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$12 billion is a staggering amount of money. I can't imagine blaming someone for shifting their stance on an exit after imagining what they could fund with a $

$12 billion is a staggering amount of money. I can't imagine blaming someone for shifting their stance on an exit after imagining what they could fund with a $12 billion payout. If the founders take the cash and build, I dunno, the world's biggest yacht, that's a waste. But I think that's incredibly unlikely.

arthurcolle 5y ago
> If the founders take the cash and build, I dunno, the world's biggest yacht, that's a waste. But I think that's incredibly unlikely. it's an email service provider for campaigns and other email spam with a recognizable brand, let's not imagine that this is beneficial beyond helping companies market stuff to people. It's like a meta-business enhancement service. Happy for the founders, hope they do some good with the new payout - but I think you are giving them a bit too much credit. Sure, kick back 100M to your old school district, maybe another 250M to BLM or to Math for America to strike off all of your philanthropic efforts in one go, curate some plebeian sympathies and smile for the cameras but at the end of the day, making it easy to bombard people with endless email campaigns isn't exactly solving global problems EDIT: I reject hero worship vigorously - Mailchimp did a thing, it made money, and another entity that did a thing and made money that makes MORE money decided to absorb it and the cash payout was so good that investors/founders of MC decided to say fuck it, I'm done. Take my chips, gimme the loot. 12 billion dollars is generational wealth, but I mean I just can't/won't/don't respect people that have enabled spam or a business model that encourages bombarding people with BS. Same thing with IAP - I don't respect people who work for Apple because there was a layered hierarchy of priorities that said "we want to generate revenue at the expense of the people that trust us with their consumer electronics" I just intrinsically cannot respect people that decide to profit off of wasting people's time, the only commodity you can't generate more of. Instead of craftsmanship we have psychopathic operators that try to fine tune all the ways to extract money from others and even develop meta-endeavors where people pay others to execute activities to get end-user observers ('users' in modern web dev parlance, for the JS devs) to waste time/spend money, for net negative expected value to themselves and others. It's super sordid and I just can't endorse it. Whatever. In 25 years these guys will probably pull a Paul Allen and then start funding brain research or something after realizing that all the money in the world can't buy time and more life.
- NetOpWibby 5y ago
  Holy shit, I couldn’t agree more.
- echelon 5y ago
  > all the money in the world can't buy time and more life. It can, it's just that biologists aren't the ones that are winning the equities and securities game most frequently. Given their inexperience, they throw money at things blindly, not realizing there are lower hanging fruit than the brain. A billionaire biologist could attack the problem from first principles. And probably make measurable headway.
  - goldforever 5y ago
    It can't, full stop.
    - echelon 5y ago
      What do you think aging is from a mechanistic standpoint? Define it and tell me how you can't make a measurable impact upon it.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        Tell it to Norm MacDonald, or Chadwick Boseman.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        echelon 5y ago
        What are you on about? Yes, people die. But we can stop it by continuing to invest in biotech.
        Apocryphon 5y ago
protomyth 5y ago
If the founders take the cash and build, I dunno, the world's biggest yacht, that's a waste. No, that would pay a lot of skilled workers a damn good wage for a couple of years. Yachts employ a lot of highly paid people.
- bluedevil2k 5y ago
  Thank you! People act like the uber-rich buying expensive things is a waste of money. We want them to spend their money. Get it into the hands of people who really need it.
  - protomyth 5y ago
    And rich people buy stuff that requires skilled labor. Those craftspeople jobs are well paid. Reducing friction for rich people to buy locally made items is a good thing.
  - ThemalSpan 5y ago
    Do that through taxation. I thought trickle down economics had been broadly repudiated.
    - ubercow13 5y ago
      Probably because rich people do not spend enough of their money, not because they spend too much of it.
    - effingwewt 5y ago
      Seriously, reading comments like those you replied to hurts my head. In fact all that's been happening is trickle up, since the wealthiest keep siphoning more and more money, such that we essentially have no middle class left. I like how we use the word class and then deny having a class/caste system.
- Igelau 5y ago
  I just want to see this incredible yacht.

arthurcolle 5y ago

> If the founders take the cash and build, I dunno, the world's biggest yacht, that's a waste. But I think that's incredibly unlikely. it's an email service provider for campaigns and other email spam with a recognizable brand, let's not imagine that this is beneficial beyond helping companies market stuff to people. It's like a meta-business enhancement service. Happy for the founders, hope they do some good with the new payout - but I think you are giving them a bit too much credit. Sure, kick back 100M to your old school district, maybe another 250M to BLM or to Math for America to strike off all of your philanthropic efforts in one go, curate some plebeian sympathies and smile for the cameras but at the end of the day, making it easy to bombard people with endless email campaigns isn't exactly solving global problems EDIT: I reject hero worship vigorously - Mailchimp did a thing, it made money, and another entity that did a thing and made money that makes MORE money decided to absorb it and the cash payout was so good that investors/founders of MC decided to say fuck it, I'm done. Take my chips, gimme the loot. 12 billion dollars is generational wealth, but I mean I just can't/won't/don't respect people that have enabled spam or a business model that encourages bombarding people with BS. Same thing with IAP - I don't respect people who work for Apple because there was a layered hierarchy of priorities that said "we want to generate revenue at the expense of the people that trust us with their consumer electronics" I just intrinsically cannot respect people that decide to profit off of wasting people's time, the only commodity you can't generate more of. Instead of craftsmanship we have psychopathic operators that try to fine tune all the ways to extract money from others and even develop meta-endeavors where people pay others to execute activities to get end-user observers ('users' in modern web dev parlance, for the JS devs) to waste time/spend money, for net negative expected value to themselves and others. It's super sordid and I just can't endorse it. Whatever. In 25 years these guys will probably pull a Paul Allen and then start funding brain research or something after realizing that all the money in the world can't buy time and more life.

NetOpWibby 5y ago
Holy shit, I couldn’t agree more.
echelon 5y ago
> all the money in the world can't buy time and more life. It can, it's just that biologists aren't the ones that are winning the equities and securities game most frequently. Given their inexperience, they throw money at things blindly, not realizing there are lower hanging fruit than the brain. A billionaire biologist could attack the problem from first principles. And probably make measurable headway.
- goldforever 5y ago
  It can't, full stop.
  - echelon 5y ago
    What do you think aging is from a mechanistic standpoint? Define it and tell me how you can't make a measurable impact upon it.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Tell it to Norm MacDonald, or Chadwick Boseman.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - echelon 5y ago
        What are you on about? Yes, people die. But we can stop it by continuing to invest in biotech.
        Apocryphon 5y ago

protomyth 5y ago

If the founders take the cash and build, I dunno, the world's biggest yacht, that's a waste. No, that would pay a lot of skilled workers a damn good wage for a couple of years. Yachts employ a lot of highly paid people.

bluedevil2k 5y ago
Thank you! People act like the uber-rich buying expensive things is a waste of money. We want them to spend their money. Get it into the hands of people who really need it.
- protomyth 5y ago
  And rich people buy stuff that requires skilled labor. Those craftspeople jobs are well paid. Reducing friction for rich people to buy locally made items is a good thing.
- ThemalSpan 5y ago
  Do that through taxation. I thought trickle down economics had been broadly repudiated.
  - ubercow13 5y ago
    Probably because rich people do not spend enough of their money, not because they spend too much of it.
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    Seriously, reading comments like those you replied to hurts my head. In fact all that's been happening is trickle up, since the wealthiest keep siphoning more and more money, such that we essentially have no middle class left. I like how we use the word class and then deny having a class/caste system.
Igelau 5y ago
I just want to see this incredible yacht.