

The Difference between $1 Billion-Plus in Exits and “Success” - cwan
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/the-difference-between-1-billion-plus-in-exits-and-“success”/

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spitfire
"He compares those assembly-line-esque entrepreneurs who say they are just
“the startup guy” to a 40-year-old man who still hangs out at a disco trying
to pick up young girls."

The money quote. Really. I really have no respect for the 20-something
"entrepreneur" flipping companies left and right (most of which don't have
long term value). Replace "startup" with "business" and "founder" with "owner"
and a lot of these companies look quite shaky.

Nice to see there are some people who still but weight in real, long term
value.

~~~
tolmasky
I think this is an incredibly unfair assessment, to the point of being
downright silly.

Taking $20 million for a company that's been around for a few years or in this
man's case $750 million (!) is not immature or unwise by any stretch of the
imagination. Saying no to $750 million, in many instances, leaves the realm of
"risky entrepreneur" and enters that of compulsive gambler. He made $750
million before the crash: genius, not stupid.

Perhaps the reason Bezos and Jobs, etc. stuck around to make their companies
successful is because there wasn't a Google around back then with infinite
amounts of money ready to throw at them. In fact, the story of many of these
"early" Silicon Valley companies is about big companies _missing_ the
opportunity to buy them or crush them (IBM with Microsoft, Yahoo almost owning
a stake in Google, etc). Let's also not forget that in the first bubble the
path to riches was IPO, _not_ sellout, thus it makes sense that people would
stick with their companies longer, because _that_ was the way to get rich.

To me this is all just a function of the market. Today IPO's are much more
rare, and the market pushes towards buyouts.

~~~
Retric
I don't think his issue is with the amount of money these founders make, but
the pyramid scheme nature of many startups. For a company to be actually worth
750 million it's got to be producing ~75 million or more each year in profit
at some time in the near future, or have a lot of assets.

Facebook may be slightly profitable, but if they are not pulling in around 100
million in profit each year within ten years they are worth less than one
billion today.

