"Hey, bank manager, I have $15B in stocks, will you loan me $150 million to buy this really, really nice home in Malibu?"
Bank manager: "Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes"
There’s a lot of hate in the comments here, but I am personally more equivocal - it is definitely true that absolutely no centimillion or billion dollar companies get founded by people that refuse to found companies. And, I think the real moral of the story - persist and get lucky with a good team and a good market angle at the right time - is a very potent moral.
But, I prefer the grittier SV myth stories a-la Ben Horowitz which mention all the times you’re vomiting in your bathroom worried about making payroll and fighting with your co-founders while your spouse is like “so, about that day job..” - I’m not sure there’s any company that gets truly valuable without some very difficult times.
Too many times I've found comfort from laying prone on a hard wood floor...
I'm not asking to remove the stress completely - it would just be nice to feel like I can afford a small nap pad underneath me.
> persist and get lucky with a good team and a good market angle at the right time - is a very potent moral.
What we should take away is that there is money to be wasted. A lot of money (which is not going into employees pockets). If someone was willing to give a billion dollars for a press of a bag of juice that could be squeezed by hand, a useless product, imagine what can be had if you have an actual product.
Instead I would suggest imagining that people are perfectly rational within the limits of their information and ability to reason, and consider what beliefs they could have had that motivated their behavior.
hectomillion, surely :) ?
https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-pref...
"There were so many depressing nights alone that often I would watch my favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption, over and over, mindlessly."
A few lines in:
> I created a horse-racing simulation game in Applesoft BASIC in Manhattan Beach Middle School’s computer classroom and ran a small gambling operation.
... Ok.
> Many of my friends who are founders of their own companies tell me how they exhibited the entrepreneurial spirit as a kid… But that wasn’t me.
Literally next sentence:
> I ran a small gambling operation
"Software" is much more than just ability to write a small BASIC program.
I have "been in software" for quarter of century and I am still constantly learning as if I was beginner.
Though having been able to write even a small BASIC program may have had an effect of you appreciating the work of a developer just a tiny little bit. And this is not given -- I have seen in the past many CEOs having no appreciation whatsoever and this leads typically to disrupting developer work and underutilizing their abilities. Then when everything starts to fall apart management blames problems on developers rather than try to understand what caused these developers to fail.
That was one of the reasons Microsoft, Google and Facebook grew so fast in the early days.
Disingenuous title? Well yeah. The author does sales.
A basic understanding of biology beyond high school level will get you further than you think. Keep in mind the medical industry has a lot of artificial barriers and gatekeeping.
Sounds like he is a solid sales person. That stuff is worth a lot ... probably more than knowing a lot about software ... even in a software business.
How I Created a $350M Software Company Knowing Nothing About Software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802194 - Dec 2015 (108 comments)
On the recent acquisition by Zoom (thanks ksaxena for pointing this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27968224)
Zoom to Acquire Five9 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27878412 - July 2021 (24 comments)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-19/zoom-to-b...
After so many rejections, I wanted to reject myself.
After what must have been more than 2,000 cold calls, I finally reached a receptive voice on the other line.
Joe owned a small but successful call center in Provo, Utah. He called my bluff and said that he knew we didn’t have anything solid yet, but he trusted we could get it built — but it had to be half the price I quoted him.
And that’s the early lesson I learned about entrepreneurship, or maybe it was a lesson in America itself. That after so many rejections, I wanted to reject myself, but then found someone who would mail me a check for $40,000, even during a recession, because they were risk-taking business owners themselves.
It made me realize that America was a magical place for entrepreneurs."
[...]
>"I’m not sure if I have any sage advice for other entrepreneurs, but out of this experience I did learn one important truth. Namely, you don’t have to be an Ivy League graduate (I’m not) or have a lot of money (we didn’t).
You just have to believe in yourself against all reasonable logic,
as trite as that sounds."
PDS: What a great piece of writing about Entrepreneurship!
Worth reading and re-reading in the future!
Most people are much better served working for a company and punching the 9-to-5 clock--especially since startups nowadays rarely give contributors sufficient stock to make the risks worthwhile.
And yet, my current total comp at Google is worth more than my final salary + (pre-tax option value at liquidity event / 8). And I reckon I was the highest paid engineer in the company.
I did forgo the options from my most recent grant when I left, but even with them, it wouldn't have exceeded Google's TC, especially considering $GOOG's recent appreciation. Since you only make money on options if the value rises, you need quite a lot late in the day for it to add up. And the 10 year expiration for the initial options was starting to come into view.
I consider myself lucky to have come out of it so well, but in retrospect, I would have been better off joining Google earlier, though it would have been at a lower level.
Instead of spending nights and weekends hacking away, spend it with your family or a hobby...become a guaranteed millionaire.
$20k invested per year, 8% average yearly return, 30 year growth = $2.5mill. YMMV based on tweaking those numbers
N.b. I do not know this from personal experience, just my observations.
All startups aren't created equal. Most startups aren't worth it. Unless the founder has a good background or showed he can raise capital, always go for consulting fees.
Abd he got the money for the permits and the bureaucracy.
And he actually motivated everyone to dig in the exact place they did.
Got 150k seed, landed a 40k contract without a product. As for team, he convinced a potential cofounder to sell his house and move across the country and hired his ex-boss, just to start
Much love to all those burning the candle at both ends with a blowtorch, may you make it out alive
I am just commenting on the greed of capitalists that manifests in throwing around millions and billions of dollars.
My point remains the same. The whole "has it in paper" as if that has no relation to cash, is not correct. Having stock is the exact same as having cash. Actually, it is way better. Because if you get cash, you have to pay taxes on it, so on $15 billion, that would be $5 billion in taxes, let's say. But if you get stock, then there's no taxes, but you get to borrow against it and get the cash anyways, as much as you need.
Sure, it might go to zero, but that's a pretty lame argument.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/nonrecourse-loan...
I also love how someone inevitably trots out the "just invest $<more spare money than most have> at <unrealistic rate>% for <very long time>". Nothing is giving you guarenteed 8% post tax returns, and you might want to, I don't know, buy a house in the next 30 years.
8%...how is that over 30 years unrealistic? That is the historical going rate for the S&P since its inception...
Also I don't know why you threw in the words "post tax" as if it means something for dollar cost averaging. If you dollar cost average the S&P...even in a taxable brokerage account...the only thing you're taxed on is dividends. Your gains compound tax free....If you throw it in a 401k, where the max individual contribution is $19500 then nothing is taxed till you withdraw.
My example of $20k is drawn from a max of $19500 contribution (and hopefully you get employer matching) because ideally you are maxing out a 401k to get the tax benefits.