41–50 of 121 posts
This is easily one of the most honest and true posts I've read about Valley culture in a long, long time. Having been through this exact process, I can assure you that this is how it really works.
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That certainly would cause the bubble to start losing air so-to-speak, but I'm not sure it would pop. If you think about it, Google and Facebook happen to be specific examples of companies that could have become billion dollar companies without VC investment. Other companies like Amazon and Tesla Motors are not.
Google becoming a billion dollar company without VC investment is possible, but it wouldn't have happened nearly as quickly, and it's quite possible that it would have been acquired by Yahoo or Microsoft. I disagree completely on Facebook becoming a billion dollar company without VC. VC funding is what allowed Facebook to monetize much later and gain huge cash reserves by selling tiny portions of equity at extremely…
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Are you serious? $6m sounds like more than enough to retire on at any point for most people.
If you want to live like a 20-something for the rest of your life, sure. Your cost structure changes as you get older and have things like houses, spouses, cars, and children.
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$6MM invested with a 6% return provides a $360k pa lifestyle just living off the interest. That seems like quite enough for houses, spouses (well—maybe spouse; alimony could eat into that quite a bit), cars, and children.
Zero risk return is way below 6% right now. I'm not sure where you're going to find anything like that. Berkshire Hathaway is willing to guarantee you a $205,000 annual income from that sum in an annuity, which is not a bad deal at all, but it's not 'never worry about money again', it's just a really nice salary, and would be substantially depleted in the case of any inflation at all.
BH annuity is not a bad deal, but losing 2% of your income a year will sound tolerable until about year 5... =)
If you retire mid-twenties on $5M, there's no way you'd make it through 70 on that, if you did nothing else active (read: risky) to increase your income.
Disturbingly accurate. • Make a sufficiently shiny, yet imminently disposable product. • Hoard employees (each one bumps your valuation by ~$1.5 million), be loud, get acquired. • Kill product. (You never cared about it anyway -- it was just a vehicle for ego and attention. Now that you've got your $5 million, you don't need the validation of all those silly pawns/customers anymore.)
If new startups agreed that they wouldn't leave their users out to dry if they got acquired would you be more likely to trust them and use their service?
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$6MM invested with a 6% return provides a $360k pa lifestyle just living off the interest. That seems like quite enough for houses, spouses (well—maybe spouse; alimony could eat into that quite a bit), cars, and children.
Zero risk return is way below 6% right now. I'm not sure where you're going to find anything like that. Berkshire Hathaway is willing to guarantee you a $205,000 annual income from that sum in an annuity, which is not a bad deal at all, but it's not 'never worry about money again', it's just a really nice salary, and would be substantially depleted in the case of any inflation at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you serious? $6m sounds like more than enough to retire on at any point for most people.
If you want to live like a 20-something for the rest of your life, sure. Your cost structure changes as you get older and have things like houses, spouses, cars, and children.
If you can earn more, great. But the chances are exceedingly low to begin with.