13 ms·

Fuck you, Money

186 points by antongm 16y ago

swombat 16y ago
Very good, well written article. Can someone with a wide breadth of experience like pg comment on whether the equation of rapacious greed with likelihood of getting fuck-you money out of the startup game is actually correct empirically?
- deleted 16y ago
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jacquesm 16y ago
I'm not sure how typical the angel quote is, most angels would be happy as long as the founders were happy with a buy-out. An exit of 15 million which yields $500K to the investor after putting up $100K means that the angel only holds about 3% of the company anyway. Also, as a rule you don't blog or write about your verbal agreement, you wait until the agreement is in writing and the money is in the bank and you've agreed with your investors that you can go public with the news. Some people will back out of a deal if you go public like this, even if they're not mentioned by name. A deal isn't done until the money is in the bank. And essentially he write that he told the guy just what he thought he wanted to hear, and now blogs that he is baffled by this and and that he didn't tell him the truth. Let's hope that said 'angel' doesn't read that blog.
TotlolRon 16y ago
The phrase is a disgrace to the idea it conveys.
- scott_s 16y ago
  I disagree. The phrase nakedly demonstrates it's about financial freedom - the freedom from ever having to worry about money every again. It's when you don't need your paycheck that you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. People who depend on their paycheck can't do that.
  - TotlolRon 16y ago
    > you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. As said. A disgrace.
    - boucher 16y ago
      I think you're confusing having the power to say something with having the obligation to say it.
      - TGJ 16y ago
        If I had the power/money to tell someone anything I wanted, I think that I could muster a few brain cells to come up with something more meaningful or creative.
    - scott_s 16y ago
      In some circumstances - if you're being exploited - it's the appropriate response.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        Yes, but how many people reading HN are truly exploited. Only if you let them... Exploited to me smacks of child labor and indentured servitude. I highly doubt there are child laborers and true slaves reading HN. But they do exist, and in larger numbers than you probably thought possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Current_situation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Current_situation That's more than the population of many countries.
        scott_s 16y ago
        exploited to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploited http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploited Some people are exploited in ways that are horrific compared to how other people are exploited. But until we have words specifically to describe white-collar workers, I'm going to use the available words that I think are most apt.
zaidf 16y ago
The company valuation he’d get in on would mean that such an acquisition would represent a 5x return, over something like three months. That’s a gargantuan return on an annualized basis. You're totally missing the part where angels invest in companies that give them zero return. Even the worst stocks give you some money back. Unfair comparison.
frossie 16y ago
the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. I'm not sure the OP has grasped the complete psychology of FU money. Surely the value of FU money is not to allow one to stop working, it is in the emotional pay-off for the security it represents. This is a big deal, especially for people who, for example, experienced financial insecurity as children. I am guessing there are also tangible social benefits to reaching that stage, even if you changed nothing in your life upon achieving it.
- sosuke 16y ago
  FU money also empowers you to work on riskier and riskier ventures without as much pressure to succeed as the first success presented. Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together. Actually I think there are plenty of such people out there. But you rarely hear about them, because they have no reason to publicise themselves. Surely someone must be out there, appreciating expensive luxury goods all day long?
    - andreyf 16y ago
      There's Felix Dennis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyefDseVCZk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyefDseVCZk I'm not sure how many luxury goods he consumes, but he does write good startup poetry: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/404957/money.txt http://dl.dropbox.com/u/404957/money.txt
- jdietrich 16y ago
  In the world of high-stakes poker, it is commonly understood that the only way to make a million dollars playing poker is not to want to make a million dollars. If you care about the money, your lizard brain takes over and stops you from taking the risks you need to take. As soon as you see the chips on the table as dollar bills, you're finished. Practically the definition of greatness in poker is the ability to play the same for pennies as you would for millions - as far as the great players are concerned, it's not really money, it's just how you keep score. I think the OP is making a similar argument about startup founders - if you're emotionally invested in the payoff, your ability to make the right decisions will be impaired. You'll choose smaller markets, less ambitious products, make safer design decisions. You think too much about making money and not enough about growing a business. I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page and Brin and Zuckerberg never really intended to start businesses. I think it's no accident that Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in his old suburban house.
GavinB 16y ago
I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. If that's the case, then why do so many start-ups sell to bigger companies? Every month we hear about another one. The "swing for the fences" companies that go through to IPO (Facebook, Google) or massive acquisition (Youtube) are more and more rare. The Angel's question is meaningless unless you also know how optimistic you are about the company's chances of growing enough to deserve a much better deal.
- dasil003 16y ago
  Yeah, this guy worked at Goldman and believes that "rapacious greed" is necessary for success. Well, I don't doubt that's true in the financial world. But in the wider world there are more types of motivations. As an investor, it's reasonable to favor greed, but it's silly to think that money is the only thing that puts fire in a person's belly. Consider Stallman and Torvalds for instance... I'd argue they've added more value to the world than any partner at Goldman ever has.
sosuke 16y ago
To answer the authors question. Absolutely sell out, if your first success buys you the freedom to fail a thousand more times it is worth selling. He said those that would sell out are those that don't already have FU money, that they aren't in the club. Those founders that hold out might already have that FU money and are free to risk holding out. Each founder in those cases can't be compared. A man asked me to follow him into a startup I didn't believe in, he could go in and fail completely and come out the other side without a scratch because of his previous success. The risk was too high for me because I didn't already have FU money to cushion a complete failure.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Going in to a start-up with founders that have different risk profiles is a great way to get in to very bad situations.
  - c1sc0 16y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Sure. Let's say that your partner has a ton of money in the bank and you are dirt poor. (Exaggerated, but that makes it easier to see where the problems can come from). After a year or two the business makes some money and you now have a steady living. Your majority partner decides to make an all-or-nothing ploy, it fails and you lose your living. He doesn't care because he already had his steady life. Of course, it could have gone the other way but the more risky a move the bigger the chance that it will fail so that's not a 50/50 thing. It's just one of hundreds of variations to the theme but I think it clarifies the point sufficiently. If all the partners in a business have a similar risk profiles then they are all going to be behind most of the strategic decisions, which in turn will help with both morale and explaining things to the home front (if you have one).
nostromo 16y ago
Interestingly I find a similar drive within myself. Many years ago I told myself I'd start a business when I had $10k in hand. Then it became $20k, then $50k, then $100k, now it's more... Of course I realize that there's no good time to leave a good job -- just like there's no good time to have a baby. It's a moving target -- and if you want to do something, you just have to jump the nest and do it. Because our minds work on a relative basis ("I make good money but he makes more") and because our dopamine payoff from money is never as good as we anticipate it to be ("no, winning the lottery will not make you happier"), it makes sense that more is never enough.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I try to frame it in terms of skills learned: "I'll start my next company when I've learned X and Y and tangibly accomplished Z." This is also a moving target, but at least it takes effort to move the goalposts, in the form of figuring out what your next goal is. At that point, you have to think about it anyway, so if the rational choice is "It's time to leave and start my company now," that should at least enter into your mind.
dirtae 16y ago
"Before anything else, let’s do the numbers: money market funds yield around 4%." What? The Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund (VMMXX) is yielding about 0.13% right now, and I think that's fairly typical.
- hugh3 16y ago
  "Right now" is a weird time for US dollar assets. Take a longer-term view and 4% is reasonable. Incidentally, my savings account in Australia is still paying 4.6%.
- alex1 16y ago
  The best money market account rates in the US are actually around 1-1.3% now (Ally, Capital One, Discover, ING, AIG). Definitely not 4%. That was in 2005.
steveklabnik 16y ago
This is an interesting contrast to the article by A Smart Bear about why he 'sold out': http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html
nandemo 16y ago
> So, will you sell out for fuck-you money? I'm not sure if the writer is serious in his use of "sell out". I think it very funny. If you sell your company for a mere $10M you're a "sell out" but if you want more and more then you're the real thing.
kscaldef 16y ago
I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph: > Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now? I'm sorry, but that's just offensive. The fact that you can't imagine a "wage-slave" contemplating these questions is probably closely linked to why you can't imagine a successful startup founder getting off the treadmill either. If you were willing to take your $4.2M or whatever and be happy, you'd also be able to understand that you can live a good life without that kind of money too. (Free hint: it's not the 48-inch TV that makes your life fulfilling.)
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- scott_s 16y ago
  I think perhaps you're interpreting what he wrote too harshly. I took it to mean that once you have FU money, you have to confront these questions because there's nothing left for you to worry about. Much of our time and mental effort is spent dealing with and worrying about survival. (Not survival in the hunter-gatherer sense, but making sure you have enough money in the next few days/weeks/months/years to live on.) When you worry about that every day, it's easier to not think about the big stuff. When only the big stuff is left, it's hard not to think about it.
  - antongm 16y ago
    Scott, that's exactly what I was getting at. My only fear about making it as a startup is having to one day answer that existential question myself. I frankly don't know what I'd decide to do.
    - kscaldef 16y ago
      Fair enough, I respect that you're willing to admit that. But please don't call me a "wage slave" because of your fears and uncertainties.
dooshydoo 16y ago
A somewhat irresponsible and hypothetical goad. A truly bankrupt sense of self-worth would be refusing 15MM for a germ of a business. It’s one thing to entertain delusions of grandeur, but to rationalize it by concluding you’re an interchangeable cog who fell backward into a successful startup is disheartening. The rapacious quality you speak of would not preclude the acceptance of an exit; rather, it would fuel it.
arvinjoar 16y ago
I stopped reading at "wage-slave". Let's not use language that implies that working for a wage is slavery. Slavery is always forced on you, you have no choice but to work, not because you need to eat, but because the man with the whip says so. It's offensive to compare the situation of a slave and someone who earns a salary. Slavery is force, not from nature, but from another human being, if you can't see the the distinction between adapting to our environment (sure, we have to eat) and being forced by another human being to work, or die, then sorry, I won't bother reading whatever it is you want me to read.
- binaryfinery 16y ago
  Hierarchy of needs: air, food, shelter. If you live in the USA and want food and shelter, you cannot get it without paying the man taxes. Even if you own your own land, you must pay taxes on it. The counter argument (that one could be a homeless person), is no more useful than pointing out that a slave could choose to die: yes a hard choice, but a choice non the less. So the creation of a tax system, whereby a person is forced to pay taxes, a percentage of which goes to the rich that hold government debt, is a system where everyone is forced to work by men with guns. That's slavery. But you can believe that you're not a slave just because there are slaves, or have been slaves, who have even less choices than you do.
  - arvinjoar 16y ago
    I was attacking the term "wage-slave" I have no problem with identifying taxes as forced on you. I even mentioned that force from another human being is what constitutes slavery, not from nature. Government is not nature, it's human beings, they use force on you, thereby enslaving you.
  - afterburner 16y ago
    You can leave anytime though. Slaves can't.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      You can leave your job, sure. And then default on your mortgage. Or be unable to pay your rent. And not be able to buy food. (or, if you mean "leave America," then you can move somewhere else... and you _still_ have to either work for yourself, or for someone else.) There's an illusion of choice, but choosing to work between McDonalds and Burger King isn't really a choice.
samratjp 16y ago
But Scott Fitzgerald called this out in Gatsby eons ago: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
joey_bananas 16y ago
Wow, this sounds like the screed of a collage freshman who just discovered that the adult world is like, totally fake and shallow, man.
- dreaming 16y ago
  Tell me more about this collage freshman. Or is this a subtle suggestion hinting at a broad but nonspecific makeup of his persona...
Hubbert 16y ago
Paul Graham is a counter-example: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. ... The all-or-nothing aspect of startups was not something we wanted. Viaweb's hackers were all extremely risk-averse. If there had been some way just to work super hard and get paid for it, without having a lottery mixed in, we would have been delighted. We would have much preferred a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, even though theoretically the second is worth twice as much. Unfortunately, there is not currently any space in the business world where you can get the first deal. http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
thibaut_barrere 16y ago
Startup founders are in the unique position of having to seriously ask themselves the following cocktail party question No, really, absolutely not. There are a lot more people able to retire and live comfortably than you think (people running simple brick and mortar businesses I know of, for instance). And one point: FU money is not the same amount for everyone. For me, FU money (if I had to live until 100 with my wife and son) is around 1.000.000 €, based on our standard of living.
apu 16y ago
I think these guys might be the best trolls I've ever seen on the web. First the NY Sucks article, and now this. Everything from the title, to the giant fuck you to "wage slaves" in the 2nd paragraph, to the fuck you to investors in the 4th paragraph to the fuck you to the Goldman folks later on, screams, "I'M GOING TO PISS YOU OFF SO YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ME." Bravo! Might I suggest a topic for your next essay? "Are you a creative type? FUCK YOU! Non-creative type? FUCK YOU, TOO!"
- quickpost 16y ago
  Agreed. He even admits as much in one of the essays he linked to: "What’s work like now? Writing code. Worrying about everything from our credit card billing to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink that will give us all diptheria some day. Writing linkbait blog posts to get us free PR (like the one you’re reading now)." http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-zero-revenue-is-better-than-working-for-goldman-sachs http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-z...
- Groxx 16y ago
  Followed closely by " 'Fuck you?' FUCK YOU TOO"
WingForward 16y ago
From the comma in the title, I thought the article was about recognizing money isn't a guarantee of happiness. As in, "Say, "Fuck you" to money itself. And instead focus on living life (and running a company) that doesn't rely on a purely materialistic metric of success." Sadly, that's not what the article was about.
msort 16y ago
I know several people who have made FU money (several millions). From my observations, their lives are not much different from the rest of us. Who a person marries, how fulfilling the days (work or non-work) are seems to matter more than pure amount of money. Time is limited and never enough. Money is not.
gaius 16y ago
If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d hanker for $50MM. That's a spurious comparison, because these guys aren't motivated by "buying stuff". Sure they do buy stuff, but for them, money is about keeping score, like who's scored the most goals in a football team.
yason 16y ago
Money is a funny thing. First you want it so that you could do whatever it is that you really want to do. Then when you have eventually got the money, you're likely to be in a position where money is no longer the priority—but rather the priority is what you really want to do. Sure, you take the money, you have the money, and you value the money's worth but it's not the thing that's driving you.
bhellman1 16y ago
"just a little more..."
deleted 16y ago
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damoncali 16y ago
Well written, thought provoking, but nonethless nonsense.
korch 16y ago
As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in? —Alexis de Tocqueville I agree with everything in this post 100%—it's spot on and well worth meditating on over the course of several years, combined with some serious reading in the ancient philosophers. Ultimately, ain't it a bitch that the law of diminishing marginal utility causes the demand curve to have a negative slope!? IMHO, that happens to be the best proof that a gift culture is a higher ideal to aim for than an efficiently allocated capitalist society premised on the FUD illusion of artifical scarcity. It is better to give than to receive(or accumulate) after all. (I recommend the writings of Buckminster Fuller more than nearly anything). Everything that everyone thinks matters, doesn't. I can't wait for the day when American "culture" gains the escape velocity to free itself from its own materialism. On the bright side, the American Empire is well on the way to smashing into the rocks, and shattering into an impoverished 3rd world nation. At least our collective happiness, sanity and basic decency will be restored.
mr_twj 16y ago
I thought this blog was going to elucidate on "fuck you, money" but it just reverted down to "fuck you money." The comma makes all the difference in the world. Really, disappointing.
krschultz 16y ago
"Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?" Actually long before the point of becoming a startup founder and possibly making to "fuck you money", you can ask that question. Other options prior to "fuck you money" that I've considered, and having worked in a startup still might make me enjoy my life more (while working at a good "wage-slave job" 9-5) 1) Building a boat. It wouldn't be worthwhile economically, but it sure would be fun. 2) Dropping out of society and becoming a ski bum, and doing absolutely nothing every single day but ski. (did it, it was really fun, but eventually it becomes boring) 3) Working for a big established company on research that wouldn't be possible at a startup (crazy thought I know, but sometimes the big companies actually have advantages) 4) Going down the ph.D. route and becoming a professor 5) Skipping all of it and being a high school teacher and inspiring youth the way I was inspired, and coding FOSS stuff at nights and during the summer All of them lead to meaningful and fun lives in the manner that working on stupid web app designed to sell some ad impressions so I can make 8 million bucks of "fuck you money" just doesn't, at least for me. Now a startup that actually changes the world, well I'd do that for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with "fuck you money". How about "fuck you living", as in, I get to do what I want and say fuck you to anyone who says otherwise (including this guy), and it has nothing to do with how much money I have in the bank. It all comes down to the decisions you make.
lionhearted 16y ago
> Crunching more realistic numbers, ‘fuck-you money’ is about $4.2MM for a 30 year old guy who plans on dying at 70 and wants to make $200K/year. ...assuming no bad decisions with the money (unrealistic). ...assuming you don't go on a spending spree (which everyone says they won't do, but a significant majority of people who find themselves in cash do in fact do). ...and so on.
portman 16y ago
"if you think of the astronomical economic gap between, say, a Malian subsistence farmer and a one-man economy like Rupert Murdoch, it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion" This is clearly written by someone who's never spent time living on less than $5 per day. There is a "binary phase change" at $1/day and another at $2/day. Earning less than $1/day, like over 1 BILLION people do, is a constant struggle for survival. The moment you earn over $1 day, the most basic needs of food and water are much more likely to be met. There's another phase change at $2/day, at which point shelter becomes a real option and survival rates increase significantly. I know this isn't an article on international development, but don't bring up the Malian subsistence farmer if you think his life is somehow just as easy as that of a $100,000k "wage slave".
lsc 16y ago
>it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion. Oh man, spoken like someone who has never earned less than $20K/year. I don't have any experience supporting myself on less (as before I made it to that tax bracket, I was living with my parents) but I imagine the transition from $1/day to $2/day is even more dramatic. Granted, my experiences living in that income tax bracket without parental support were mercifully short, but there's a pretty dramatic difference between making $10K/year and making $30K/year. Also, I think your perceived earning ability has a lot to do with comfort levels. Right now, I'm paying myself maybe $30K year... but I think it'd take about 20 minutes to get a $100K+/year job, if I could convince someone I was ready to work for them rather than for myself, which I think makes me quite a bit more comfortable than I would be otherwise... I have a safety net. Maybe not quite as much of a safety net as a couple million in the bank, but it's still a pretty cushy net, and I use that net from time to time. No matter how badly I fail, I know I can go get a cushy job that pays me far more money than I need without requiring me to work that hard.
danbmil99 16y ago
one thing he doesn't factor in is that when you get FU money, you suddenly find that you have a cadre -- a virtual entourage -- of friends, family, and hangers-on who you never realized were (according to them) supporting you for years with your crazy dreams, and therefore are morally justified in expecting you to enrich their lives along with your own. This can happen in more subtle ways than "yo gimme some cash for dinner". You find that scads of folks have their own zany startup ideas; your wife is ready to fulfill her dream of big-home ownership; your peers expect you to send your kids to the same fancy schools they send theirs to (and your kids agree). People have written about this, esp. wrt lottery winners, but the same mechanics apply to the Silicon Valley lottery.
maztenz 16y ago
i dont can't hack the ethernet telkomflash who can help me?????

186 points by antongm 16y ago

Very good, well written article. Can someone with a wide breadth of experience like pg comment on whether the equation of rapacious greed with likelihood of getting fuck-you money out of the startup game is actually correct empirically?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

jacquesm 16y ago

I'm not sure how typical the angel quote is, most angels would be happy as long as the founders were happy with a buy-out. An exit of 15 million which yields $500K to the investor after putting up $100K means that the angel only holds about 3% of the company anyway. Also, as a rule you don't blog or write about your verbal agreement, you wait until the agreement is in writing and the money is in the bank and you've agreed with your investors that you can go public with the news. Some people will back out of a deal if you go public like this, even if they're not mentioned by name. A deal isn't done until the money is in the bank. And essentially he write that he told the guy just what he thought he wanted to hear, and now blogs that he is baffled by this and and that he didn't tell him the truth. Let's hope that said 'angel' doesn't read that blog.

TotlolRon 16y ago

The phrase is a disgrace to the idea it conveys.

scott_s 16y ago
I disagree. The phrase nakedly demonstrates it's about financial freedom - the freedom from ever having to worry about money every again. It's when you don't need your paycheck that you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. People who depend on their paycheck can't do that.
- TotlolRon 16y ago
  > you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. As said. A disgrace.
  - boucher 16y ago
    I think you're confusing having the power to say something with having the obligation to say it.
    - TGJ 16y ago
      If I had the power/money to tell someone anything I wanted, I think that I could muster a few brain cells to come up with something more meaningful or creative.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    In some circumstances - if you're being exploited - it's the appropriate response.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Yes, but how many people reading HN are truly exploited. Only if you let them... Exploited to me smacks of child labor and indentured servitude. I highly doubt there are child laborers and true slaves reading HN. But they do exist, and in larger numbers than you probably thought possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Current_situation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Current_situation That's more than the population of many countries.
      - scott_s 16y ago
        exploited to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploited http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploited Some people are exploited in ways that are horrific compared to how other people are exploited. But until we have words specifically to describe white-collar workers, I'm going to use the available words that I think are most apt.

zaidf 16y ago

The company valuation he’d get in on would mean that such an acquisition would represent a 5x return, over something like three months. That’s a gargantuan return on an annualized basis. You're totally missing the part where angels invest in companies that give them zero return. Even the worst stocks give you some money back. Unfair comparison.

frossie 16y ago

the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. I'm not sure the OP has grasped the complete psychology of FU money. Surely the value of FU money is not to allow one to stop working, it is in the emotional pay-off for the security it represents. This is a big deal, especially for people who, for example, experienced financial insecurity as children. I am guessing there are also tangible social benefits to reaching that stage, even if you changed nothing in your life upon achieving it.

sosuke 16y ago
FU money also empowers you to work on riskier and riskier ventures without as much pressure to succeed as the first success presented. Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together. Actually I think there are plenty of such people out there. But you rarely hear about them, because they have no reason to publicise themselves. Surely someone must be out there, appreciating expensive luxury goods all day long?
  - andreyf 16y ago
    There's Felix Dennis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyefDseVCZk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyefDseVCZk I'm not sure how many luxury goods he consumes, but he does write good startup poetry: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/404957/money.txt http://dl.dropbox.com/u/404957/money.txt
jdietrich 16y ago
In the world of high-stakes poker, it is commonly understood that the only way to make a million dollars playing poker is not to want to make a million dollars. If you care about the money, your lizard brain takes over and stops you from taking the risks you need to take. As soon as you see the chips on the table as dollar bills, you're finished. Practically the definition of greatness in poker is the ability to play the same for pennies as you would for millions - as far as the great players are concerned, it's not really money, it's just how you keep score. I think the OP is making a similar argument about startup founders - if you're emotionally invested in the payoff, your ability to make the right decisions will be impaired. You'll choose smaller markets, less ambitious products, make safer design decisions. You think too much about making money and not enough about growing a business. I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page and Brin and Zuckerberg never really intended to start businesses. I think it's no accident that Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in his old suburban house.

GavinB 16y ago

I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. If that's the case, then why do so many start-ups sell to bigger companies? Every month we hear about another one. The "swing for the fences" companies that go through to IPO (Facebook, Google) or massive acquisition (Youtube) are more and more rare. The Angel's question is meaningless unless you also know how optimistic you are about the company's chances of growing enough to deserve a much better deal.

dasil003 16y ago
Yeah, this guy worked at Goldman and believes that "rapacious greed" is necessary for success. Well, I don't doubt that's true in the financial world. But in the wider world there are more types of motivations. As an investor, it's reasonable to favor greed, but it's silly to think that money is the only thing that puts fire in a person's belly. Consider Stallman and Torvalds for instance... I'd argue they've added more value to the world than any partner at Goldman ever has.

sosuke 16y ago

To answer the authors question. Absolutely sell out, if your first success buys you the freedom to fail a thousand more times it is worth selling. He said those that would sell out are those that don't already have FU money, that they aren't in the club. Those founders that hold out might already have that FU money and are free to risk holding out. Each founder in those cases can't be compared. A man asked me to follow him into a startup I didn't believe in, he could go in and fail completely and come out the other side without a scratch because of his previous success. The risk was too high for me because I didn't already have FU money to cushion a complete failure.

jacquesm 16y ago
Going in to a start-up with founders that have different risk profiles is a great way to get in to very bad situations.
- c1sc0 16y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Sure. Let's say that your partner has a ton of money in the bank and you are dirt poor. (Exaggerated, but that makes it easier to see where the problems can come from). After a year or two the business makes some money and you now have a steady living. Your majority partner decides to make an all-or-nothing ploy, it fails and you lose your living. He doesn't care because he already had his steady life. Of course, it could have gone the other way but the more risky a move the bigger the chance that it will fail so that's not a 50/50 thing. It's just one of hundreds of variations to the theme but I think it clarifies the point sufficiently. If all the partners in a business have a similar risk profiles then they are all going to be behind most of the strategic decisions, which in turn will help with both morale and explaining things to the home front (if you have one).

nostromo 16y ago

Interestingly I find a similar drive within myself. Many years ago I told myself I'd start a business when I had $10k in hand. Then it became $20k, then $50k, then $100k, now it's more... Of course I realize that there's no good time to leave a good job -- just like there's no good time to have a baby. It's a moving target -- and if you want to do something, you just have to jump the nest and do it. Because our minds work on a relative basis ("I make good money but he makes more") and because our dopamine payoff from money is never as good as we anticipate it to be ("no, winning the lottery will not make you happier"), it makes sense that more is never enough.

nostrademons 16y ago
I try to frame it in terms of skills learned: "I'll start my next company when I've learned X and Y and tangibly accomplished Z." This is also a moving target, but at least it takes effort to move the goalposts, in the form of figuring out what your next goal is. At that point, you have to think about it anyway, so if the rational choice is "It's time to leave and start my company now," that should at least enter into your mind.

dirtae 16y ago

"Before anything else, let’s do the numbers: money market funds yield around 4%." What? The Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund (VMMXX) is yielding about 0.13% right now, and I think that's fairly typical.

hugh3 16y ago
"Right now" is a weird time for US dollar assets. Take a longer-term view and 4% is reasonable. Incidentally, my savings account in Australia is still paying 4.6%.
alex1 16y ago
The best money market account rates in the US are actually around 1-1.3% now (Ally, Capital One, Discover, ING, AIG). Definitely not 4%. That was in 2005.

steveklabnik 16y ago

This is an interesting contrast to the article by A Smart Bear about why he 'sold out': http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html

nandemo 16y ago

> So, will you sell out for fuck-you money? I'm not sure if the writer is serious in his use of "sell out". I think it very funny. If you sell your company for a mere $10M you're a "sell out" but if you want more and more then you're the real thing.

kscaldef 16y ago

I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph: > Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now? I'm sorry, but that's just offensive. The fact that you can't imagine a "wage-slave" contemplating these questions is probably closely linked to why you can't imagine a successful startup founder getting off the treadmill either. If you were willing to take your $4.2M or whatever and be happy, you'd also be able to understand that you can live a good life without that kind of money too. (Free hint: it's not the 48-inch TV that makes your life fulfilling.)

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scott_s 16y ago
I think perhaps you're interpreting what he wrote too harshly. I took it to mean that once you have FU money, you have to confront these questions because there's nothing left for you to worry about. Much of our time and mental effort is spent dealing with and worrying about survival. (Not survival in the hunter-gatherer sense, but making sure you have enough money in the next few days/weeks/months/years to live on.) When you worry about that every day, it's easier to not think about the big stuff. When only the big stuff is left, it's hard not to think about it.
- antongm 16y ago
  Scott, that's exactly what I was getting at. My only fear about making it as a startup is having to one day answer that existential question myself. I frankly don't know what I'd decide to do.
  - kscaldef 16y ago
    Fair enough, I respect that you're willing to admit that. But please don't call me a "wage slave" because of your fears and uncertainties.

dooshydoo 16y ago

A somewhat irresponsible and hypothetical goad. A truly bankrupt sense of self-worth would be refusing 15MM for a germ of a business. It’s one thing to entertain delusions of grandeur, but to rationalize it by concluding you’re an interchangeable cog who fell backward into a successful startup is disheartening. The rapacious quality you speak of would not preclude the acceptance of an exit; rather, it would fuel it.

arvinjoar 16y ago

I stopped reading at "wage-slave". Let's not use language that implies that working for a wage is slavery. Slavery is always forced on you, you have no choice but to work, not because you need to eat, but because the man with the whip says so. It's offensive to compare the situation of a slave and someone who earns a salary. Slavery is force, not from nature, but from another human being, if you can't see the the distinction between adapting to our environment (sure, we have to eat) and being forced by another human being to work, or die, then sorry, I won't bother reading whatever it is you want me to read.

binaryfinery 16y ago
Hierarchy of needs: air, food, shelter. If you live in the USA and want food and shelter, you cannot get it without paying the man taxes. Even if you own your own land, you must pay taxes on it. The counter argument (that one could be a homeless person), is no more useful than pointing out that a slave could choose to die: yes a hard choice, but a choice non the less. So the creation of a tax system, whereby a person is forced to pay taxes, a percentage of which goes to the rich that hold government debt, is a system where everyone is forced to work by men with guns. That's slavery. But you can believe that you're not a slave just because there are slaves, or have been slaves, who have even less choices than you do.
- arvinjoar 16y ago
  I was attacking the term "wage-slave" I have no problem with identifying taxes as forced on you. I even mentioned that force from another human being is what constitutes slavery, not from nature. Government is not nature, it's human beings, they use force on you, thereby enslaving you.
- afterburner 16y ago
  You can leave anytime though. Slaves can't.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    You can leave your job, sure. And then default on your mortgage. Or be unable to pay your rent. And not be able to buy food. (or, if you mean "leave America," then you can move somewhere else... and you _still_ have to either work for yourself, or for someone else.) There's an illusion of choice, but choosing to work between McDonalds and Burger King isn't really a choice.

samratjp 16y ago

But Scott Fitzgerald called this out in Gatsby eons ago: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

joey_bananas 16y ago

Wow, this sounds like the screed of a collage freshman who just discovered that the adult world is like, totally fake and shallow, man.

dreaming 16y ago
Tell me more about this collage freshman. Or is this a subtle suggestion hinting at a broad but nonspecific makeup of his persona...

Hubbert 16y ago

Paul Graham is a counter-example: "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. ... The all-or-nothing aspect of startups was not something we wanted. Viaweb's hackers were all extremely risk-averse. If there had been some way just to work super hard and get paid for it, without having a lottery mixed in, we would have been delighted. We would have much preferred a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, even though theoretically the second is worth twice as much. Unfortunately, there is not currently any space in the business world where you can get the first deal. http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

thibaut_barrere 16y ago

Startup founders are in the unique position of having to seriously ask themselves the following cocktail party question No, really, absolutely not. There are a lot more people able to retire and live comfortably than you think (people running simple brick and mortar businesses I know of, for instance). And one point: FU money is not the same amount for everyone. For me, FU money (if I had to live until 100 with my wife and son) is around 1.000.000 €, based on our standard of living.

apu 16y ago

I think these guys might be the best trolls I've ever seen on the web. First the NY Sucks article, and now this. Everything from the title, to the giant fuck you to "wage slaves" in the 2nd paragraph, to the fuck you to investors in the 4th paragraph to the fuck you to the Goldman folks later on, screams, "I'M GOING TO PISS YOU OFF SO YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ME." Bravo! Might I suggest a topic for your next essay? "Are you a creative type? FUCK YOU! Non-creative type? FUCK YOU, TOO!"

quickpost 16y ago
Agreed. He even admits as much in one of the essays he linked to: "What’s work like now? Writing code. Worrying about everything from our credit card billing to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink that will give us all diptheria some day. Writing linkbait blog posts to get us free PR (like the one you’re reading now)." http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-zero-revenue-is-better-than-working-for-goldman-sachs http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-z...
Groxx 16y ago
Followed closely by " 'Fuck you?' FUCK YOU TOO"

WingForward 16y ago

From the comma in the title, I thought the article was about recognizing money isn't a guarantee of happiness. As in, "Say, "Fuck you" to money itself. And instead focus on living life (and running a company) that doesn't rely on a purely materialistic metric of success." Sadly, that's not what the article was about.

msort 16y ago

I know several people who have made FU money (several millions). From my observations, their lives are not much different from the rest of us. Who a person marries, how fulfilling the days (work or non-work) are seems to matter more than pure amount of money. Time is limited and never enough. Money is not.

gaius 16y ago

If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d hanker for $50MM. That's a spurious comparison, because these guys aren't motivated by "buying stuff". Sure they do buy stuff, but for them, money is about keeping score, like who's scored the most goals in a football team.

yason 16y ago

Money is a funny thing. First you want it so that you could do whatever it is that you really want to do. Then when you have eventually got the money, you're likely to be in a position where money is no longer the priority—but rather the priority is what you really want to do. Sure, you take the money, you have the money, and you value the money's worth but it's not the thing that's driving you.

bhellman1 16y ago

"just a little more..."

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damoncali 16y ago

Well written, thought provoking, but nonethless nonsense.

korch 16y ago

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in? —Alexis de Tocqueville I agree with everything in this post 100%—it's spot on and well worth meditating on over the course of several years, combined with some serious reading in the ancient philosophers. Ultimately, ain't it a bitch that the law of diminishing marginal utility causes the demand curve to have a negative slope!? IMHO, that happens to be the best proof that a gift culture is a higher ideal to aim for than an efficiently allocated capitalist society premised on the FUD illusion of artifical scarcity. It is better to give than to receive(or accumulate) after all. (I recommend the writings of Buckminster Fuller more than nearly anything). Everything that everyone thinks matters, doesn't. I can't wait for the day when American "culture" gains the escape velocity to free itself from its own materialism. On the bright side, the American Empire is well on the way to smashing into the rocks, and shattering into an impoverished 3rd world nation. At least our collective happiness, sanity and basic decency will be restored.

mr_twj 16y ago

I thought this blog was going to elucidate on "fuck you, money" but it just reverted down to "fuck you money." The comma makes all the difference in the world. Really, disappointing.

krschultz 16y ago

"Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?" Actually long before the point of becoming a startup founder and possibly making to "fuck you money", you can ask that question. Other options prior to "fuck you money" that I've considered, and having worked in a startup still might make me enjoy my life more (while working at a good "wage-slave job" 9-5) 1) Building a boat. It wouldn't be worthwhile economically, but it sure would be fun. 2) Dropping out of society and becoming a ski bum, and doing absolutely nothing every single day but ski. (did it, it was really fun, but eventually it becomes boring) 3) Working for a big established company on research that wouldn't be possible at a startup (crazy thought I know, but sometimes the big companies actually have advantages) 4) Going down the ph.D. route and becoming a professor 5) Skipping all of it and being a high school teacher and inspiring youth the way I was inspired, and coding FOSS stuff at nights and during the summer All of them lead to meaningful and fun lives in the manner that working on stupid web app designed to sell some ad impressions so I can make 8 million bucks of "fuck you money" just doesn't, at least for me. Now a startup that actually changes the world, well I'd do that for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with "fuck you money". How about "fuck you living", as in, I get to do what I want and say fuck you to anyone who says otherwise (including this guy), and it has nothing to do with how much money I have in the bank. It all comes down to the decisions you make.

lionhearted 16y ago

> Crunching more realistic numbers, ‘fuck-you money’ is about $4.2MM for a 30 year old guy who plans on dying at 70 and wants to make $200K/year. ...assuming no bad decisions with the money (unrealistic). ...assuming you don't go on a spending spree (which everyone says they won't do, but a significant majority of people who find themselves in cash do in fact do). ...and so on.

portman 16y ago

"if you think of the astronomical economic gap between, say, a Malian subsistence farmer and a one-man economy like Rupert Murdoch, it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion" This is clearly written by someone who's never spent time living on less than $5 per day. There is a "binary phase change" at $1/day and another at $2/day. Earning less than $1/day, like over 1 BILLION people do, is a constant struggle for survival. The moment you earn over $1 day, the most basic needs of food and water are much more likely to be met. There's another phase change at $2/day, at which point shelter becomes a real option and survival rates increase significantly. I know this isn't an article on international development, but don't bring up the Malian subsistence farmer if you think his life is somehow just as easy as that of a $100,000k "wage slave".

lsc 16y ago

>it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion. Oh man, spoken like someone who has never earned less than $20K/year. I don't have any experience supporting myself on less (as before I made it to that tax bracket, I was living with my parents) but I imagine the transition from $1/day to $2/day is even more dramatic. Granted, my experiences living in that income tax bracket without parental support were mercifully short, but there's a pretty dramatic difference between making $10K/year and making $30K/year. Also, I think your perceived earning ability has a lot to do with comfort levels. Right now, I'm paying myself maybe $30K year... but I think it'd take about 20 minutes to get a $100K+/year job, if I could convince someone I was ready to work for them rather than for myself, which I think makes me quite a bit more comfortable than I would be otherwise... I have a safety net. Maybe not quite as much of a safety net as a couple million in the bank, but it's still a pretty cushy net, and I use that net from time to time. No matter how badly I fail, I know I can go get a cushy job that pays me far more money than I need without requiring me to work that hard.

danbmil99 16y ago

one thing he doesn't factor in is that when you get FU money, you suddenly find that you have a cadre -- a virtual entourage -- of friends, family, and hangers-on who you never realized were (according to them) supporting you for years with your crazy dreams, and therefore are morally justified in expecting you to enrich their lives along with your own. This can happen in more subtle ways than "yo gimme some cash for dinner". You find that scads of folks have their own zany startup ideas; your wife is ready to fulfill her dream of big-home ownership; your peers expect you to send your kids to the same fancy schools they send theirs to (and your kids agree). People have written about this, esp. wrt lottery winners, but the same mechanics apply to the Silicon Valley lottery.

maztenz 16y ago

i dont can't hack the ethernet telkomflash who can help me?????