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The only reason Whatsapp was bidded up to an insane 19 Billion sale value was because Acton did not want to sell. Note that it's not insane in terms of value (in hindsight this was clearly a good buy for FB), but insane when considering that value for your small 30 person company.

That's a crazy sale price, I'd like to see you turn it down.

It can be true that he didn't want to sell and regrets it and just couldn't reject that offer, the opportunity costs available to you at the level are nuts. This is a risk with centralized services, it's why we need systems that don't require benevolence: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...

Most people don't have principles valued at 19B.

I think Urbit is a potential way to get there, but a lot of the web3 ownership model points in this direction.




Also turning down money for yourself is one thing, but turning it down for your employees and everyone else involved is different.


Agreed - at that level you're talking nearly 100M for each employee? Maybe more?

Even if I'm off by a magnitude (and I think I'm not) - that's life changing money for everyone that helped him build Whatsapp.


Even on a purely ethical level, selling the company has to pretty bad to offset the amount of good you can do with that amount of wealth.



Matrix doesn't solve these issues, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882848

That said, I think Matrix is cool and appreciate what they're trying to do. I just think without solving the upstream problems you won't be able to succeed beyond a niche audience.




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