
Of course this company is for sale - mustardhamsters
http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2012/06/of-course-this-company-is-for-sale/
======
petercooper
_He was extremely clear that anything less than a multibillion dollar IPO was
a pathetic failure, and he’d resign before he’d let such an abomination
happen. So his startup is not actually for sale._

An IPO is essentially a partial sale. But, really, if someone came and offered
him $30bn right now, would he sell? If so, it's for sale (and, yep, there are
certainly people who _would never sell certain things at any price_ so it's
not just an academic exercise).

There's an old joke along these lines:

"If I gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with me?" .. "A million
dollars is a lot of money, and you don’t look that bad, so I guess I would
consider it." .. "Ok, since I don’t have a million dollars, would you sleep
with me for $100?" .. "What kind of woman/guy do you think I am?!" .. "We’ve
already established the answer to that question. Now we’re just negotiating
the price."

~~~
kristopolous
Does anyone know where this one actually comes from?

~~~
a-priori
I'd heard it attributed to Winston Churchill. But, some Googling reveals other
attributions to George Bernard Shaw, and nothing conclusive either way. So I'd
say that it's uncertain who said it, or even that someone famous did.

~~~
jarofgreen
I'll add that I heard it was Oscar Wilde to the list. Who really knows?

------
raganwald
Some things are not be for sale. I own a replica of Jackie Robinson’s Kansas
City Monarchs Negro League Jersey. I wear it to baseball games (where else?)

I once was offered $100, cash for the jersey at a Blue Jays game. I said “no.”
The offer was raised to $200. Again, no. I explained it wasn’t for sale. The
fellow offering me the money explained that “everything was for sale.”

I find such people manipulative. They have money, so they try to twist the
rest of the world to play by their rules. I told him that it would take me
four hours to earn $200, so it was worth four hours to me, right? He agreed.

I told him he could have the jersey if he worked for me for four hours. End of
conversation right there.

<http://raganwald.posterous.com/this-jersey-is-not-for-sale>

This may or may not apply to your dream startup.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Some people are stupid :-) He would have learned much working for you for four
hours, _and_ he would have a rare collectible jersey!

But I disagree with this _"I find such people manipulative. They have money,
so they try to twist the rest of the world to play by their rules."_

Sometimes it is as you say, a sense of entitlement, however sometimes it was
an opportunity they didn't have.

Let me share two anecdotes to illustrate, first we have old VAX parts. You
know that architecture that Digital Equipment made around the turn of the
century. During the big Y2K scare a lot of perfectly good VAX computers were
dumped for scrap, I bought too many of those. But in putting together working
examples for my collection I would have extra parts. Sometimes I'd sell those
parts. I asked a guy who was buying a part from me for more money than I had
paid for the entire system why he didn't do what I do and just pick up
scrapped machines? His response was surprising. He related that he spent his
time shipping stuff around the country, he made good money doing it. He used
VAXes running his custom software to make that work. He spent his time doing
what he was good at, and then using the extra money he made to occasionally go
out and buy a VAX part. The money was fungible he could translate it into VAX
hardware easily. If he subtracted off the money he would lose by spending his
time buying up old machines and testing them instead of shipping stuff, and
added back the money he saved by getting parts this way, he still came out
behind just shipping stuff . So while I might think he was 'paying a lot' for
a part, he was, in fact, saving money!

A more personal story, early in my marriage my wife and I would occasionally
get into arguments about chores. (I'm sure this was unique to my marriage :-))
She wanted me to do a variety of chores, and I wanted to hire someone to do
those same chores. My reasoning was that at the time I had a number of people
who were willing to pay me $75/hr for consulting on various technical
projects. This was work that I enjoyed doing. Further there were lots of
people who would do any number of household type chores for $10 an hour. So I
could spend the weekend doing a consulting project, make $750, and then hire
someone to come out three times a week, four hours a day, and do chores for
the whole month!

In neither case, my VAX parts buyer, or myself, was trying to 'twist the world
to play by their rules' rather, there are rule equivalences that are
arbitrated by their monetary value. My 10 hrs of consulting was 'equal' to a
month of housework, but it is absolutely true that I wasn't following the
'rule' of 'husband does housework too.' [1]

The life lesson I took away is that, like the concept of 'enterprise' value,
strict monetary exchanges don't include the emotional cost as well. The
emotional cost can and does change the sales price significantly at times. It
can be useful to know when someone is so emotionally invested that the total
cost is outside the market. As with raganwald's shirt, the replicas can be
bought elsewhere for much less than the total cost. When the startup founder's
emotional investment prices the startup outside of market norms it can be
leading indicator of trouble.

[1] For future and current husbands out there I do not recommend you try
reasoning to this by explaining you could spend your time building a robot and
then it would do the housework. Rather than impress your spouse with your
robotic skillz they get rather insulted that you think their work can be
replaced by a robot!

~~~
raganwald
_Let me share two anecdotes to illustrate, first we have old VAX parts. You
know that architecture that Digital Equipment made around the turn of the
century. During the big Y2K scare a lot of perfectly good VAX computers were
dumped for scrap, I bought too many of those. But in putting together working
examples for my collection I would have extra parts. Sometimes I'd sell those
parts. I asked a guy who was buying a part from me for more money than I had
paid for the entire system why he didn't do what I do and just pick up
scrapped machines? His response was surprising. He related that he spent his
time shipping stuff around the country, he made good money doing it. He used
VAXes running his custom software to make that work. He spent his time doing
what he was good at, and then using the extra money he made to occasionally go
out and buy a VAX part. The money was fungible he could translate it into VAX
hardware easily. If he subtracted off the money he would lose by spending his
time buying up old machines and testing them instead of shipping stuff, and
added back the money he saved by getting parts this way, he still came out
behind just shipping stuff . So while I might think he was 'paying a lot' for
a part, he was, in fact, saving money!_

I think my guy understood very well that it was easier for him to trade stocks
or buy and sell companies or whatever it was he did to make money than work
for a fellow who was selling Macintosh computers. And he probably did enjoy
his work. I agree with his reasoning, I was annoyed by being told that
everything is for sale as if I have no free will in the matter :-)

~~~
dennisgorelik
You definitely have a free will -- you are free to define asking price.

:-)

------
potatolicious
> _"Not everyone thinks about their company this way. I have a good friend who
> is running a very successful startup with a fantastic future ahead. He told
> me – and I quite believe him – that he would sell the company for a billion
> dollars over his dead body."_

I don't think this friend is really different from Eric. Both companies are
for sale, just at different price points. A startup that _isn't_ for sale is
one where you'd have to physically threaten the founder to acquire it.

Of course, the number of founders that have breathlessly pitched me their
company that will be "a multi-billion dollar business in 5 years" are
uncountable. So I'd argue Eric has a more pragmatic and realistic view of his
possible outcomes.

~~~
jurre
In this episode of TWiS[1]dhh claims he would _never_ sell 37signals, it's an
interesting discussion about this exact topic.

[1] [http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/twist-46-with-
davi...](http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/twist-46-with-david-
heinemeier-hansson)

------
Swizec
Some companies are started to make money. Some to build dreams.

But it's much easier to build dreams on top of a multimillion euro cash-out.

~~~
wavephorm
Not if the Euro crashes and becomes worthless.

------
Alan01252
I've had a lot of recent discussions about this. My Dad always says one of the
worst decisions he made when he was running his first company was not to sell
it. The price was right, but he could see was the turnover and the potential
to earn more later. Little did he know the 90's recession was just around the
corner.

I often wonder what I'd do now if faced with a similar situation.

~~~
wpietri
It can be dangerous to do path-not-taken analysis like that. If he sold it to
idiots who ran it into the ground, he might now be saying, "I can't believe I
sold my company to those assholes. Worst decision I ever made."

Some years back, The Economist covered a study that showed that half of all
mergers destroyed value. And that was in pure dollar terms. A lot of acquirers
do things that are financially profitable but still horrific to entrepreneurs.

I was recently talking to somebody who now suspects their company was bought
mainly for negotiating leverage with some other companies who wanted the
startup destroyed. I'm sure the acquirer came out ahead, but no matter how
much I got paid it would have made me sad to see 5 years' labor destroyed. It
might be economically more rational to sell my sick dog to a lab, but I'd
still rather have it put down and bury it myself.

~~~
erehweb
True on path-not-taken analysis. But in general, people find regrets from
actions (e.g. selling the company) much easier to rationalize than from
inaction (not selling). See "Stumbling On Happiness"

------
DanBlake
I think this article applies directly to people who have not sold a company
before, or "reached the shore".

Talk to some guys who have sold a company for more than 10 million and are now
working on their next one. In some cases its about the cash, but mostly its
because they love doing what they do.

------
blackhole
Many people start companies to make money. Other people start companies to
build dreams.

~~~
ChuckMcM
As long as their dream is to solve a real problem I think you can do ok by it,
but when you have someone dreaming about something that is useless, unless it
is also your dream to build that useless thing, my advice would be to move on.

------
opendomain
The morale is that everything is for sale. Of course you would not sell a
person, a pet, or something you LOVE - and some people are passionate about
their startup but the bottom line is that it is just a business. But the story
does not say what happened next? Did the company receive an offer? Did some
people leave because they heard a rumor and were afraid of their jobs or
perhaps lost some passion for the startup?

------
pmarca
That's an interesting post. It can be read two completely different ways.

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JVIDEL
From experience those who say they'll never sell at any price are often the
ones that end up selling for peanuts.

Anyone can talk the talk, and since _that_ movie saying you wont sell is the
"tough guy quote of the day".

------
chengiz
So whatever happened to Wildseed?

~~~
Todd
There was some great innovation that happened at Wildseed. The inverted design
made it easy to type with your thumb. The Smart Skins not only changed the
look of the device (they wrapped around and clipped on to the body), but there
was an Atmel smart card chip embedded in the plastic that would change your
wallpaper, ringtones, etc. once it was clipped on. There were RGB LEDs behind
each key on the keypad so you would run "visualizers". These could act like a
three bar sound meter for your music, for example. Of course, with all of the
innovation, what we didn't anticipate was that smart phones were just around
the corner...

