3 ms·

not wanting to sell your business for any price does seem stupid and insane. If someone offered $2bn, there's probably a lot of good you could do with that cas

by axod 17y ago

not wanting to sell your business for any price does seem stupid and insane. If someone offered $2bn, there's probably a lot of good you could do with that cash to make the world a better place. But saying they'd never sell obviously fits with their PR of having contrarian viewpoints.

generalk 17y ago
So on the one hand, I (hypothetically) have a business that I run every day. This makes me immeasurably happy. On the other hand, I have two billion USD, which may make me happy but I'll lose my business, which does make me happy. It's not stupid or insane to keep something that makes you happy.
- axod 17y ago
  You don't think you'd be able to create the circumstances to be happy again with $2bn? I'm also extremely happy working on what I work on day to day, but I'm also extremely confident that I'd be able to come up with other stuff that'd make me just as happy if not happier in the future :/
probablycorey 17y ago
There are lots of things people won't do for any price. That doesn't make them stupid or insane. I wouldn't separate from my wife for $2bn. I wouldn't cut off my fingers for $2bn. I wouldn't murder someone for $2bn. A religious person may not denounce God for $2bn. Certain things are more valuable than money; but what those are differ from person to person. DHH seems to value his work at 37signals more than money, which seems to be working out great for him.
- axod 17y ago
  I think it's easier to build 'another company you love working at', than replacing a wife or your fingers. If creating a company is so easy if you follow the rules in their book ;) why don't they rise to the challenge, and create a new one from scratch? (For extra points they'd do it stealthy so no one knew it was them).
  - btilly 17y ago
    I think it's easier to build 'another company you love working at', than replacing a wife or your fingers. Surgery can reattach fingers. With $1b in your pocket (assuming your ex-wife gets the rest in the divorce settlement), lots of women will volunteer to be your next wife. (Of course constructing a successful marriage takes more work.) Creating a new company takes a lot of work. No shortcuts available.
- cookiecaper 17y ago
  But the thing is that there'd be no material detriment in taking the deal. DHH would just have a ton of money, and he could keep working on Rails apps and whatever else to his heart's content. The kind of emotional connection to what is ultimately a meaningless, lifeless brand where you refuse to sell for any amount of money is surely foolish.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - dhh 17y ago
    Of course there's a detrimental effect of selling the company that I've invested the last decade into. The investment is much deeper than purely financial. It's the pride of getting there, the satisfaction of staying there, and the joy of coming to work with the best people I've ever worked with. What a shallow perspective to think all this meaningless just for another zero or two on the bank account.
    - cookiecaper 17y ago
      I guess I don't understand what you mean by "there". Selling the company would only cause further progress. Your employees don't have to stay there, and you don't have to quit. You can sell the company, keep doing the same things, either at 37Signals or some other place, and just be a lot richer at the same time. I really am not seeing a detriment still. You just seem to value the brand 37Signals so much that you're not willing to let another control it. This is silly in my mind, because it's just a brand, and there's no reason to believe you'd lose a lot of control in a potential acquisition anyway, or that even if you did, you couldn't go and start something else and keeping develop Rails apps. This all presumes a good deal. I'm not saying you should just sell to anybody, because you shouldn't, and I wouldn't. But it is a little overboard to claim that you'll never sell, not even for 10 or 20 times your annual revenue even if everything else about the deal was good. I understand not wanting to let someone else run your product into the ground. I know how painful that is, because it's happened to me before. But not every potential buyer is like that.
ewjordan 17y ago
I realize this is OT, and I apologize, but I have to ask: is anyone else having a problem where HN has recently begun swallowing all italicized words, making them invisible? The first part of the above comment reads, to me, "not wanting to sell your business for price seem stupid and insane". I can still highlight and copy/paste "ask" and "does", but they're getting hidden in the actual page display. That's Firefox 3.6 on OS X. Worse, any page with italics does not show up at all in Safari or Chrome (again, on OS X) - in Safari, it starts to load and render, but the moment one of the <i> tags gets hit, boom!, the whole page disappears. ...or is there just something majorly borked with my system? I'm not having trouble on any other sites...
rythie 17y ago
So by that logic, Would you have sold Google, Microsoft or Apple in the early days for $2bn even though they were profitable and growing fast?

by axod 17y ago

generalk 17y ago

So on the one hand, I (hypothetically) have a business that I run every day. This makes me immeasurably happy. On the other hand, I have two billion USD, which may make me happy but I'll lose my business, which does make me happy. It's not stupid or insane to keep something that makes you happy.

axod 17y ago
You don't think you'd be able to create the circumstances to be happy again with $2bn? I'm also extremely happy working on what I work on day to day, but I'm also extremely confident that I'd be able to come up with other stuff that'd make me just as happy if not happier in the future :/

probablycorey 17y ago

There are lots of things people won't do for any price. That doesn't make them stupid or insane. I wouldn't separate from my wife for $2bn. I wouldn't cut off my fingers for $2bn. I wouldn't murder someone for $2bn. A religious person may not denounce God for $2bn. Certain things are more valuable than money; but what those are differ from person to person. DHH seems to value his work at 37signals more than money, which seems to be working out great for him.

axod 17y ago
I think it's easier to build 'another company you love working at', than replacing a wife or your fingers. If creating a company is so easy if you follow the rules in their book ;) why don't they rise to the challenge, and create a new one from scratch? (For extra points they'd do it stealthy so no one knew it was them).
- btilly 17y ago
  I think it's easier to build 'another company you love working at', than replacing a wife or your fingers. Surgery can reattach fingers. With $1b in your pocket (assuming your ex-wife gets the rest in the divorce settlement), lots of women will volunteer to be your next wife. (Of course constructing a successful marriage takes more work.) Creating a new company takes a lot of work. No shortcuts available.
cookiecaper 17y ago
But the thing is that there'd be no material detriment in taking the deal. DHH would just have a ton of money, and he could keep working on Rails apps and whatever else to his heart's content. The kind of emotional connection to what is ultimately a meaningless, lifeless brand where you refuse to sell for any amount of money is surely foolish.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- dhh 17y ago
  Of course there's a detrimental effect of selling the company that I've invested the last decade into. The investment is much deeper than purely financial. It's the pride of getting there, the satisfaction of staying there, and the joy of coming to work with the best people I've ever worked with. What a shallow perspective to think all this meaningless just for another zero or two on the bank account.
  - cookiecaper 17y ago
    I guess I don't understand what you mean by "there". Selling the company would only cause further progress. Your employees don't have to stay there, and you don't have to quit. You can sell the company, keep doing the same things, either at 37Signals or some other place, and just be a lot richer at the same time. I really am not seeing a detriment still. You just seem to value the brand 37Signals so much that you're not willing to let another control it. This is silly in my mind, because it's just a brand, and there's no reason to believe you'd lose a lot of control in a potential acquisition anyway, or that even if you did, you couldn't go and start something else and keeping develop Rails apps. This all presumes a good deal. I'm not saying you should just sell to anybody, because you shouldn't, and I wouldn't. But it is a little overboard to claim that you'll never sell, not even for 10 or 20 times your annual revenue even if everything else about the deal was good. I understand not wanting to let someone else run your product into the ground. I know how painful that is, because it's happened to me before. But not every potential buyer is like that.

ewjordan 17y ago

I realize this is OT, and I apologize, but I have to ask: is anyone else having a problem where HN has recently begun swallowing all italicized words, making them invisible? The first part of the above comment reads, to me, "not wanting to sell your business for price seem stupid and insane". I can still highlight and copy/paste "ask" and "does", but they're getting hidden in the actual page display. That's Firefox 3.6 on OS X. Worse, any page with italics does not show up at all in Safari or Chrome (again, on OS X) - in Safari, it starts to load and render, but the moment one of the <i> tags gets hit, boom!, the whole page disappears. ...or is there just something majorly borked with my system? I'm not having trouble on any other sites...

rythie 17y ago

So by that logic, Would you have sold Google, Microsoft or Apple in the early days for $2bn even though they were profitable and growing fast?