9 ms·

I remember being shocked when Yahoo spurned MSFT's $44+ billion offer in 2008. Goes to show, when someone offers you 11 figures for a failing company, sell beca

I remember being shocked when Yahoo spurned MSFT's $44+ billion offer in 2008. Goes to show, when someone offers you 11 figures for a failing company, sell because the offers aren't going to get better.

randywaterhouse 10y ago
Interesting to consider the reasons for the past valuation -- before everyone realized Alibaba was blowing up (I believe it was < $1bn of that $44bn deal). So, in 2016 dollars we're talking $5bn for their core web business vs. 50bn+ (2016 dollars) for the 2008 MSFT offer.
- vram22 10y ago
  Why the heck do people use 'bn' for billion and 'mm' for million? I've seen VC @fredwilson use 'mm' many times on his blog (avc.com), and IIRC I read some reasoning for it, either there or elsewhere, which made some kind of sense (they said Roman numeral for 1000 is M, so for million we use MM, though not sure if that is quite right logic), but why then the inconsistency between 'mm' and 'bn'?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Because language and notation doesn't necessarily have to be logically consistent, just consistent in use.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    http://abstrusegoose.com/389 http://abstrusegoose.com/389
  - dgacmu 10y ago
    The way to consistently use 'm' as thousand and 'mm' as million is if you assume a Latin derivation, with 'm' short for mille. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mille#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mille#Latin ('mm' thus being 'thousand thousand', since roman numerals don't compose that way -- MM would be two thousand). That doesn't mean that that's the way it evolved, but it's a way to categorize it mentally so it makes sense. While there's no logic for it conflating with 'million' and 'mega', at least 'mm' is fairly unique, unless you measure your money by its length.
    - jegoodwin3 10y ago
      That's true now but not in all historical periods. In the original system, m. was an abbreviation for mille, and not a composable component of the numeral at all. In effect, it served as a comma does in English text today, to separate the thousands from the units -- both of which were encoded using the composable letter system we are now familiar with. Later, of course, people assimilated the operation of the M to the other letters, esp. on the dates of printed books. However, if we are discussing manuscript practice in the 15th century, the medieval approach and not the modern approach to Roman numerals would likely be in play... In any event, using mm. to represent mille mille (a thousand thousand, a million in modern parlance) would create no cognitive dissonance as it does today.
  - seanhunter 10y ago
    I used to work in finance, and there is a bunch of obscure terminology and conventions, adopted from different cultures (eg you can trade a "Lakh" of silver). See how the currency sign for GBP looks like a capital L? and the currency sign for shillings and pence was "s" and "d"? (now the uk use "p" for pence since decimalisation). So "Lire", "Soldi" and "Denarii" were the denominations of Italian currency in the the late Renaissance, and this obscure terminology was because originally the bankers in London were from Lombardy. So I always thought MM was the same. For something like "Mille Mille" (ie one thousand thousands). I don't have any reference for this, that was just my own theory, and it's slightly undermined by the fact that the Italians have a word for "Million" ("Milione").
    - toyg 10y ago
      Loads of Latin and Italian words were modified across the world, not unlike what happens today with English; it's perfectly possible that accountants trading predominantly in the New World or some other remote area could have come up with their own approximation for a word (milione) that is not from Classic Latin and is actually pretty recent (wikipedia says XIII to XIV century, whereas lira and soldo are much older and denario goes all the way back to Rome fighting Carthage).
    - vram22 10y ago
      Good point. Yes, lakh (sometimes spelled lac) in English is from the Hindi word laakh, which I think is from Sanskrit laksha. (Many Indian languages are descended from or influenced by Sanskrit.)
    - AjithAntony 10y ago
      For anyone who is about to google this, a lakh is 100,000
    - vram22 10y ago
      Ha, interesting. Didn't know about soldi. Coincidentally, had blogged (as an aside to my main post topic) about denarii recently. Here's what one looked like: http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-many-uses-of-randomness-part-2.html?m=0 http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-many-uses-of-randomnes...
harryh 10y ago
It's important to realize that the 5B verizon is paying isn't for all of Yahoo. It doesn't include Yahoo's holdings in Alibaba or Yahoo Japan or Yahoo's patent portfolio. So while Yahoo might be worth a bit less now than the 44B MSFT offer the drop isn't all that big. The risk was probably worth it.
asdfologist 10y ago
People were also shocked when Zuckerberg turned down $1+ billion offers. Hindsight is 20/20.
- jaggederest 10y ago
  I don't know about other people, but there's a number past which I do not care. N > 10^7 in my pocket after tax, I'm out, regardless of circumstances, regardless of ability to earn more. No ragrets.
  - orthoganol 10y ago
    With the caveat that maybe you derive deep satisfaction from growing your business and by it impacting the world. I always think, if I had "FU money" and didn't have to work, what would I do? I would probably start working on the greatest possible venture I could image myself doing. If that venture (maybe akin to a Tesla or a SpaceX) becomes a billion+ dollar company, still doesn't matter to me as a founder, there's no point for me to sell it. That said, a social network centered on photo sharing and a slightly more handy version of email or event sharing is definitely not one of these high impact ventures in my opinion, so yes, I would have sold that long ago and went to work on something more meaningful.
  - harmegido 10y ago
    I suspect it's not about money at a certain point.
    - spriggan3 10y ago
      It is always about the money. The more money you have the more money you need to manage the money you already have. So it is always about the money. The Zuck was confident his website was worth way more than a billion. that's why he didn't sell.
      - mywittyname 10y ago
        If it was about money, he wouldn't be giving away most of his company while trying to retain a controlling stake. The fact that he is giving away his money suggests that he's more interested in being a successful business mogul than he is about being "FU rich."

randywaterhouse 10y ago

Interesting to consider the reasons for the past valuation -- before everyone realized Alibaba was blowing up (I believe it was < $1bn of that $44bn deal). So, in 2016 dollars we're talking $5bn for their core web business vs. 50bn+ (2016 dollars) for the 2008 MSFT offer.

vram22 10y ago
Why the heck do people use 'bn' for billion and 'mm' for million? I've seen VC @fredwilson use 'mm' many times on his blog (avc.com), and IIRC I read some reasoning for it, either there or elsewhere, which made some kind of sense (they said Roman numeral for 1000 is M, so for million we use MM, though not sure if that is quite right logic), but why then the inconsistency between 'mm' and 'bn'?
- coldtea 10y ago
  Because language and notation doesn't necessarily have to be logically consistent, just consistent in use.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  http://abstrusegoose.com/389 http://abstrusegoose.com/389
- dgacmu 10y ago
  The way to consistently use 'm' as thousand and 'mm' as million is if you assume a Latin derivation, with 'm' short for mille. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mille#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mille#Latin ('mm' thus being 'thousand thousand', since roman numerals don't compose that way -- MM would be two thousand). That doesn't mean that that's the way it evolved, but it's a way to categorize it mentally so it makes sense. While there's no logic for it conflating with 'million' and 'mega', at least 'mm' is fairly unique, unless you measure your money by its length.
  - jegoodwin3 10y ago
    That's true now but not in all historical periods. In the original system, m. was an abbreviation for mille, and not a composable component of the numeral at all. In effect, it served as a comma does in English text today, to separate the thousands from the units -- both of which were encoded using the composable letter system we are now familiar with. Later, of course, people assimilated the operation of the M to the other letters, esp. on the dates of printed books. However, if we are discussing manuscript practice in the 15th century, the medieval approach and not the modern approach to Roman numerals would likely be in play... In any event, using mm. to represent mille mille (a thousand thousand, a million in modern parlance) would create no cognitive dissonance as it does today.
- seanhunter 10y ago
  I used to work in finance, and there is a bunch of obscure terminology and conventions, adopted from different cultures (eg you can trade a "Lakh" of silver). See how the currency sign for GBP looks like a capital L? and the currency sign for shillings and pence was "s" and "d"? (now the uk use "p" for pence since decimalisation). So "Lire", "Soldi" and "Denarii" were the denominations of Italian currency in the the late Renaissance, and this obscure terminology was because originally the bankers in London were from Lombardy. So I always thought MM was the same. For something like "Mille Mille" (ie one thousand thousands). I don't have any reference for this, that was just my own theory, and it's slightly undermined by the fact that the Italians have a word for "Million" ("Milione").
  - toyg 10y ago
    Loads of Latin and Italian words were modified across the world, not unlike what happens today with English; it's perfectly possible that accountants trading predominantly in the New World or some other remote area could have come up with their own approximation for a word (milione) that is not from Classic Latin and is actually pretty recent (wikipedia says XIII to XIV century, whereas lira and soldo are much older and denario goes all the way back to Rome fighting Carthage).
  - vram22 10y ago
    Good point. Yes, lakh (sometimes spelled lac) in English is from the Hindi word laakh, which I think is from Sanskrit laksha. (Many Indian languages are descended from or influenced by Sanskrit.)
  - AjithAntony 10y ago
    For anyone who is about to google this, a lakh is 100,000
  - vram22 10y ago
    Ha, interesting. Didn't know about soldi. Coincidentally, had blogged (as an aside to my main post topic) about denarii recently. Here's what one looked like: http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-many-uses-of-randomness-part-2.html?m=0 http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-many-uses-of-randomnes...

harryh 10y ago

It's important to realize that the 5B verizon is paying isn't for all of Yahoo. It doesn't include Yahoo's holdings in Alibaba or Yahoo Japan or Yahoo's patent portfolio. So while Yahoo might be worth a bit less now than the 44B MSFT offer the drop isn't all that big. The risk was probably worth it.

asdfologist 10y ago

People were also shocked when Zuckerberg turned down $1+ billion offers. Hindsight is 20/20.

jaggederest 10y ago
I don't know about other people, but there's a number past which I do not care. N > 10^7 in my pocket after tax, I'm out, regardless of circumstances, regardless of ability to earn more. No ragrets.
- orthoganol 10y ago
  With the caveat that maybe you derive deep satisfaction from growing your business and by it impacting the world. I always think, if I had "FU money" and didn't have to work, what would I do? I would probably start working on the greatest possible venture I could image myself doing. If that venture (maybe akin to a Tesla or a SpaceX) becomes a billion+ dollar company, still doesn't matter to me as a founder, there's no point for me to sell it. That said, a social network centered on photo sharing and a slightly more handy version of email or event sharing is definitely not one of these high impact ventures in my opinion, so yes, I would have sold that long ago and went to work on something more meaningful.
- harmegido 10y ago
  I suspect it's not about money at a certain point.
  - spriggan3 10y ago
    It is always about the money. The more money you have the more money you need to manage the money you already have. So it is always about the money. The Zuck was confident his website was worth way more than a billion. that's why he didn't sell.
    - mywittyname 10y ago
      If it was about money, he wouldn't be giving away most of his company while trying to retain a controlling stake. The fact that he is giving away his money suggests that he's more interested in being a successful business mogul than he is about being "FU rich."