

Big Companies Are Where Small Companies Go to Die - superchink
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1197-big-companies-are-where-small-companies-go-to-die

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smoody
Well, to be fair, they have taken that article and generalized it in a broader
way, but based on what firsthand experience? Oh, right... firsthand experience
reading the original article.

It's so funny that people can take one or two articles and use them to build a
case -- kind of like when DHH found that some successful companies were not
run by MBAs and declared that MBAs don't really add much value (paraphrased).

Here's the thing: The press prefers to report about things going wrong because
that's what people like to read. For example, they'll report about people
getting killed in traffic accidents, but they are unlikely to report on how
many people didn't get killed on any given day. Should I therefore declare
that people shouldn't drive cars and prove my point by linking to two articles
about traffic accidents? I'd be laughed at, but then again, I'm not 37Signals.

I have firsthand experience with the type of acquisition they are writing
about. The experience was amazing! The company worked really hard to make us
feel like part of the family, brought their best people in to help us scale
everything up (including putting one of their founders on the team), and they
drove tons of traffic to our app. Their stock climbed-up 10x over the course
of my time there (but cashing out is all about timing, unfortunately), and I
now have a network of really great friends in the industry -- many of which
are now running their own successful startups. Ouch, right? I really got
burned.

I'm just _one_ datapoint but, IMHO, one firsthand datapoint is all it takes to
prove that their sweeping generalization isn't really worth paying attention
to in this case.

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timr
Come on, folks...the story that this blurb points to is the _top rated_ story
in the site right now. This article doesn't add anything to the discussion.

