

We Hold Twitter For Ransom For $100 Billion Dollars - nav
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/we-hold-twitter-ransom-for-100-billion-dollars/

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tjogin
37signals didn't make fun of Twitter. They made fun of ridiculous, unrealistic
valuations.

That Twitter was the subject of a ridiculous, unrealistic valuation is not
Twitter's fault, it is the fault of the person doing the ridiculous,
unrealistic, valuation claim.

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shabda
However they said nothing which hadn't been said previously, and they said it
in a disingenuous way.

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borism
I found it quite ingenious [sic]...

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mattyb
shabda spelled it correctly.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disingenuous>

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aston
You missed the joke.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ingenious>

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verdant
Valuations usually are calculated in a way to benefit whomever is doing the
calculating.

That said, a company is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. If
Twitter (or anyone) can create the perception that their company is worth x,
and then sell it for x, then it really was worth x.

~~~
borism
> That said, a company is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

This implies transaction takes place in an efficient market - i.e. bidders
have full information about the thing they're buying. Tech start-ups market is
quite far from being an efficient market, as we see proven time and time
again.

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anamax
Actually, it doesn't. The efficient market hypothesis gets us to some price
agreement and some notion that said price reflects "available" information.
(Insert reference to Paul Newman's phone number problem.)

Absent that, it's still true that company X is worth Y to person Z if Y is
willing to buy Z at valuation Y. The fact that someone would do the
transaction at a different valuation doesn't change that fact.

"worth" is actually complicated and it's somewhat silly to think that it can
be collapsed into a single number.

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albertsun
37signals is starting to sound bit bitter and jealous.

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tptacek
You really think 37signals couldn't decide tomorrow to play the VC valuation
game?

They've published enough hints about their customer base to make an order-of-
magnitude guess about their topline numbers. They have something like 15
people in the whole company, including support. They are absolute complete
geniuses at software marketing --- tens of thousands of people hang on their
every word, half of which consist of blog posts that do nothing but talk about
moving text boxes around in their existing products.

I don't think they're jealous.

I do think they're arrogant. I think they believe zealously that many of the
barriers to getting a software business off the ground are artificial. I get
the impression --- colored by my own biases, of course --- that they see VCs
and analysts and the trade press and the convention wisdom as gatekeepers that
add no value, distort the market, and restrain entrepreneurship.

I have never, ever gotten the sense from anything they've written that they'd
look down on me from launching a product --- any kind of product. I've never
gotten the sense that I'd have to "qualify" in their eyes to break into the
business. Despite extraordinary success and "mindshare", everything they write
seems welcoming and encouraging to me, and that's not something I think is
easy to pull off.

I'm always a bit confused by why people here are so put off by them. It's
always looked to me like these guys are in our corner. The VC startup culture,
not so much.

(ps: I can also imagine some straightforward business plans that would justify
the insane valuations that Twitter is getting. I can hold these thoughts in my
head at the same time.)

~~~
albertsun
I think they absolutely could play the VC valuation game and would be
spectacularly successful at it. I'm not trying to take away anything from
their success. I greatly respect them and have read and agreed with a lot of
what they write. Most of what they write and that I've read so far has been
welcoming and encouraging like you say, and has encouraged me even.

All that being said, these last few posts about Mint and people who cash out
and now this about Twitter have had quite a different tone.

I remember the first time I read a 37signals post, they wrote something along
the lines of, the 37signals way of doing things is not for everyone.

These last few posts make them sound bitter that people are succeeding at
doing things a different way.

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bjplink
It's a shame there aren't more threads here about 37signals that mention their
products and less threads about their snarky, linkbait blog posts.

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brown9-2
Perhaps news about their products just isn't as interesting?

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kwamenum86
I think they were making fun of sites like TC a little bit as well.

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smiler
Some Americans get sarcasm & wit... others just don't

