
Out of acqui-hire stage - duck
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/04/out-of-acqui-hire-stage.html
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ChuckMcM
Nice post. I tell engineers itching for promotion a similar story. Once you
are demonstrating you can be promoted you have to ask do you _want_ to be. The
standards of evaluating your work change between code monkey and senior code
monkey.

As it is with startups, as you grow the expectations of what you can do also
go up. So doing just as well as before when you heard feedback like "cool,
innovative" becomes "is that all they do?" as Scott Mcnealy told promoted
folks at Sun, "one step up, one step closer to the door."

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tdenkinger
Forgot one: "Go for profitability, make poor decisions, bounce along the
bottom for awhile, and then liquidate."

The most likely path.

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davidw
A few 'case studies' and some data would make this a lot more interesting
discussion.

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its_so_on
I would frame this as, Let's hear them!

HN is the right place to ask...

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kposehn
Some friends of mine went through the same process and got to actual value.
They chose the cash machine and did fairly well - to this date they turn a
fairly significant amount of cash and do very well.

The regret they still have to this day is it didn't fit with their life goals.
They each wanted to keep doing more things, but they are tied in and cannot
exit that easily. Several of the founders would like to move on, but that
option is several years off.

I think the lesson I've learned is that as entrepreneurs we should look at
those options based on our goals in life. If you'll be satisfied doing the
same sort of business for a long time, then the cash machine is open. If
you're not, look for - and work towards - that exit.

One of them said to me "The path to your exit starts at day one; people you
meet today could be your potential acquirers/partners tomorrow."

[edited to show the last line was a quote]

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cperciva
Isn't this largely determined by the number of employees? My impression was
that for internet startups the valuation to # of employees ratio tended to be
close to constant (since when valuations rise companies raise more money, of
which almost all gets spent on employees); which suggests that the valuation
to # of founders ratio is proportional to the total # of employees to # of
founders ratio.

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illumen
ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., facebook

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its_so_on
Personally, I would hate to be in Zuckerberg's shoes. I don't mean I would
mind the money, but I would hate to literally be in his shoes running the
company "with my name on it" as a sole founder. If anything goes wrong, he's
pretty much "done" with entrepreneurship. So perhaps a better example is the
loads of non-facebooks that make a ton of money on a quiet multibillion dollar
exit, without anyone outside a tight circle even knowing who the founders
were. (although having a ton of users). Instagram, maybe?

EDIT: you guys don't like this comment. Let me generalize.

\- Facebook is a bad example because it reached a 50B valuation in private
equity deals pre-IPO.

It's better if you mention a company that has already IPO'd, been sold
outright (founder not involved anymore), or has lower-valuation equity deals,
so that the founder is not under as much pressure.

I would not like to be in the position of figureheading such a company pre-
IPO.

This is just my personal taste. Please don't think that I'm trying to be
prescriptive. You can trade places with Mr. Zuckerberg if you like. I'm just
giving you my thoughts of a better example.

now I'm at -2. Would you please explain why ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ...,
facebook can't be replaced with

ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., zynga (i.e. post ipo, valuation 6B)

or ramen noodle, aqui-hire, ..., instagram (bought for 1b).

Why do we have to use the company loads of people are saying will fail, and
which has to start from a baseline of private equity deals that have already
happened valuing it at 50 billion?

This is approximately the amount of money Microsoft has in the bank. How many
sales does Microsoft make per year.

This is an enormous responsibility to his previous backers and those who
believe in Facebook. I hope for him that everything goes right and he makes a
great IPO and remains at the head of company that will always be worth more
than that.

But why pick an example where he's under pressure to achieve that. Can you
imagine how devastating it would be for the day to come when facebook is sold
for 5billion? That would mean that 90% of its valuation would have been
"squandered".

baselines and anchors are incredibly important. I think you guys are just not
failing to appreciate the pressure on him to stay on top.

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bmelton
Done? Really?

He's a proven winner, at this stage. He's got billions in revenue, and took a
startup from "the kids at that one college" phase to being one of the most
used applications on the planet.

Facebook has more users than Microsoft was able to sell copies of Windows 7
to.

I think "done" is a knee-jerk response, as I'm betting that he wouldn't have a
hard time finding a team, or funding, or be hampered in any way in his ability
to execute on whatever he decides to do post-Facebook, even if he screws it
all up.

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eaurouge
_Facebook has more users than Microsoft was able to sell copies of Windows 7
to._

Not commenting on any other points raised in this thread except to say: you
can't compare Facebook users to Microsoft customers, there's a big difference.

Edit: To the downvoter. This is not a Facebook vs Microsoft argument. Users
don't pay for the product, customers (I'm assuming they bought the software
and didn't pirate it) do. It's not the same metric.

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rhizome
Facebook users are not Facebook's customers.

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MaysonL
Windows users (for the most part) are not Microsoft customers.

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rhizome
I know what you're saying, that actual retail sales are not a big deal for
them. However, you're making a category error in that "Windows purchases" (as
well as Office, etc.) are what defines their customers of Microsoft's software
arm where there is no parallel situation on the Facebook side. That is, at all
levels, Microsoft's customers are interacting with the same stuff: Microsoft
software.

For Facebook it's different. Facebook's customers are consuming and
interacting with an entirely different resource than Facebook's users. In
fact, I'd say that Facebook's customers (advertisers et al) actually have
__very little __social interaction with each other on an experiential basis
compared to Facebook's users. This is to say that Facebook likely puts _a lot_
of work into ensuring that nothing on the customer side gets inadvertently
shared, unlike the user side.

