6 ms·

A lot of people are here laughing at digg for turning this down, but hindsight is 20-20. Zuckerberg turned down $1Billion from Yahoo, and at least on paper is

by DevX101 16y ago

A lot of people are here laughing at digg for turning this down, but hindsight is 20-20. Zuckerberg turned down $1Billion from Yahoo, and at least on paper is worth an order of magnitude more now. At the time, digg was a leader in a new take on publishing distribution. If executed well, it could have very feasibly been worth more than $80M.

gnaritas 16y ago
> Zuckerberg turned down $1Billion from Yahoo, and at least on paper is worth an order of magnitude more now. Just because you won the lottery doesn't mean it wasn't stupid to not take the cash. Zuck should have took the billion as a first time entrepreneur. It was the better bet. Playing against the odds might be exciting, and you might even win, but it's still not smart.
- rewind 16y ago
  Depends whether or not you believe Zuckerberg genuinely wanted to build a world-changing business. If that's his main goal (and the more I hear him talk, the more I start to believe it), and he genuinely believes he can do it, then taking the money isn't necessarily what's most important to him. I read a lot about entrepreneurs getting shit on for not swinging for the fences, but then they get shit if they turn down a billion dollar offer when they only see that as a triple. It remains to see how this all plays out, but when you turn down a billion dollars, I think there's a good chance you're doing it for more than the money.
  - gnaritas 16y ago
    Still doesn't matter. Your first shot out of the gate, you take the money because it enables you get money out of the way. Everyone needs money. You swing for the fences the second time out, after you've got cash in the bank and don't need the money. That's the smart thing to do, play the odds. Zuck went against the odds, that wasn't smart, it was immature; he seems to have beat the odds so it worked out, but it was much more likely to go the other way, and it still could. Something could wipe out Facebook just like Facebook wiped out MySpace.
    - neilk 16y ago
      I have a feeling Zuckerberg is not going to have to worry about money no matter what happens. Even in 2007 he was clearly headed for multimillionaire status. I don't know him personally but at the time he reputedly lived on a mattress in an empty room in Palo Alto. Maybe he's the kind of guy that values winning more than the accoutrements of success.
      - gnaritas 16y ago
        If facebook hadn't taken off, I doubt anyone here would know who Zuckerberg was. He rode a fad to fame and capitalized on it and made many a blunder along the way. He's no different than Kevin Rose and Digg. Facebook's popularity will wane, people will abandon it; many people already are in the sense that they don't check it much anymore. Something else will come along and the crowd will have a new toy.
        jambo 16y ago
        I sometimes hope for this outcome, too, but I recognize that, for me, it is as jealousy that I got my project wrong in 03-04.
        code_duck 16y ago
        I certainly hope so, because I don't particularly like their vision of the internet.
        dillydally 16y ago
        In what universe is Facebook a fad? There are billion-dollar companies built on their platform, ferchrissakes!
        gnaritas 16y ago
        Platform, lol. The site was better before the platform enabled apps. The entire platform is faddish, it's popular because it's popular and everyone else is doing it; until they aren't, then you stop. There are billion dollar industries that are entirely based on fads, movies, music, games, or fashion for example. The amount of money has no bearing on whether something is faddish. For most, facebook is entertainment, the entertainment industry in all its forms is all about fads and popularity.
  - code_duck 16y ago
    I'm very skeptical when people tell me that their motivation is to 'change the world'. Even more so when they are very dead set to make sure that THEY are the ones who change it vs. their competitors. Facebook is a twist on existing services to share photos, text messages, emails and games. It's not like he's out fighting poverty, political corruption and disease or something.
- neilk 16y ago
  Zuckerberg had the Facebook platform in his pocket during all those negotiations. It seems like a great bet to me. If Facebook is worth a billion just for audience share of relatively traditional social networking, it should be a billion plus with the release of the platform and a marketplace. I can't stand FB, but I have to say that was the right move.
  - gnaritas 16y ago
    It would have been the right move for a more experienced entrepreneur who was gambling with play money; it's the wrong move for a first timer who'd have been wiped out had it failed. He rolled the dice and won, but the odds were not in his favor; it was not smart.
    - drusenko 16y ago
      Starting a company is never a safe bet. Every step along the way as you build a successful company, you have opportunities to sell. By your logic, you would sell at the first opportunity in the low millions. Clearly, that wouldn't have been the right move, but it would have been the safe move. The right way to think about selling a company depends on what your goals are. People are motivated by different things. Some entrepreneurs are motivated mostly by money, some mostly by recognition, and others by being influential/changing the world. If you go with the money because you're a first time entrepreneur, there's a great chance that Facebook would be your one significant company in life, and you would have bailed out without seeing it to its conclusion. At the end of the day, depending on your personal goals, that might be a failure for you, personally.
  - adrianwaj 16y ago
    I think the best move by FB was buying FriendFeed in Aug '09 a few years after knocking back Yahoo and making Bret Taylor CTO and having Paul Bucheit cultivate an engineering culture. I was surprised by this, because Taylor originally stated he wanted FF to grow into a self-sustaining company. If FB didn't have the pockets to do this, FB wouldn't be nearly as successful as it is today. Today FB is impressively fast, were Tornado + HipHop the keys for this to happen? If Twitter fixed its UI and fail whales a few years ago, it'd be much bigger today. PG a year or two ago spoke of Twitter as a protocol: yet still I think this hasn't manifested as it's still only used at the presentation layer. It should have or should still look into this path. Increasingly I'm seeing outcomes determined by the smarts of the CEO who end up having to think for themselves, because eventually they get surrounded by Yes-people. I see a deficit at Google with Eric Schmidt, although I can't say I've met him, Google needs a Jobs at this point. FB just need to put in a search engine (Bing?,) to stop losing users to Google. If I may continue, the FF acquisition basically allowed FB to compete with Twitter (and not lose users to it.) It was Twitter that undermined Digg, because sharing with people you know is more fun than with sharing people you don't know. The lessons in strategy here with Digg, Facebook, (and also Yahoo's non-acquisition by MS) is that if a potential acquirer comes to you having in mind that your business be acquired to spearhead or enable massive growth of their own, you say no. Or rather, if they're more (or even less) excited about your business than you are, sell unless you can obtain that excitement somehow, perhaps by acquiring yourself.

by DevX101 16y ago

gnaritas 16y ago

> Zuckerberg turned down $1Billion from Yahoo, and at least on paper is worth an order of magnitude more now. Just because you won the lottery doesn't mean it wasn't stupid to not take the cash. Zuck should have took the billion as a first time entrepreneur. It was the better bet. Playing against the odds might be exciting, and you might even win, but it's still not smart.

rewind 16y ago
Depends whether or not you believe Zuckerberg genuinely wanted to build a world-changing business. If that's his main goal (and the more I hear him talk, the more I start to believe it), and he genuinely believes he can do it, then taking the money isn't necessarily what's most important to him. I read a lot about entrepreneurs getting shit on for not swinging for the fences, but then they get shit if they turn down a billion dollar offer when they only see that as a triple. It remains to see how this all plays out, but when you turn down a billion dollars, I think there's a good chance you're doing it for more than the money.
- gnaritas 16y ago
  Still doesn't matter. Your first shot out of the gate, you take the money because it enables you get money out of the way. Everyone needs money. You swing for the fences the second time out, after you've got cash in the bank and don't need the money. That's the smart thing to do, play the odds. Zuck went against the odds, that wasn't smart, it was immature; he seems to have beat the odds so it worked out, but it was much more likely to go the other way, and it still could. Something could wipe out Facebook just like Facebook wiped out MySpace.
  - neilk 16y ago
    I have a feeling Zuckerberg is not going to have to worry about money no matter what happens. Even in 2007 he was clearly headed for multimillionaire status. I don't know him personally but at the time he reputedly lived on a mattress in an empty room in Palo Alto. Maybe he's the kind of guy that values winning more than the accoutrements of success.
    - gnaritas 16y ago
      If facebook hadn't taken off, I doubt anyone here would know who Zuckerberg was. He rode a fad to fame and capitalized on it and made many a blunder along the way. He's no different than Kevin Rose and Digg. Facebook's popularity will wane, people will abandon it; many people already are in the sense that they don't check it much anymore. Something else will come along and the crowd will have a new toy.
      - jambo 16y ago
        I sometimes hope for this outcome, too, but I recognize that, for me, it is as jealousy that I got my project wrong in 03-04.
      - code_duck 16y ago
        I certainly hope so, because I don't particularly like their vision of the internet.
      - dillydally 16y ago
        In what universe is Facebook a fad? There are billion-dollar companies built on their platform, ferchrissakes!
        gnaritas 16y ago
        Platform, lol. The site was better before the platform enabled apps. The entire platform is faddish, it's popular because it's popular and everyone else is doing it; until they aren't, then you stop. There are billion dollar industries that are entirely based on fads, movies, music, games, or fashion for example. The amount of money has no bearing on whether something is faddish. For most, facebook is entertainment, the entertainment industry in all its forms is all about fads and popularity.
- code_duck 16y ago
  I'm very skeptical when people tell me that their motivation is to 'change the world'. Even more so when they are very dead set to make sure that THEY are the ones who change it vs. their competitors. Facebook is a twist on existing services to share photos, text messages, emails and games. It's not like he's out fighting poverty, political corruption and disease or something.
neilk 16y ago
Zuckerberg had the Facebook platform in his pocket during all those negotiations. It seems like a great bet to me. If Facebook is worth a billion just for audience share of relatively traditional social networking, it should be a billion plus with the release of the platform and a marketplace. I can't stand FB, but I have to say that was the right move.
- gnaritas 16y ago
  It would have been the right move for a more experienced entrepreneur who was gambling with play money; it's the wrong move for a first timer who'd have been wiped out had it failed. He rolled the dice and won, but the odds were not in his favor; it was not smart.
  - drusenko 16y ago
    Starting a company is never a safe bet. Every step along the way as you build a successful company, you have opportunities to sell. By your logic, you would sell at the first opportunity in the low millions. Clearly, that wouldn't have been the right move, but it would have been the safe move. The right way to think about selling a company depends on what your goals are. People are motivated by different things. Some entrepreneurs are motivated mostly by money, some mostly by recognition, and others by being influential/changing the world. If you go with the money because you're a first time entrepreneur, there's a great chance that Facebook would be your one significant company in life, and you would have bailed out without seeing it to its conclusion. At the end of the day, depending on your personal goals, that might be a failure for you, personally.
- adrianwaj 16y ago
  I think the best move by FB was buying FriendFeed in Aug '09 a few years after knocking back Yahoo and making Bret Taylor CTO and having Paul Bucheit cultivate an engineering culture. I was surprised by this, because Taylor originally stated he wanted FF to grow into a self-sustaining company. If FB didn't have the pockets to do this, FB wouldn't be nearly as successful as it is today. Today FB is impressively fast, were Tornado + HipHop the keys for this to happen? If Twitter fixed its UI and fail whales a few years ago, it'd be much bigger today. PG a year or two ago spoke of Twitter as a protocol: yet still I think this hasn't manifested as it's still only used at the presentation layer. It should have or should still look into this path. Increasingly I'm seeing outcomes determined by the smarts of the CEO who end up having to think for themselves, because eventually they get surrounded by Yes-people. I see a deficit at Google with Eric Schmidt, although I can't say I've met him, Google needs a Jobs at this point. FB just need to put in a search engine (Bing?,) to stop losing users to Google. If I may continue, the FF acquisition basically allowed FB to compete with Twitter (and not lose users to it.) It was Twitter that undermined Digg, because sharing with people you know is more fun than with sharing people you don't know. The lessons in strategy here with Digg, Facebook, (and also Yahoo's non-acquisition by MS) is that if a potential acquirer comes to you having in mind that your business be acquired to spearhead or enable massive growth of their own, you say no. Or rather, if they're more (or even less) excited about your business than you are, sell unless you can obtain that excitement somehow, perhaps by acquiring yourself.