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Tiny

tinycapital.com

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Re: Tiny

#41

Post by kulikalov »

dmitriid wrote: post #9
buf wrote: post #4

Tiny is basically as advertised. A few years ago, I tried to sell one of my businesses to them (Zack) and he was straightforward in his reason to pass back then (profit too low). Took about a day once I had my metrics sorted. The experience was positive and re-enforced my understanding of important growth metrics and product storytelling.

> profit too low > important growth metrics > product storytelling Yup. Everything that's wrong with (predominately US) modern business culture. Product doesn't matter, storytelling is. Nothing matters, inflated growth metrics do. Profit doesn't matter unless it's high (for some definition of high), but even that doesn't matter if you have hyperinflated growth metrics.

It seems to me that the opposite tendency would vastly decrease the pace of innovation

Re: Tiny

#42

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bjarneh wrote: post #31
umvi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The catch is that your business has to be in pretty darn good shape. They won't just buy any company, you have to prove it is stable, profitable, and growing.

> you have to prove it is stable, profitable, and growing. I just cannot imagine selling my business if everything was pointing upwards like that.. but people are different I guess

I can; it's if you want to cash out now instead of accumulate money over the next twenty years. Plenty of people who do that trick (start a company, cash out) a few times. They call themselves "serial entrepreneurs", which either means the above, or they've left behind a long string of failed businesses.

Re: Tiny

#43

Post by diordiderot »

padolsey wrote: post #34

Is there a story behind the cruel-sounding "Cap table cleanup" heading? It says: > You've got early employees, investors, or a co-founder > who wants to leave or cash out. You want to swap them > for a friendly new face who can add value and help you > grow the business. It feels like they're insinuating that there's usually a painful process in enabling people to cash-out and leave? Is this because of the whole "gol…

Just a heads up that you don't need to add a new ≪ for each line of text in the text area, everything after the first ≪ will be quoted untill you double 'enter'. Cheers

Re: Tiny

#44

Post by Cthulhu_ »

xyst wrote: post #16

> We pay finders fees of $25,000 to $200,000+, all you have to do is intro us. hmmm - not a bad payday just to be a referral

Yeah there's got to be a catch there, nobody works for 'just a referral' that doesn't result in something significant.

Re: Tiny

#45

Post by robfitz »

padolsey wrote: post #34

Is there a story behind the cruel-sounding "Cap table cleanup" heading? It says: > You've got early employees, investors, or a co-founder > who wants to leave or cash out. You want to swap them > for a friendly new face who can add value and help you > grow the business. It feels like they're insinuating that there's usually a painful process in enabling people to cash-out and leave? Is this because of the whole "gol…

It's a positive thing, just written weirdly.

E.g., an early employee takes a moderate salary plus X% equity.

Normally that person is stuck waiting until a liquidity event (like an acquisition, IPO, or late-round funding where some private shares can be sold).

But if the startup has shifted from hypergrowth mode to realizing that it's going to be profitable and stable, then that liquidity event won't ever happen.

So Tiny is basically saying, hey, if you've incentivized your people with equity, but you're no longer on the VC exit path, you can set up a deal with us where those people may choose to sell us their little slices of equity, which gives us some ownership and gives them the financial windfall they were originally hoping for.

Re: Tiny

#46

Post by devoutsalsa »

mrslave wrote: post #25
FeepingCreature wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest It doesn't even matter if the business will have profits, it matters if the business will look to future investors like it will have profits.

If only this were Keyne's most famous theory. I believe he (or the greater school of thought built around him) did argue that stimulus through discounted interest rates should be balanced in a timely fashion. But I have to look around the world and wonder which - if any - of our leaders is brave enough to do this? The long trend downwards in interest rates everywhere has not had the desired effect and there are a lot…

Without my glasses on, I read that as Kanye’s and was really confused for a good minute.

Re: Tiny

#47

Post by cole-k »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #40
vasco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone solves a problem of mine because they're motivated by money instead of the problem domain I don't really care. Are you upset that the gas station operator doesn't have a hobby about gas?

ppl aren't very good at solving problems they don't have. i imagine it's hard to design a good/efficient gas station if you've never used one before. service reps/tech support aren't very good if they don't use the product. software sucks/is slow to use unless the designers also use it on the daily and feel first-hand what the pain points are.

I can jive with the idea that people aren't "very good" at solving the problems they don't engage with, but I think it's important to acknowledge that plain old "good" can be enough.

To wit, I'm not going to be upset if tech support takes 3 minutes to process my question and reads out an answer from a pamphlet in monotone if it is indeed a solution to my problem. And there is some software that I use _despite_ its pain points because it solves problems I have.

Re: Tiny

#49

Post by jsnell »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #44
xyst wrote: post #16

> We pay finders fees of $25,000 to $200,000+, all you have to do is intro us. hmmm - not a bad payday just to be a referral

Yeah there's got to be a catch there, nobody works for 'just a referral' that doesn't result in something significant.

Obviously the finder's fee is only paid if it leads to a deal.

Re: Tiny

#50

Post by mkl »

diordiderot wrote: post #43
padolsey wrote: post #34

Is there a story behind the cruel-sounding "Cap table cleanup" heading? It says: > You've got early employees, investors, or a co-founder > who wants to leave or cash out. You want to swap them > for a friendly new face who can add value and help you > grow the business. It feels like they're insinuating that there's usually a painful process in enabling people to cash-out and leave? Is this because of the whole "gol…

Just a heads up that you don't need to add a new ≪ for each line of text in the text area, everything after the first ≪ will be quoted untill you double 'enter'. Cheers

Not really. HN doesn't support any quoting syntax/formatting. There's a common convention in use of putting a ">" (not "<" or the more relevant ">") at the start of a quoted paragraph. The "problem" with the above comment is they indented the quote, which formatted it as code, which wraps strangely, so they wrapped it manually.
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