

Ask HN: How many of you have sold your startup? - xSwag

Why? What was it like afterwards?<p>I've always been interested in wanting to know what it is like selling off a company you built, what do people do after they sell a startup? Work? Retire? New startup? Share experiences of what it was like and how it changed your life (for better or worse)
======
OafTobark
The following responses are base solely on my experience so please don't take
it as the norm as I have no other comparisons to go off of...

1\. Most people in the tech/startup scene will congratulate you. Most people
outside of the above will ask why you sold your company. The reason for asking
probably varies. I didn't expect that. It was weird at first to have many of
my non-tech/non-business friends ask that question, whether it was people I
was close to or random folks I haven't talked to in awhile. I suspect many are
just genuinely curious why anyone would ever sell their company (maybe its not
considered a norm).

2\. Right after the sale, there was a transition period with the parent
company and the team would go on to work for the new owners. That didn't quite
pan out for our founding team, myself included. I left after a few months.
From there, I went traveling for 6-7 months just to travel and enjoy life a
little bit. The grind during the startup consumed a large portion (read: all
of it) my life and I wanted to just relax for a little bit.

I thought traveling was the thing I wanted to do. And then it wasn't. Like a
kid excited about a new video game, the excitement wears off and eventually
you don't care. After 6-7 months, I didn't care for traveling anymore either.
Doing the startup had changed me (for better or for worse) and I wanted to
work on something else.

3\. I didn't know if I wanted to do another startup, a project, or whatevers.
I just knew I wanted to work on something else. This proved insanely
difficult. While we were grinding on our startup, coming up with new roadmaps
and new ideas were a cinch, there was always ways to expand on things. Going
back to scratch, with a world of knowledge I didn't have prior to the first
startup made things incredibly difficult. You start to dissect everything and
half the ideas I wouldn't have thought twice about in the past, I now wouldn't
want to do simply because I know a lot more and have a strong disinterest in
certain ideas, didn't want to deal with certain aspects of an idea, or just
simply didn't see a viable growth for such an idea.

It took quite awhile to even just come up with any idea (business or not) that
I wanted to solve for myself, if nothing else. There was a moment where
everything just came to a complete halt because I was in this weird limbo
stage where I was extremely picky about ideas or just had no interest in
anything. Following up on HN or any tech news was more entertaining than
helpful if anything. Ultimately it just took a lot of time away from all this
stuff before ideas started to flow again (ideas that mattered). In time, I had
more ideas than I could keep up with, but it took awhile to get there (about a
year).

4\. How it changed my life. The learning experience from start to finish is
impossible to measure. And I don't just mean the hard knowledge you walk away
with from doing a startup. There are an incredible amount of subtle things you
learn as well, that may or may not be correlated with the startup and what the
startup does itself. The financial change also helped me realize what I really
wanted and what I didn't want. I came into the startup thinking I wanted a lot
of things. After the sale, I got an incredibly nice place, a new car, etc...
but then realized one day out of the blue, I sat there quietly on my couch and
realize I barely sat in it more than a handful of times. I had a nice TV I
never watched (ever since I got into doing my startup, TV became non-existant
and the habit stayed), etc... All these things I gotten that I thought I
wanted were things I no longer cared about.

I did a full 180 and got rid of almost everything, instead choosing to adopt a
minimalistic life. Especially after I read a blog post from a friend who did
something similar. He sold off all his possession, cars, house, etc... and
everything he owned fit into a single backpack. Nothing more. It was an
incredibly sense of freedom. He then went traveling around the world. I had no
interest in traveling anymore but the idea of an extreme minimalistic life
really appealed to me at that point. And that's what I did.

Of course other things that vastly was life changing was getting rid of all my
debt, my family's debt, giving my parents a chunk of money to enjoy their
lives, etc...

5\. For the most part though, outside of the above, things doesn't change as
much as people think they do. My day to day is a slight variation of what it
was before. I still hang out with all my friends like nothing changed. I still
work day in and day out on the computer on new projects, etc.. I still eat out
at the same places, and for the most part, even when I wasn't financial
secure, I never thought twice about my spending habits so that part didn't
change aside from not owning any debt. Overall, I would say the biggest change
is probably my perspective on life (the kind I actually wanted) and I am
fortunate enough to be picky about what I want to do with my time now.

Hope that helps.

~~~
rolandal
I think that your #2 - traveling - is something that is highly valued as an
activity that people want to do/do more of by insiders in the tech industry.
It's interesting that even though you now have infinite ability to travel, it
even wore off after only 6 months.

Was it because you visited all the places you wanted (bucket list), were you
traveling alone or with a partner/companion and it became boring, or the fact
that you don't really have a "homebase" when you're traveling.

The reason I'm curious because I see myself working as hard as I can to be
able to achieve the freedom to travel whenever/wherever I wish - and hope that
it lasts a lifetime and not just for a short 6 month period.

~~~
OafTobark
Everyone is different so I can't comment on how it'll turn out for you. I
traveled with friends and my girlfriend so company was definitely not an
issue. I didn't have a bucket list, more of just places I wanted to travel to
after it became possible that I could.

I think for me, it was one of those things that sounded great on paper but in
practice it wasn't as awesome as I thought it would be. It was definitely fun
and exciting at first but then it just got redundant. I dreaded getting on
long flights. And although there were lots of places to go and things to see,
at the end of the day, it's still relatively the same thing. You can only do
something so much before it gets boring. Sure you go site seeing and
parasailing, jet skiing, etc... Eat all the local foods... But eventually it's
the same thing masked under a different place/time. Maybe for others that is
exciting but for me the honeymoon mode wore off.

Plus half the time I couldn't stop my mind from thinking about doing stuff.
It's like a disease you acquire, being active on doing something was just
constantly a part of my mind (something as in another project, startup,
business, etc)

------
Robby2012
I don't really understand why everyone gets so excited when being acquired by
some big company, my startup is my baby, if I sold it I would felt like if I
had screwed up everything

~~~
mapster
True. Though being acquired is essentially someone investing in your company
by purchasing a majority stake. This investment could soar your company or
product to greater heights than you could ever accomplish behind the helm.

