Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
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Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#2Thank you for sharing... 43 sounds super painful, and super tricky to safely share!
For others here: part of "companies are bought, not sold" is not just price difference, but whether the deal happens at all. Your startup needs to be solving something critical for an executive , eg, cuts red tape on internal politics, and enough so that they'll push the deal through because they need it. Good signal is inbound, but not only, and part of your job is to help figure that out or get that inbound.
The reverse is still possible, but now you both underprice and need to find a firm that is efficient here. As part of my surprise in seeing gitlab internal docs in the open.. they explicitly look for good but struggling product teams to scoop up for basically annual bonus levels, and it sounds like they can do that quickly... If that's what you want.
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#3[deleted]
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#4I believe that Have I Been Pwned provides a useful service, but I find it very strange that needs to be valuated and sold like a startup when it’s essentially been able to survive because people singularly trust Troy with a bunch of illegally obtained material. Like, how do you buy that; how could you ethically and legally make money from it? Why can’t it just continue being supported by contributions?
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#5I believe that Have I Been Pwned provides a useful service, but I find it very strange that needs to be valuated and sold like a startup when it’s essentially been able to survive because people singularly trust Troy with a bunch of illegally obtained material. Like, how do you buy that; how could you ethically and legally make money from it? Why can’t it just continue being supported by contributions?
A key feature of our society is that many things are given away for free and supported by an advertising infrastructure.
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#6I believe that Have I Been Pwned provides a useful service, but I find it very strange that needs to be valuated and sold like a startup when it’s essentially been able to survive because people singularly trust Troy with a bunch of illegally obtained material. Like, how do you buy that; how could you ethically and legally make money from it? Why can’t it just continue being supported by contributions?
He explained a little bit about his thoughts on this in a previous blog post: https://www.troyhunt.com/project-svalbard-the-future-of-have...
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#7I believe that Have I Been Pwned provides a useful service, but I find it very strange that needs to be valuated and sold like a startup when it’s essentially been able to survive because people singularly trust Troy with a bunch of illegally obtained material. Like, how do you buy that; how could you ethically and legally make money from it? Why can’t it just continue being supported by contributions?
A key feature of our society is that many things are given away for free and supported by an advertising infrastructure.
I emailed Troy to ask if he'd consider operating it as a non-profit utility similar to Let's Encrypt, and offered to help (because it's only fair if you come with an ask).
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#8Damn that sounds like an incredibly exhausting experience, and all he got out of it was... a hugely expensive bill.
All I can say is props to him to keeping his principles, I really hope he's be able to grow HIBP into a sustainable gig for himself and a small core team.
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#9Damn that sounds like an incredibly exhausting experience, and all he got out of it was... a hugely expensive bill. All I can say is props to him to keeping his principles, I really hope he's be able to grow HIBP into a sustainable gig for himself and a small core team.
Seeing people hold onto their principles is pretty damn rare nowadays.
Re: Project Svalbard, Have I Been Pwned and its ongoing independence
#10I believe that Have I Been Pwned provides a useful service, but I find it very strange that needs to be valuated and sold like a startup when it’s essentially been able to survive because people singularly trust Troy with a bunch of illegally obtained material. Like, how do you buy that; how could you ethically and legally make money from it? Why can’t it just continue being supported by contributions?
He explained a little bit about his thoughts on this in a previous blog post: https://www.troyhunt.com/project-svalbard-the-future-of-have...
I didn't find that very satisfying, unfortunately. He mentions that he's overloaded with trying to maintain the service, but then jumps immediately to looking for someone to acquire Have I Been Pwned. Couldn't he just get a few more people to help him out?