"Flipper ethics"? Yikes. There is a special flavor of bile that comes from bootstrapping types. I wonder if it's caused by dread of their own lack of connection

"Flipper ethics"? Yikes. There is a special flavor of bile that comes from bootstrapping types. I wonder if it's caused by dread of their own lack of connections to investors, or of their lack of expertise in this area, or what. There are actually very good reasons for why "flipping" is good for everyone. It's obviously good for the founders (notwithstanding DHH's puzzling story of a guy who was forced to switch from a mac to a PC after his startup was acquired). And the acquirers take a rational risk by purchasing a startup. At the point of acquisition, a startup may only have a 1/100 chance of being the next Facebook, but it will be acquired for 1/1000th the price of Facebook. 100 of those acquisitions, if you're Google, and what you have is a Facebook for tenth of the price (and a whole pile of other good stuff). In fact, if you don't want to take too much risk, going for acquisition is better than going for revenue on the scale of 37signals. It even seems dishonest that he compares the 37signals way and the IPO way in terms of risk, completely ignoring the acquisition way. Also, I don't think the average hacker wants to be a "tycoon". He probably just wants to solve the money problem once and for all.