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

An acquisition is always a failure

pandodaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#61

Post by jlodwick »

mindcrime wrote: post #3

No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…

> You don't know me, my life, my past, my future, my dreams, my fears, my hopes, my goals or a goddamned other thing about me.

True, but I know about the potential of companies, and failing to reach that potential is a form of failure.

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#63

Post by ok_craig »

jlodwick wrote: post #54
crazygringo wrote: post #32

> With a fat bank account, I was pretty set to do whatever I wanted for a long time. ... But it didn’t take long to realize that my new life was a hell of a lot less exciting than running an independent company had been. Sorry, but this is completely self-contradictory. With your fat bank account, you can start a new, independent company. If what he wants is: > our way of thinking of a better approach to consumer tec…

> With your fat bank account, you can start a new, independent company. It takes years to build a great company. Running a great company was better than having the potential to start a new one.

> Running a great company was better than having the potential to start a new one.

For you, in your specific context.

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#64

Post by niggler »

jacquesm wrote: post #60
niggler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Many people go into startups just for the profit motive, but I firmly believe that you should start a startup because it is something you want to do or because a side project became too large to continue as a side project (forced to do)

> Many people go into startups just for the profit motive Do you feel that increases or decreases their chances of success?

The profit motive drives a very short-term hyper-growth mentality, and the decisions reflect that nature (abrupt axing of free service tier or price hikes to show "revenue growth", engaging in questionable accounting practices, etc), which increases success if you define success as cashing out.

If you define success in terms of longevity, given that certain practices essential for long-term survival run counter to the goal of fast growth and high valuations, the profit motive decreases chances of success.

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#65

Post by jacquesm »

niggler wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people go into startups just for the profit motive Do you feel that increases or decreases their chances of success?

The profit motive drives a very short-term hyper-growth mentality, and the decisions reflect that nature (abrupt axing of free service tier or price hikes to show "revenue growth", engaging in questionable accounting practices, etc), which increases success if you define success as cashing out. If you define success in terms of longevity, given that certain practices essential for long-term survival run counter to th…

> the profit motive decreases chances of success.

Agreed. I think it works that way because if profit is your motive you will run your start-up focusing on the wrong goal, which is to increase your bank account instead of to increase your users satisfaction or the quality of your product. By focusing on a second order goal you will likely lose track of what really matters. But if you focus on what does really matter your second order goal will be achieved as a by-product.

I do believe that you can achieve higher profits by tweaking an existing, successful model. But to achieve high profits by going for the money directly only works well for those that are either in finance or direct derivatives of finance (such as bank robbers, who after all have the most direct line between 'profits' and their actions ;) ).

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#66

Post by kybernetikos »

sliverstorm wrote: post #10
mindcrime wrote: post #3

No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…

Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?

I think the point of the article is that the majority of startups are founded by people who want to get rich more than they really want to be a visionary or entrepreneur.

People talk about 'exit' strategies. It makes it rather obvious that the thing they've created is much less important than the money to them.

Whether or not that bothers you, I think it's nice to have occasional articles talking about the view espoused in this article - that entrepreneurship is artistic and artists that care about their money more than their art are viewed with a mixture of admiration and disappointment by artists that have not yet had the chance to 'sell out' or the few who get the chance and don't.

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#67

Post by jacques_chester »

jlodwick wrote: post #57
jacques_chester wrote: post #48

A sweeping generalisation in the title made by a tech blog is always a success.

Yeah. My suggested title was "A Critique of Popular Ambition". In future articles I might ask for more input on the title.

You probably won't get it. Subeditors guard their privileges jealously.

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#68

Post by sliverstorm »

mbell wrote: post #26
sliverstorm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?

It depends on your goal. Even companies that stay privately held and turn a profit year over year end up in many ways being a lifestyle company; Often resulting in stagnation and then slowly erode from the inside. It can work, you can avoid stagnation, but only for a few types of companies / founders. For example Valve can pull this off, they are a game company, always building the next great game, they always have s…

My first thought is, you don't have to grow like wildfire. From what I've seen, operations that stay smaller, tend to avoid stagnation.

Of course, I suppose keeping your company modestly sized does stand in the way of securing your "cool billion", which is apparently the minimum take for anybody who is anybody?

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#69

Post by [deleted] »

mindcrime wrote: post #3

No, no, a thousand times no. This is complete bullshit. I'm sorry, but you lost me at: The proper ambition for a tech entrepreneur should be to join the ranks of the great tech companies, or, at least, to create a profitable, independent company beloved by employees, customers, and shareholders. Nobody, not you, not my mom or dad, not "God", not Linus Torvalds, not Bill Gates, not the Queen of England, not the Dali L…

[deleted]

Re: An acquisition is always a failure

#70

Post by crapshoot101 »

phillmv wrote: post #22
sliverstorm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I build a company to a point where I could sell for enough that I could walk away with, I don't know, let's call it $10,000,000 USD. The other option is to stay independent and maybe, maybe eventually IPO. This is the part that rankles with me. Why is, "stay privately held and continue to turn a profit year over year" never considered an option? Why is it only "sell" or "IPO"?

Well, it's not an option if you've taken VC. A VC is only looking at time frames of 3-5 years, given the limitations of their business model. If you don't look poised to grow 5-10x within that time frame then it's not worth their time, given they could be throwing money at the next potentially huge company instead. If you run out of time you might get turfed by your investors when they call in their convertible note,…

Not true. VC funds have 10 year lives, depending on the fund obviously.
Post reply on HN