Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development

Thanks for your input, though my question was specifically to lugg and asked "can you imagine what, if any, part of this could be done purely online". Still, your thoughts on a different subject have been interesting and thanks for them. You can also send me email if you'd like to write more.

Thanks!

If the diamond could be worth $10M when polished, but also could be worth $0 because of flaws you can't yet see, and there's only a 20% chance that it will be worth $10M, then $2M is exactly the right amount to take. And in this particular case, I'd take the $2M every time, because that's the exact expected value of 20% odds of a $10M valuation.

And when you have your own company, there is always some level of risk. The chance of $10M may be far less than 20% -- and there may be a 1% chance of $200M.

It's only if you think your diamond has either already been polished to the point of being worth more than $2M, or you feel your own odds of success at polishing are better than 20%, that you should say no to the offer.

The original author believed that, which is perfectly fine. He had previous experience with selling a company, and so he may have even been right.

But those with less experience may actually do well to sell unless someone with more experience is around to tell them they're sitting on a diamond mine that's worth way more than the offer. Or you can roll the dice based on your own appraisal of the odds; that's fine too.

I've actually been in the situation where I did say no to terms I didn't find good enough, but then later the company failed and I ended up owning 100% of nothing. So having them "underpay" for me would have ended up with me owning 40% of something at least, since they were going to fund it to the next level.

It's easy to take a look at the odds and guess wrong -- and it's also easy to be an armchair quarterback and tell people that they should have taken a chance instead of the easy cash. As a result of my experience, I'd likely lean toward the easy cash at this point, but feel free to make your own decisions as you see fit.

- Honed my CV (more like made me rewrite it), it was full of fluff pieces and bullshit that made ME happy. He basically took a red marker to all the things that weren't purely factual and provable (or at least explainable.) He was an ex developer and current on tech so he knew what he was talking about in regards to what needed to be said and what wasn't. This could easily be done online with google docs and a skype call.

- Answered all the dumb questions every developer wants to know but really shouldn't be asking a prospective employer in an initial interview (can I wear shorts and a tshirt? how much $$$? flexitime? holidays? beer on friday? - This would be solved by an FAQ employers could fill out.

- Filtered jobs I'd call awful on anyway (multiple reporting lines, under paying, no source control, one man bands, etc etc This is easy for development, just make sure it passes the joel test.

- Found opportunities that actually match my skill-set (Full stack PHP Developer with javascript tendencies) - Sort of job board style sites attempt to solve this but suck at it pretty badly, because who pays their bills?

- Interview prep happens but its essentially just reminding me to be myself and if I don't have an answer say so. I don't know what would be worth it to you for putting this online but you could certainly do some last minute reminder calls with the candidate and follow up directly afterward to ensure everything went well / any issues can be discussed while they're fresh.

Sorry if that doesn't help much, a lot of it requires a person and a phone, I'd certainly start in those areas though, do things that don't scale n all heh.

Feel free to email me if you want any further info, don't follow HN too much.