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I wish I had $8M dollars and a bunch of really dedicated people to build a company to >$1M ARR and then get rid of all of them. At that price you are looking at

I wish I had $8M dollars and a bunch of really dedicated people to build a company to >$1M ARR and then get rid of all of them. At that price you are looking at a company at roughly $X0M value already. Most companies end up having to work tirelessly to grow because they have baggage of money that needs return. If you can get rid of that baggage it's relatively easy to just slow down and reap the rewards. FANG could all probably afford to pay 10x what you do for 1 hour of work a month if they stopped trying to grow. If this post is saying "Hey I got this $X0M company for free come hang out with me and I'll give you some of the insane money we are making. You don't even need to work much, the people before you already did most of work but I'm not giving them anything. By writing stuff like this we will get people to buy our coolaid and more of our content, by telling them they can also get the same life. More money for us." Then that's amazing and more power to you. It really is a pretty good deal for the 25 people at gumroad. Genuinely curious if gumroad was started again from scratch with no investment if it could get to any kind of scale with the kind of work and pay structure referred to in the post.

adewinter 6y ago
I'm curious why you think folks at gumroad don't "work much" and that most of the work had been done by those no longer at the company. Did you used to work there and have some insider knowledge? Seems to me the post wasn't even claiming to have >$1M ARR either (there was a graph for the creators ARR which I think is different?) and that everyone does work... they just do it using a non-traditional process. edit: There's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25675713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25675713 which might point to >$1M ARR? edit 2: I also realized in a business like this ARR just doesn't matter (who cares? You're not trying to raise another round or IPO). https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 shows the net profit and it amounts to 1 senior engineer's salary. That's amazing for a small business with a small number of employees but it's not exactly living high off the hog.
- newen 6y ago
  ARR for SaaS companies do matter. It usually means you can sell the company for a decent multiplier of the ARR. And they’re definitely getting more than $1M ARR, not just creators ARR.

adewinter 6y ago

I'm curious why you think folks at gumroad don't "work much" and that most of the work had been done by those no longer at the company. Did you used to work there and have some insider knowledge? Seems to me the post wasn't even claiming to have >$1M ARR either (there was a graph for the creators ARR which I think is different?) and that everyone does work... they just do it using a non-traditional process. edit: There's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25675713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25675713 which might point to >$1M ARR? edit 2: I also realized in a business like this ARR just doesn't matter (who cares? You're not trying to raise another round or IPO). https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 shows the net profit and it amounts to 1 senior engineer's salary. That's amazing for a small business with a small number of employees but it's not exactly living high off the hog.

newen 6y ago
ARR for SaaS companies do matter. It usually means you can sell the company for a decent multiplier of the ARR. And they’re definitely getting more than $1M ARR, not just creators ARR.