

I will not be acquihired - cperciva
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-07-21-I-will-not-be-acquihired.html

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quesera
Colin, I think the most likely situation is that you are offered a great job
by someone who doesn't want you to continue side work.

You'd have to make the decision between that well-paid dream job, or your
commitment to your own business. If we are lucky, you can negotiate an
exemption based on limited hours required to maintain tarsnap, and/or some
contract fulfillment period (contract to customers, which does not exist
presently).

Or you could farm the maintenance out to a trusted person, give them a cut of
the biz, and stay on as a passive shareholder.

I'm happy that tarsnap does well for you, but we know it will be quite a
stretch for it to match your potential for income and impact at a larger
company. We hope it expands to meet and exceed all of your needs, and gives
you other kinds of valuable rewards.

But we wouldn't hold it against you if you had to make personal decisions that
didn't fulfill all of our wishes. You don't owe us that. No one does.

If you were feeling generous, you could offer customers a 1-year product EOL
notice guarantee. Barring insolvency, acts of g-d, etc, that you pledge to
operate tarsnap at full service levels for at least one year after
notification of product EOL. That's more than most small companies offer, and
more than enough for us to get our stuff moved elsewhere. 1 year might be too
much.

~~~
cperciva
Tarsnap _is_ a dream job. :-)

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einhverfr
Looks like an awesome business. Glad you are successful and dedicated to your
customers. The one thing I would ask then is what happens if something happens
to _you?_ Are there other people who can take over?

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cperciva
In other words, what if I get hit by a bus? Right now that is an issue, in
that I'm the only person involved in running Tarsnap -- the only mitigating
factor is that (AWS power outages notwithstanding) the service basically runs
itself, so if I do get hit by a bus there would be plenty of time for people
to retrieve their data before Tarsnap was shut down.

~~~
einhverfr
What will it take to grow it so you can bring someone else on?

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cperciva
Time, I guess? Tarsnap is growing steadily.

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tptacek
How many months of FTE salary are you hoping to bank before you hire? What
multiple of an FTE salary are you hoping to get to in monthly rev before you
hire?

(I know it depends on the kind of FTE you're planning to hire, but I'm
deliberately not putting a stick in the sand because I'm not trying to figure
out how much you make).

~~~
cperciva
_How many months of FTE salary are you hoping to bank before you hire?_

That's not really something I'm looking at.

 _What multiple of an FTE salary are you hoping to get to in monthly rev
before you hire?_

I want to have enough revenue that I can hire someone without reducing my
"take-home profits" to an uncomfortably low level. So 2 FTE salaries, for some
definition of "FTE salary", I guess. (And yes, I do realize that the idea of
"wait until you can afford to pay someone before hiring them" is horribly out
of style.)

It's more likely that I'll follow yegg's example of expanding initially via
contract and part-time work, though.

~~~
tptacek
No, the opposite, actually: 2xFTE is aggressive; it presumes growth or steady
revenue.

But you answered my question: you seem relatively conservative about this
stuff.

What kind of stuff would you contract out if money wasn't an object?

~~~
cperciva
_2xFTE is aggressive; it presumes growth or steady revenue._

Well, a single month of 2xFTE wouldn't make me run out and hire someone... I'd
need to be confident that it would continue. But presuming growth or steady
revenue is pretty safe in the case of Tarsnap -- most of Tarsnap's revenue
comes from storage costs, and in a typical month only about 10% of data gets
deleted (and most of that is from machines which are uploading and deleting
roughly equal amounts, presumably as part of an archive rotation process).

 _you seem relatively conservative about this stuff._

Within the limits implied by the fact that I'm running a startup company: Yes,
I'm quite conservative in how I do things.

 _What kind of stuff would you contract out if money wasn't an object?_

More testing. Kivaloo development. A GUI wrapper. I might throw some money at
a web designer to see if they could make something I like more than the
current site (I know you hate Tarsnap's web design, but like the picodollars,
it does a good job of attracting the customers I want.) At some point, user
support, but probably not yet (I worry that having someone else do user
support would lead to me getting out of touch with the user community).

Probably more, but those are the bits which immediately come to mind.

~~~
tptacek
Interesting. Thanks!

I understand, disagree with, and respect the strategy you have with regards to
segmenting out desirable customers, but think "picodollars" is a tragically
bad way of doing it. :)

~~~
cperciva
I understand, disagree with, and respect your opinions about how I run my
company. :)

~~~
tptacek
Not allowed! Look at my karma number!

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PufferBuffer
It's grate to be dedicated to your business, but don't say 'never'. There may
come a day when you've exhausted all and every one option on the table, but
getting acquired for the sake of a high-bonus job would allow you to preserve
sanity and to get some $, before once again embarking on the journey that is
entrepreneurship.

~~~
cperciva
_getting acquired for the sake of a high-bonus job would allow you to preserve
sanity and to get some $_

Yes, but as I wrote, Tarsnap is profitable enough that I don't need to go
somewhere else to get money.

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GuiA
... yet

~~~
cperciva
Explain?

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PufferBuffer
GuiA means that you are currently profitable, and if things work well for you,
the company will continue to be profitable. I was only suggesting talent
acquisition as a safety net for the day when thing don't go so well. If it
never happens, we are all happy for you!

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DASD
Colin, How about putting a spin on the perspective...Would you "acquihire"
other independent developers as part of your growth strategy?

~~~
cperciva
It's possible. I don't think acquihires are _wrong_ (although I do wish that
job-hunter acquihires were more up-front about the fact that they're building
a portfolio rather than a company) -- they're just _not the direction Tarsnap
is headed_.

But I think it's far more likely that I'd hire out of the open source
community than out of the startup community.

~~~
DASD
Do you think there is a way for (potential) customers to identify any
information about the intentions of the developer or company?

The recent Internet Defense League makes me wonder if something similar
couldn't be launched for small software companies who make it CLEARLY part of
their ethos about the direction of the company. This would not necessarily be
a membership kind of animal but more of a "we agree with the ideas of Small
Software Developers' Principles."

~~~
cperciva
_Do you think there is a way for (potential) customers to identify any
information about the intentions of the developer or company?_

Well, in many cases "free" is strongly suggestive of the "not trying to build
a company, just building a portfolio in order to attract job offers" scenario.
Beyond that, it's hard to say.

 _The recent Internet Defense League makes me wonder if something similar
couldn't be launched [...]_

I'm not sure what "something similar" would be here. Your favourite website is
being shut down because its developers got acquihired by Google, so you should
write a letter to your member of congress?

~~~
DASD
I don't know if free is necessarily an indicator or not. Craigslist at one
point was a start-up and usage of the site is free with the exception of ads
for some categories(apartment listings I believe?) in dense areas such as NYC.
I would say the business supported the founder well enough and even so he was
able to create a philanthropic extension because of it.

"Something similar" being companies that subscribe to an idea of "not heading
towards acquihire." Substitute idea with ethos/loose
organization/alliance/whatever other non-hostile word might suffice here. I'm
not suggessting that by participating you elect to be lynched by a mob at the
slightest whim of misunderstanding or error. It is more of a self-certify that
a company has an intention of providing a service and not a portfolio to be
hired in 180 days.

~~~
cperciva
Cases like craigslist are why I said "in some cases". A simple website which
can handle millions of users from a single low-end server can survive being
free for a long time. An online backup service where a single user might cost
many dollars a month to serve, on the other hand, needs revenue to survive in
the long term.

Your idea of self-certification is why I wrote that blog post. It's an open
invitation to lynch me if Tarsnap gets acquired and shut down a few months
later.

