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I find it surprising that Heroku was the breakeven point. There have been other (what I consider) rather high-profile exits, such as Cloudkick, Reddit, Etherpad
by thematt 16y ago
I find it surprising that Heroku was the breakeven point. There have been other (what I consider) rather high-profile exits, such as Cloudkick, Reddit, Etherpad, 280 North, etc. These were good companies and were acquired for significant amounts; it seems like YC would have realized some significant gains on them.
- ry0ohki 16y agoI'm wondering if "break-even" in this case means "typical VC 10X expected profit on investments"
- kirubakaran 16y agoNo. That would be one hell of a creative definition for 'break-even'.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoLook at a Hollywood contract sometime, with such lovely concepts as "triple breakeven" and "rolling breakeven". The creativity in LA isn't just behind the camera!
- tastybites 16y agoOur lawyer (we're based in LA) says that on many smaller Hollywood deals you're lucky to even have a written contract...
- quellhorst 16y agoI had 2 Hollywood deals that were written only because there was an email thread.
- nopinsight 16y agoThe article might have meant YC recouped their past investments in all startups combined: "YC broke even on its past investments when Salesforce.com (CRM) bought YC company Heroku" Since the sales price is above 200 million, YC's equity would be worth 12+ million, which likely surpassed the total monetary first-seed investments in every startup they did so far.
- marcamillion 16y agoThat is kinda staggering given that there are still many stars that are doing pretty well...that YC is yet to exit. From Dropbox to AirBnB to WePay to Wufoo to Justin.tv to Posterous to Scribd, etc. All of those I suspect, if they have an exit (I doubt Wufoo will - mainly because I don't think the founders are interested), it will be pretty substantial.