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

How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

dealbook.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#31

Post by duaneb »

jmathai wrote: post #28
blackjack160 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

45 arranged marriage individuals in the study. 24 of them over the age of 45. Not sure how this satisfaction study can be considered conclusive in any context.

Assuming you're comparing arranged marriages to "love marriages" I wouldn't even bother. In the US the divorce rate is somewhere near or above 50%. Logically "love marriages" make plenty of sense but the data proves (in the US at least) that it doesn't work. At least not once the human factor is taken into account. People from cultures where arranged marriage is not acceptable seem to have a very hostile view on it.…

>proves

No, it doesn't. To actually prove love marriages do not make sense, every single love marriage should fail. Anyway, 50% is a pretty damn good success rate, I think. I don't think I could choose someone to spend the rest of my life with correctly on my first time. It's perfectly natural to fall out of love - that doesn't mean that love marriages don't work, it just means that some don't work.

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#33

Post by larrys »

nchuhoai wrote: post #27

Saying the deal was bad for instagram and attributing it to careless decisions by young founders is like saying you should have known how the FB stock is going to develop. Duh, you always take risk if part of your deal is in stocks, you dont have to be a professional to know that. Heck, people, including seasoned investors have predicted on average 54 for the stock, so why wouldnt you have taken stock? Always awesome…

Agree.

The writer for the story is "A former corporate attorney at Shearman & Sterling, he is a professor at the Michael E. Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University."

As such he is looking at what structures could be possible instead of what happens actually in negotiation because you have to get agreement on both sides. While of course he could be correct, (we don't know the exact details so we can't rule that out) there is the possibility that those wouldn't have been terms agreed upon even if proposed.

The title of the story was "How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal". Well they also could have cut a better deal by getting twice the amount they got even with the same terms or all in cash, right?

It's ironic as well since to most outside observers Instagram did quite well.

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#35

Post by steve8918 »

This article is ridiculous. Even if the deal were for $300M cash only, it would have been an amazing coup. $300M for a company with 30M users and ZERO revenues? They infrastructure costs were pure spending and eating away at cash, and they had no idea how low their user base would drop to if they tried even a modicum of monetization, like ads or subscriptions.

The fact they got 23M shares of FB is simply delicious gravy on top. This means they get to participate in any upside on FB for free. The only thing that would suck is if they were somehow taxed on the value of FB shares when the deal went down, but I'm not even sure that would occur. I'm sure there's a way to structure the deal so that they wouldn't need to pay taxes until they sell the shares.

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#36

Post by AznHisoka »

duaneb wrote: post #31
jmathai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you're comparing arranged marriages to "love marriages" I wouldn't even bother. In the US the divorce rate is somewhere near or above 50%. Logically "love marriages" make plenty of sense but the data proves (in the US at least) that it doesn't work. At least not once the human factor is taken into account. People from cultures where arranged marriage is not acceptable seem to have a very hostile view on it.…

>proves No, it doesn't. To actually prove love marriages do not make sense, every single love marriage should fail. Anyway, 50% is a pretty damn good success rate, I think. I don't think I could choose someone to spend the rest of my life with correctly on my first time. It's perfectly natural to fall out of love - that doesn't mean that love marriages don't work, it just means that some don't work.

He's not saying it makes no sense. He's saying arranged marriages have just as high a success rate, if not higher. Personally, I can see that intuitively as well. Expectations are low, and there's not as much "passion". Not a lot of passion sounds bad to a lot of people, but it's better than having tons of passion, and having it turn sour.

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#37

Post by sp332 »

duaneb wrote: post #31
jmathai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you're comparing arranged marriages to "love marriages" I wouldn't even bother. In the US the divorce rate is somewhere near or above 50%. Logically "love marriages" make plenty of sense but the data proves (in the US at least) that it doesn't work. At least not once the human factor is taken into account. People from cultures where arranged marriage is not acceptable seem to have a very hostile view on it.…

>proves No, it doesn't. To actually prove love marriages do not make sense, every single love marriage should fail. Anyway, 50% is a pretty damn good success rate, I think. I don't think I could choose someone to spend the rest of my life with correctly on my first time. It's perfectly natural to fall out of love - that doesn't mean that love marriages don't work, it just means that some don't work.

It's not just about finding "the right person". Lots of external factors can have a huge effect on marriage success, like religion http://www.edivorcepapers.com/divorce-statistics/christian-d... or local culture http://www.divorcerate.org/divorce-rate-japan.html or even changes in culture over time http://www.edivorcepapers.com/divorce-statistics/divorce-rat... eta: 50% is not a good rate.

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#39

Post by ChuckMcM »

It is interesting how folks miss the article for the headline. The headline is link baitey, the article tries to explain a financial device called a 'stock collar' which is known in M&A circles but not be common knowledge for startup founders.

I read it as, "Hey, here is this financial tool to consider when selling your company called a stock collar, and here is an example of how using it would have been advantageous." That is a reasonable thing for someone to know.

Re: How Instagram Could Have Cut a Better Deal

#40

Post by duaneb »

sp332 wrote: post #37
duaneb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>proves No, it doesn't. To actually prove love marriages do not make sense, every single love marriage should fail. Anyway, 50% is a pretty damn good success rate, I think. I don't think I could choose someone to spend the rest of my life with correctly on my first time. It's perfectly natural to fall out of love - that doesn't mean that love marriages don't work, it just means that some don't work.

It's not just about finding "the right person". Lots of external factors can have a huge effect on marriage success, like religion http://www.edivorcepapers.com/divorce-statistics/christian-d... or local culture http://www.divorcerate.org/divorce-rate-japan.html or even changes in culture over time http://www.edivorcepapers.com/divorce-statistics/divorce-rat... eta: 50% is not a good rate.

Isn't religion/culture/whatever just one aspect of finding the right person?
Post reply on HN