I was referring to common sense :)

In real estate brokers typically get around 2.5%, so even if they find a buyer that is ready to pay 100K more, it's only $2500 extra (so probably $1500 after taxes). It's not a lot of money esp if they can invest that time and energy in parallelizing other deals. Time is of the essence in such transactions.

And then of course a Buyer side agent's incentives are aligned exactly opposite to the buyer, but even if they would want to push for an early transaction above anything else.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#294

Post by blehn »

hansvm wrote: post #240
blehn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With promotions, equity, and stock price growth (+220% over the last 5 years), probably closer to 2 or 2.5M of Google income.

Stock price growth isn't a huge distinguishing factor unless you're acknowledging that we're looking in hindsight and expect that he would have been one of the employees to leave those equity grants in GOOG shares and never touch them. Anyone can convert realized gains to Google stock (including the slightly better GOOGL shares instead of the GOOG shares most employees get from their RSUs), and the fees for convertin…

You're right it's not huge but (in hindsight) it's not negligible either. Because the vesting schedule is 4 years for each grant, the employees have no choice but to leave the shares in GOOG for 1-4 years.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#295

Post by gopher_space »

khaki54 wrote: post #285
rexreed wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What terms would you have offered, including any seller financing, required lock-in or employment from Michael, etc? What would you have done with the product after acquisition?

I think the terms they came to were pretty generous to the buyer. Michael brings a lot of value to the deal as a seller, there isn't going to be a hidden gotcha, more likely hidden benefits of forward thinking you'd uncover over time. Lock-in or additional hours from Michael wouldn't be needed, the product isn't awfully complex, and I'm sure everything is more documented than you would expect. What I would have liked…

> I would also try to sign up and train some government focused resellers to see if we can make progress in that segment. USG is very favorable to small businesses. Control over the supply chain would be a selling point to USG as well.

You have a procurement onboarding process that's just sitting around right now? I've been looking at small, local companies that will be closing due to lack of staff/interest once the owner calls it quits.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#296

Post by cko »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #75
tills13 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy hell the pessimism in this thread over a life-changing amount of money for 99% of people. > should have stayed at Google You should feel privileged that you've never been "stuck" at a job that you don't find personally interesting and stimulating. Wasting your life to see the number in your bank account increase.

Half a million isn't really that much.

It's not just half a million, he made more in business profits before the sale.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#298

Post by lionhead »

tradertef wrote: post #248
wallawe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is capital gains, meaning 15-20% in taxes. Nowhere near half.

Why is it capital gains?

Because he is either selling his shares in the company, or the individual assets owned by the company, either way it should be taxed as capital gains.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#299

Post by spiderxxxx »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #81
ignoramous wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how hard starting/running a business is That it is, but here Michael is explicit that most of the pain [0] was from doing hardware, software, and e-commerce all at once. Surely, there are other relatively easier businesses in tech? [0] Reminds me of Avery Pennarun's A profitable, growing, useful, legal, well-loved... failure (2012), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754531

If it’s easy, everyone would do it.

If it's easy, then there's probably not a lot of value in doing it either.

Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

#300

Post by ornornor »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #75
tills13 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy hell the pessimism in this thread over a life-changing amount of money for 99% of people. > should have stayed at Google You should feel privileged that you've never been "stuck" at a job that you don't find personally interesting and stimulating. Wasting your life to see the number in your bank account increase.

Half a million isn't really that much.

It’s 18–24k per year in perpetuity. You can have a decent living on this much in a sizeable part of the world. Not in SV though. But still, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
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