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Here's a hypothetical scenario: - You're running the successor to Bandcamp - You're making good money, employ a couple staff - Epic comes to you offering mil

Here's a hypothetical scenario: - You're running the successor to Bandcamp - You're making good money, employ a couple staff - Epic comes to you offering millions to buy your business The rational choice is to sell. Would you choose the stress of running a sustainable business over the payout? I know I wouldn't. There's no indication afaik that Bandcamp was in financial trouble before they got acquired. This is inevitable in the current ecosystem.

gizmo 3y ago
Cheaters think everybody cheats when given the opportunity. Thieves believe only fear of the law is what keeps the masses in line. Liars believe lying is normal and that they’re only embellishing anyway and really it’s for the greater good and also pragmatic and necessary to succeed. There are many people who would not f their users and employees over when given the opportunity. Be like that.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  Would like to think i wouldn't sell, but if someone massive company is offering my money, the worry is always they'll build their own later and stomp me anyway.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    That and there's probably an element of wishful thinking. "I built this nice thing, and they promised me they won't mess it up."
  - diggan 3y ago
    That's why the product itself should not just be the technology stack (as GP might allude to), but something larger. In the case of Bandcamp, it's the relationships, community, trust and integrity that makes it what it is, and another massive company won't just be able to create those things by throwing random employees at the problem.
- constantly 3y ago
  Well, first of all, it’s transactional. I have no particular affinity for any given service I use. If another service comes along that has enough upside to overcome the momentum of switching, I’ll definitely do it, and I’m sure you would too, and maybe that will annoy the company. That goes the same for the company; if they have a chance to cash out, I’m sure they’d take it. And maybe that will annoy me. But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive.
  - drcongo 3y ago
    I'm a Bandcamp user, the sale to Epic fucked me over.
    - wizerdrobe 3y ago
      I’ve admittedly aged into a stereotype out of an Hard Times article and so haven’t bought an album in years… What did they do exactly? My music is there I bought years back.
    - heleninboodler 3y ago
      Like the sibling comment, I'd honestly be interested in hearing how they fucked you over. I know the whole "we will keep running it just like it's always been" trope is very hard to swallow, but it seems to me they actually had left it alone thus far. Am I wrong about that?
    - amatecha 3y ago
      Same. The best online music service since Napster got screwed and it's never coming back. The writing is on the wall and it's clear that the "enshittification" officially begins.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive. Because that's what happened to a lot of companies who got bought out - eventually the MBA sharks wanted their returns. Minecraft, MySQL, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Reddit, TwiXXer, they all fell victim to enshittification. Others just ossified with steady streams of Big Money coming in like Mozilla, Wikipedia or a ton of stuff from Adobe. Or they got closed down by Big Corp because they were no longer "profitable" enough like Google Reader. Personally, I'm happy enough that HN still exists.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Thing is, we are in a pretty ruthless society governed by sometimes insane amounts of money - and eventually, anyone will sell out given the right price, and no matter the purchase contract, eventually big-corp culture will seep in. See e.g. Atlassian, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft or Facebook who have been on the buyer side, and Minecraft and MySQL for infamous cases of companies that got bought out.
- amrocha 3y ago
  I agree with you on not wanting to fuck the users over either. Personally I don't want to do that. But the reality is, I have other things I need in life too, and those things require money. My dad is working into his 70s, what if I could fund his retirement? What if I could pay for my brothers uni? Or for my grandma's nurse? When our basic necessities are not secure, we can't always make the ethical choice. Until then, people will keep selling out.
  - gizmo 3y ago
    Literally everybody has family members who could use extra money. If having family absolves you from ethical constraints we can dispense with the notion of ethics altogether.
    - amrocha 3y ago
      Sure, and that's why most people would sell. Having a family doesn't "absolve you" from ethics, but it means that you have to weight doing right by your family vs doing right by your users. Most people choose their family, and nobody blames them for it.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > nobody blames them for it I do. If somebody has to do wrong by their customers to do right to their family, they've seriously messed everything up.
        amrocha 3y ago
        Ok well, that's alright but you have to realize that you're in the minority here. And no, they haven't messed everything up, society has failed them
    - alickz 3y ago
      I don't think selling your company is unethical
- projectazorian 3y ago
  Bandcamp did have investors, they weren't 100% bootstrapped. Those investors likely had board seats and a significant say in whether to accept Epic's offer. Not to mention that COVID led to a steep increase in the site's traffic. It's possible that the added operational burden meant that Bandcamp was no longer the chill lifestyle business that it used to be.
willsmith72 3y ago
It's not at all as simple as a "rational choice". It completely depends on your objective. Why did you start the business in the first place? If it was to make a few mill and never have to work again, sure, sell. If you wanted to build something bigger than yourself, work with great people, feel accomplished, then why sell? How is that few mill going to get you those things? A lot of founders regret their first sale because they realise they didn't want a cashout, they wanted to build something awesome
- comprev 3y ago
  To back this view up there are plenty of artists who openly admit they "break even" when they've sold a 300-batch of records. The operating costs include buying instruments/software/hardware, using a mastering service and pressing vinyl - all of which are not cheap. They do it for the love of producing music - and watching their work sell out within _minutes_ of being released... which in turn inspires them to make another record (or ten haha!)
  - amrocha 3y ago
    I'm not dismissing that, but most artists sell out given the chance. The thing is that the gap between "breaking even" and "life changing money" is huge for most artists. You wouldn't sell out for 50K per year, but 1M? Sell out for 2 years and you're set for life, then you can go back to making the music you love. But very few artists can pull 1M per year, so it doesn't happen as often.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  > feel accomplished Believe it or not you can buy that. Though I'm sure there's some corporate backed, non-replicable, behavioral science study that says otherwise.
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    I choose not, can you convince me otherwise?
  - 3y ago
JohnFen 3y ago
> The rational choice is to sell. Not necessarily. Whether or not that's the rational choice depends on what your goals are.
npteljes 3y ago
It's also rational not to sell. Why not value a nice sustainable business over selling out? I understand that many of us would sell, I would probably sell too. But different people do exist. Valve didn't sell, for example, and I'm sure they were approached many times.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Yeah they definitely do exist, but it's the exception. That's why everybody knows about valve and epic. However, if Gabe's family had urgently needed money back in the day, would he have sold? Maybe. That's what I'm getting at. You need to be in a very stable position to be able to turn down a big offer like that when it comes, and in general in our society we're always one or two emergencies away from being destitute on the streets. Until we make sure people are taken care of, these companies will keep being the exception.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I don't know about how rare it is, because rejected offers don't make the news. We either talk about the successful selling stories, or the major holdouts. I don't think this paints a full picture. Besides, my point is that there are multiple options, all of them rational. There is no single rational choice.
racked 3y ago
> The rational choice is to sell. If you as the owner are already wealthy 'enough', then that is not necessarily the rational choice. It depends how much you care about the future of the business. In my dreams, if I ran such a noble business, I would hope that I'd have managed to extract enough value from the business to arrange for my own pension by the time others want to acquire it, so I can reject their offers and keep control to safeguard the business's integrity. On the other hand, we are human. If the acquiring party makes an absolutely life-changing offer, it may be hard to resist. The story of Nullsoft and AOL comes to mind.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Well yeah, but almost nobody is in that position and that's the problem. You could always help out the people around you. Until everyone in our society is taken care of by default, these noble businesses will keep being extremely rare.

gizmo 3y ago

Cheaters think everybody cheats when given the opportunity. Thieves believe only fear of the law is what keeps the masses in line. Liars believe lying is normal and that they’re only embellishing anyway and really it’s for the greater good and also pragmatic and necessary to succeed. There are many people who would not f their users and employees over when given the opportunity. Be like that.

lawlessone 3y ago
Would like to think i wouldn't sell, but if someone massive company is offering my money, the worry is always they'll build their own later and stomp me anyway.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  That and there's probably an element of wishful thinking. "I built this nice thing, and they promised me they won't mess it up."
- diggan 3y ago
  That's why the product itself should not just be the technology stack (as GP might allude to), but something larger. In the case of Bandcamp, it's the relationships, community, trust and integrity that makes it what it is, and another massive company won't just be able to create those things by throwing random employees at the problem.
constantly 3y ago
Well, first of all, it’s transactional. I have no particular affinity for any given service I use. If another service comes along that has enough upside to overcome the momentum of switching, I’ll definitely do it, and I’m sure you would too, and maybe that will annoy the company. That goes the same for the company; if they have a chance to cash out, I’m sure they’d take it. And maybe that will annoy me. But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive.
- drcongo 3y ago
  I'm a Bandcamp user, the sale to Epic fucked me over.
  - wizerdrobe 3y ago
    I’ve admittedly aged into a stereotype out of an Hard Times article and so haven’t bought an album in years… What did they do exactly? My music is there I bought years back.
  - heleninboodler 3y ago
    Like the sibling comment, I'd honestly be interested in hearing how they fucked you over. I know the whole "we will keep running it just like it's always been" trope is very hard to swallow, but it seems to me they actually had left it alone thus far. Am I wrong about that?
  - amatecha 3y ago
    Same. The best online music service since Napster got screwed and it's never coming back. The writing is on the wall and it's clear that the "enshittification" officially begins.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive. Because that's what happened to a lot of companies who got bought out - eventually the MBA sharks wanted their returns. Minecraft, MySQL, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Reddit, TwiXXer, they all fell victim to enshittification. Others just ossified with steady streams of Big Money coming in like Mozilla, Wikipedia or a ton of stuff from Adobe. Or they got closed down by Big Corp because they were no longer "profitable" enough like Google Reader. Personally, I'm happy enough that HN still exists.
mschuster91 3y ago
Thing is, we are in a pretty ruthless society governed by sometimes insane amounts of money - and eventually, anyone will sell out given the right price, and no matter the purchase contract, eventually big-corp culture will seep in. See e.g. Atlassian, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft or Facebook who have been on the buyer side, and Minecraft and MySQL for infamous cases of companies that got bought out.
amrocha 3y ago
I agree with you on not wanting to fuck the users over either. Personally I don't want to do that. But the reality is, I have other things I need in life too, and those things require money. My dad is working into his 70s, what if I could fund his retirement? What if I could pay for my brothers uni? Or for my grandma's nurse? When our basic necessities are not secure, we can't always make the ethical choice. Until then, people will keep selling out.
- gizmo 3y ago
  Literally everybody has family members who could use extra money. If having family absolves you from ethical constraints we can dispense with the notion of ethics altogether.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    Sure, and that's why most people would sell. Having a family doesn't "absolve you" from ethics, but it means that you have to weight doing right by your family vs doing right by your users. Most people choose their family, and nobody blames them for it.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > nobody blames them for it I do. If somebody has to do wrong by their customers to do right to their family, they've seriously messed everything up.
      - amrocha 3y ago
        Ok well, that's alright but you have to realize that you're in the minority here. And no, they haven't messed everything up, society has failed them
  - alickz 3y ago
    I don't think selling your company is unethical
projectazorian 3y ago
Bandcamp did have investors, they weren't 100% bootstrapped. Those investors likely had board seats and a significant say in whether to accept Epic's offer. Not to mention that COVID led to a steep increase in the site's traffic. It's possible that the added operational burden meant that Bandcamp was no longer the chill lifestyle business that it used to be.

willsmith72 3y ago

It's not at all as simple as a "rational choice". It completely depends on your objective. Why did you start the business in the first place? If it was to make a few mill and never have to work again, sure, sell. If you wanted to build something bigger than yourself, work with great people, feel accomplished, then why sell? How is that few mill going to get you those things? A lot of founders regret their first sale because they realise they didn't want a cashout, they wanted to build something awesome

comprev 3y ago
To back this view up there are plenty of artists who openly admit they "break even" when they've sold a 300-batch of records. The operating costs include buying instruments/software/hardware, using a mastering service and pressing vinyl - all of which are not cheap. They do it for the love of producing music - and watching their work sell out within _minutes_ of being released... which in turn inspires them to make another record (or ten haha!)
- amrocha 3y ago
  I'm not dismissing that, but most artists sell out given the chance. The thing is that the gap between "breaking even" and "life changing money" is huge for most artists. You wouldn't sell out for 50K per year, but 1M? Sell out for 2 years and you're set for life, then you can go back to making the music you love. But very few artists can pull 1M per year, so it doesn't happen as often.
Tao3300 3y ago
> feel accomplished Believe it or not you can buy that. Though I'm sure there's some corporate backed, non-replicable, behavioral science study that says otherwise.
- willsmith72 3y ago
  I choose not, can you convince me otherwise?
- 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

> The rational choice is to sell. Not necessarily. Whether or not that's the rational choice depends on what your goals are.

npteljes 3y ago

It's also rational not to sell. Why not value a nice sustainable business over selling out? I understand that many of us would sell, I would probably sell too. But different people do exist. Valve didn't sell, for example, and I'm sure they were approached many times.

amrocha 3y ago
Yeah they definitely do exist, but it's the exception. That's why everybody knows about valve and epic. However, if Gabe's family had urgently needed money back in the day, would he have sold? Maybe. That's what I'm getting at. You need to be in a very stable position to be able to turn down a big offer like that when it comes, and in general in our society we're always one or two emergencies away from being destitute on the streets. Until we make sure people are taken care of, these companies will keep being the exception.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I don't know about how rare it is, because rejected offers don't make the news. We either talk about the successful selling stories, or the major holdouts. I don't think this paints a full picture. Besides, my point is that there are multiple options, all of them rational. There is no single rational choice.

racked 3y ago

> The rational choice is to sell. If you as the owner are already wealthy 'enough', then that is not necessarily the rational choice. It depends how much you care about the future of the business. In my dreams, if I ran such a noble business, I would hope that I'd have managed to extract enough value from the business to arrange for my own pension by the time others want to acquire it, so I can reject their offers and keep control to safeguard the business's integrity. On the other hand, we are human. If the acquiring party makes an absolutely life-changing offer, it may be hard to resist. The story of Nullsoft and AOL comes to mind.

amrocha 3y ago
Well yeah, but almost nobody is in that position and that's the problem. You could always help out the people around you. Until everyone in our society is taken care of by default, these noble businesses will keep being extremely rare.