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But how many first time entrepreneurs would turn down a $1B offer after 2 years of work?
Guaranteed the writers of these articles have never been in that position.
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I find it hard to believe that the FB->IG relationship is significantly different from the Amazon->Zappos one Why? Zappos was minting money and sustainable in their own right well before the acquisition. IG had no datapoints showing they could sustainably make revenue when they were acquired.
> Why? Hmm, I guess fundamentally I find it hard to believe that a large corporation would acquire a smaller one just to let them run completely independently - it just seems counter-intuitive unless the acquirer is a holding company, basically. It definitely also doesn't seem like Amazon's jam. Twitch seemed to have a pretty large upward trajectory (and path to profitability) right around the time they were acquired…
I don't find it hard to believe - it is a perfectly valid defensive move to contain a potential competitor. What if an independent Zappos decided to start selling everything, not just shoes? Also, it might provide an internal 'skunkworks' where Amazon finds lessons applicable to the larger organization without killing the golden-egg-laying goose. It's quite a reasonable way of self-disrupting.
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I find it hard to believe that the FB->IG relationship is significantly different from the Amazon->Zappos one Why? Zappos was minting money and sustainable in their own right well before the acquisition. IG had no datapoints showing they could sustainably make revenue when they were acquired.
> Why? Hmm, I guess fundamentally I find it hard to believe that a large corporation would acquire a smaller one just to let them run completely independently - it just seems counter-intuitive unless the acquirer is a holding company, basically. It definitely also doesn't seem like Amazon's jam. Twitch seemed to have a pretty large upward trajectory (and path to profitability) right around the time they were acquired…
But the Zappos case was different. They didn't NEED to sell, so they put in the selling agreement that they get to keep a bunch of autonomy.
Basically Zappos loves being a part of Amazon for shipping and logistics benefits.
But Zappos core strategy/identity is based on being an uncommonly fun place to work and being great to its employees. They wanted to make sure when they sold that the never had to deal with employees "the Amazon" way.
This is a sobering look at what it takes to build a business vs a product (vs, even smaller scale, a feature). You have to be willing to put in the long hours (err, years) and the schlepping to do all the business-y stuff: * distribution * monetization * back end systems for admin users * sales channels etc, etc Or, you can cash out and assimilate, err integrate, with a larger company that has done that hard work and…
Instagram was huge even before Facebook took over. It has gone from strength to strength in the 6 years since but I'm pretty sure that would've been the case without Facebook's involvement (see also: Twitter and Snapchat). You seem to be doing the founders and the team behind Instagram a huge disservice here by accusing them of not being willing to put in the work and riding on Facebook's coattails.
It's easy to second guess... "if only they'd hung there, the $100B valuation today would be theirs" . But how many first time entrepreneurs would turn down a $1B offer after 2 years of work? Guaranteed the writers of these articles have never been in that position.
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I am a daily reader of Stratechery. It's a very "MBA" publication: the emphasis is always on strategy, distribution channels, markets, sales and marketing, etc. It's a soberingly different worldview than product-obsessed, hacker/maker/developer-centric worldview you get on HN a lot of the time. HN definitely skews toward the entrepreneurial/business end of software, but there's still a real emphasis on building great…
> "It's not the technology that matters, it's the strategy". I don't think that's right. A big talking point that comes up over and over with Instagram was how well-built the app was. Yet that wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't pivoted from a location based app to photo sharing. Technology/product matters to get your foot in the door, but it's strategy/execution what ultimately makes it or breaks it.
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I've always wondered about this. How much inventive is that? When the person thinks "if I work really hard and this, I'll increase my huge pool of money from an amount I can't easily spend given the rest of my life to an amount almost six times as much!", does that really resonate? It's not like it's the same as $700 to $4,000, or even from $7,000,000 to $40,000,000. There are things you can buy to spend most of thos…
> but those are things it's not really worth buying multiple of (e.g. houses, super yachts) Don't think consumer goods. Think: * own and run a professional sports team * spearhead a transit project in your hometown * build 100 libraries with your name on them * influence politics for a generation * fund the cure for the rare disease that killed your mother If all you can think to do with a few billion extra dollars i…
And for the philanthropic ones, are you really going to say, "well, I better not stop now, because a few hundred million might not be enough..."?
There are plenty of things that huge amounts of money can be spent on, but I think in most cases those aren't things most people are specifically interested in. At least not enough to ultimately sway their opinion about leaving early.
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I am a daily reader of Stratechery. It's a very "MBA" publication: the emphasis is always on strategy, distribution channels, markets, sales and marketing, etc. It's a soberingly different worldview than product-obsessed, hacker/maker/developer-centric worldview you get on HN a lot of the time. HN definitely skews toward the entrepreneurial/business end of software, but there's still a real emphasis on building great…
Ben also said in today's update that the "relative importance decreases over time as things like network effects and business models come to bear". This is another way of putting Marc Andreesen and Steven Sinofski's point that if you have product / market fit, then you can do almost everything wrong and it won't matter. I think Ben gets that the tech and product are the only thing that matters pre-PMF, but post-PMF,…