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

321–330 of 521 posts

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#321

Post by ticmasta »

gumby wrote: post #252
caffeine wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's extremely valuable as a lesson for prospective early employees. My own personal takeaway is crystal clear: if you want to benefit from the sale of something, you need to be the owner! Much like a gardener or builder who doesn't get paid out when the house gets sold, unless you have a LOT of equity as an early employee, you will not be getting founder-type payouts (and rightly so as you took little to no…

Companies don't have to be run that way. When we sold Cygnus the receptionist was able to pay off her mortgage and other debt. She was a 65 year old divorced woman and now she could afford to retire (she stayed with the company though). Of course we were a traditional SV startup -- people are different these days.

the math is still incredibly lopsided. Your secretary can pay off her mortgage or buy a new car; the founders get FU money. This is just how it works; hate the game not the player.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#322

Post by cj »

pier25 wrote: post #143

> But they were incredibly gracious and both agreed to write off their investment. So the investors just accepted to lose $800k while the founder was getting $3.7M? Can someone explain the logic here?

> So the investors just accepted to lose $800k

$500k came from a fund General Catalyst set up specifically to encourage startups to build new businesses that integrate with Stripe. [0]

The goal for the money was to enrich the Stripe ecosystem. Not generating returns for investors.

If the money came from a regular fund without the Stripe affiliation, General Catalyst 100% would not have accepted the $800k loss.

[0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-catalyst-in...

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#323

Post by IshKebab »

user5994461 wrote: post #199
pier25 wrote: post #143

> But they were incredibly gracious and both agreed to write off their investment. So the investors just accepted to lose $800k while the founder was getting $3.7M? Can someone explain the logic here?

They are investment funds that manage billions of dollars. They invested 800k hoping to make 80-800M out of it. It's pretty obvious the business didn't pan out as well as intended. It's not really worth their time anymore. Still. They could have caused troubles and tried to recoup their $800k out of the $4M. They were nice not to. The money will be written as a loss and go through some accounting/tax trick to minimiz…

In what way would it have been trouble? Surely they legally own that bit of the company?

Something doesn't make sense. $800k is not a small enough amount for any responsible investment fund to walk away from.

I wonder if maybe it was actually worth way less. I think he said they walked away from their $800k investment, but maybe that was at a much higher valuation. If it was only worth $80k I can see them not bothering.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#324

Post by humanlion87 »

tinyhouse wrote: post #308
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Even the founder probably got less than a mid/senior level FAANG employee would get (and the FAANG employee had no risk) Not really... he's been working on the startup for 7 years. Let's assume he had an average salary of 150K during those years. Plus he got $3.7M on the acquisition (it's not clear from his post if that's what he takes home or if it's pre-tax). That's 4.75M. Now let's assume a senior engineer in FA…

All the freedom in the world, and all the responsibility in the world too. The constant pressure to make the correct decisions for over 7 years would definitely be worth a 2x multiplier at least right?

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#325

Post by lollmao »

ianmobbs wrote: post #315
swyx wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you read between the lines he is definitely going to start something again. some people cannot just sit on their hands.

If you read the actual lines, he said he's moving away from software and into the arts

Read again, it says "for a while". Also, he doesn't want to have to do it out of financial necessity.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#326

Post by smnscu »

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…

Just another data point. While I would probably never pursue VC funds, their move resonated with me and now I have the names General Catalyst and Bessemer seared into my brain (not to mention sharing the story to my friends and other people with startups). $800k for that kind of advertising is decidedly not a bad move.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#327

Post by Silhouette »

mrtksn wrote: post #256
Silhouette wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t been in the UK since a while so I hear that now things changed so you can no longer pretend to run a company when being essentially an employee. That's actually been the case for about 20 years now. The relevant term is "IR35".

Hmm, I have been driving relatively fast lately. must be the relativistic speeds that 20 years is not the same for both of us! Anyway, apparently the changes are postponed to April 2021 at stationery frame of reference: https://www.taylorhopkinson.com/ir35/

Those are merely administrative changes. The law and tax rules themselves will still be much the same as they have been since 2000 or so.

The reason this is big news anyway is that for the first time, large clients will themselves become responsible for determining whether an engagement falls under IR35 or not, and may also become liable to the government for the shortfall if the determination made is incorrect. Until that point, it's the freelancer/contractor operating through an intermediary who is on the hook (except for various government contracts, where the analogous change came in a while back).

In a surprise to no-one who has ever worked in the independent sector, this has made lots of big businesses that were formerly quite regular users of the flexible workforce much more sceptical, and many big names appear to have outright shut down this way of working for now.

At some point, presumably our government will realise that it has to pay for its spending spree during the coronavirus and that getting the economy back on its feet is going to need that flexible workforce, so with a bit of luck they'll come to their senses and finally do something about IR35, though I'm not holding my breath.

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#328

Post by xenocyon »

paganel wrote: post #309
coward8675309 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit the nail on the head: the cynicism. Cynicism isn’t a morally neutral stance. Assuming everyone else is arguing in bad faith and in favor of their crude short-term political/economic interests. Asserting that all property is theft and that the system is rigged. Dismissing those who disagree as gullible or stupid or (themselves) cynically trying to manipulate people. There is so much of it here and it comes fro…

> Asserting that all property is theft and that the system is rigged. There is definitely a discussion to be had about property, smarter people than us have had it for at least 150 years (even more, if you include the discussion between Locke and Filmer), don't see anything that cynic about it. I'd go on to say that even Cynicism itself was a really interesting philosophical school [1]. I do agree that that there are…

Right, the comment you are responding to appears to be conflating anarchism with cynicism (which is, ironically, a rather cynical take on anarchism).

Re: I sold Baremetrics

#330

Post by tinyhouse »

humanlion87 wrote: post #324
tinyhouse wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the founder probably got less than a mid/senior level FAANG employee would get (and the FAANG employee had no risk) Not really... he's been working on the startup for 7 years. Let's assume he had an average salary of 150K during those years. Plus he got $3.7M on the acquisition (it's not clear from his post if that's what he takes home or if it's pre-tax). That's 4.75M. Now let's assume a senior engineer in FA…

All the freedom in the world, and all the responsibility in the world too. The constant pressure to make the correct decisions for over 7 years would definitely be worth a 2x multiplier at least right?

It's definitely worth the multiplier. But that's not the right question imo. The question is if his well being was affected by that responsibility. From his post I didn't get the impression he was under a lot of pressure (unlike a senior FAANG engineer...). He worked hard of course but that doesn't mean he suffered. He just lost interest.

I'm not saying running a company is not stressful. Of course it is. Even is it's yours and no one can fire you. But it's very different when you're the one who is making the decisions and not depending on other people and politics.

Post reply on HN