11 ms·

After my dad died, I ran and sold his company (2018)

880 points by ziptron 2y ago

goodJobWalrus 2y ago
In case the author is reading this, I am wondering why Dad did not have a succession plan, and was it ever discussed in the family what should happen after? What was dad’s plan?
- IshanMi 2y ago
  The author mentions that his father was in touch with a PE-backed chemical company a month before he passed, who re-engaged a month after- sounds like that might have been his succession plan?
- jalapenos 2y ago
  From reading it, and the various references to various potential buyers his father had already been in discussion with, it appears his plan was to sell it before that. This is a big problem with these kinds of businesses. A lot of these solo owners who build up a business over the course of many decades serious underestimate how hard they are to sell, and have an unrealistic idea of what valuation they'll be able to get. There is a whole industry of those bottom feeders the author referred to, who's business is precisely waiting for these sole owners to either die, or better yet become incapacitated to the extent they are forced to sell their businesses (but not so much that they can't hold a pen and read a sales contract), so that they can swoop in and offer them 2x or 3x - "what's your best alternative?".
  - amadeuspagel 2y ago
    If there's a whole industry of them, shouldn't there be lots of competition to buy these companies?
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      A whole industry of bottom-feeders buyers, but the companies they are buying are not necessarily in the same markets as each other, at all.
    - bell-cot 2y ago
      There's vastly more profit in buying a few companies at 33 paise on the rupee than in buying lots of companies at 99 paise on the rupee. And coordinated punishment of any newcomers - who try to disrupt a status quo of systematic underbidding - does not even require communication between the incumbents.
      - smcin 2y ago
        What exactly is the coordinated punishment of newcomers?
        bell-cot 2y ago
        The simplest tactic is to bid up anything they're trying to buy to 101+ paise on the rupee.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Then who is buying at 33 paise? You are contradicting yourself. If something “worth” 1 rupee is not selling for 1 rupee,then the logical conclusion, absent collusion/cartel/monopsony behavior, is that it is not worth 1 rupee or even 99 paise, but rather the 33 paise that it is selling at.
        bell-cot 2y ago
        The established players - and occasional well-behaved newcomers - are buying at (say) 33 paise on the rupee. The "1 rupee" is what the business would be worth, in a highly efficient, open market. Which this market clearly is not. And the regulars are quietly colluding to keep it that way.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        The context of _rm’s post is not about the OP’s dad’s specific business in its specific regulatory environment which may or may not constitute a “highly efficient, open market”. > lot of these solo owners who build up a business over the course of many decades serious underestimate how hard they are to sell, and have an unrealistic idea of what valuation they'll be able to get. From this, I get the sense that _rm was talking about owners of niche businesses that are surprised to find a smaller market of interested buyers, and hence are surprised they cannot sell their business at a price they hoped to get. My point was simply that just because a seller cannot get a buyer to pay the price they hoped, that does not make the buyer a “bad” person.
  - daedrdev 2y ago
    Yeah his father probably had been receiving lowball and unserious offers for years if one were to find the right email folder
  - FredPret 2y ago
    I'm not commenting on OP or their family business, but a multiple of 2x or 3x could be more than fair for a hands-on small business. Consider that there are large public companies with established management systems that you can buy and hold, completely hands-off, for multiples of 5x - 10x. GM is trading at 5x, lots of banks are in that range, huge equipment rentals, mines, etc.
    - im3w1l 2y ago
      Doesn't a multiple of 5 basically mean the market is seriously worried that the business will shrink / go bankrupt?
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Perhaps, but investors are neither fully informed nor fully rational. People get overexcited about new trends, then everybody jumps on the bandwagon, and good but boring stocks are ignored. Doesn't mean these are weak businesses though.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Why are the buyers referred to in derogatory terms? By the same logic, the seller should also be referred to in the same derogatory terms, for holding out for too high of a price. Or one could do the sensible thing and leave emotion out of it, and realize business is just business. The market price is the price that results in a transaction.
    - chmod775 2y ago
      >Why are the buyers referred to in derogatory terms? Because they are taking advantage of the owner's impaired judgement due to their personal situation/ill health in trying to extract an unfair price. Such behavior is referred to as "morally reprehensible" at best, and is skirting the legal line of what would be considered a contract made under duress at worst.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        So no one should ever buy from someone who is dying or ill? That’s crazy. Supply and demand curves are in constant flux. The seller didn’t like the market prices when they were healthy, that does not mean they are entitled to a minimum price. Everyone gets ill and dies eventually, and everyone knows it. They are free to sell before that at the market price.
        chmod775 2y ago
        > So no one should ever buy from someone who is dying or ill? You can do that. However there's an issue with basing a business around reaching out to people with bad-faith offers the week their parents died or they were hospitalized themselves.
      - gedy 2y ago
        > Because they are taking advantage of the owner's impaired judgement due to their personal situation/ill health in trying to extract an unfair price I think you are assuming way too much - a lot of older folks sell things "because they are done", and much is upside from when they purchased or started originally. Even when they are ill, many folks just don't care enough about the money enough to wait it out, negotiate, etc.
- asanwal 2y ago
  Hi - author here. This is a big question tbh and the lack of a succession plan is a function of many things: 1. This was my dad's baby. He loved the engineering and the science of it and so the idea of retiring from it was difficult for him to conceive. Doing that also requires thinking about one's mortality which I also believe was difficult for him. 2. This was a small market business in a tier 2 city in India. Attracting talent that could take it over was challenging. And myself and my siblings having been born and brought up in the States and being utterly clueless about the engineering/science of the company made us a non-starter. 3. As others have pointed out, he was thinking about succession/exit because he knew it was required for the biz to live on and grow. But life unfortunately had other plans and he was taken away from us unexpectedly. There are definitely lots of could haves, should haves, would haves, etc I've thought about afterwards, but this was clearly one of those "play the cards you're dealt" kind of situations. Thanks for reading.
  - triyambakam 2y ago
    I'm curious if you can share: how were you raised in the US while your father was in India? You were raised by a relative, or your mother lived away from your father?
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    Thanks for writing a great article. I was honestly impressed with how much you cared for your employees. The American way would be to just sell it to the highest bidder without any concern for anything else. Does India have a different social contract? I'd never expect a company to actually look out for my best interest. It seems like you really cared for your team. Are lifers common in India? Back in my grandpa's time, you worked at the same place for 20 years, they gave you a gold watch, and then you retired. Now your expected to jump ship often or your leaving money on the table.
    - asanwal 2y ago
      Thank you. I don't think there is an Indian social contract but having been born and brought up here in the USA, I'd be talking out of my a$$ on that topic :) This was maybe more of an implied or expected contract I had with my dad and mom who built the business and by extension the Atlas team. Job hopping is quite common in India, but that's probably more common in larger cities. In a tier 2 city like where my dad's business was, there are limited options for a plant engineer for example, and as far as I can tell, the skills they have in a fine chemicals plant may not be immediately transferable to a plastics manufacturer. And finally, many were with my dad for 10+ years so probably some amount of comfort in knowing the domain, the job, the boss, etc.
- jfdsaflkjv 2y ago
  The Dad probably expected to live longer and run the business until then. Sounds like it was a big part of his identity. Besides, most closely-held businesses don't have succession plans anyway.
- codegeek 2y ago
  This was in India where succession planning for small business is non-existent and if kids don't pick up their family business, it's over. However, even in America, this situation exists for small businesses. With so many baby boomers retiring from businesses like HVAC etc, their kids don't necessarily want to continue the business.
amadeuspagel 2y ago
Fascinating article, but reading it I kept asking myself: Why not promote someone to CEO? Surely any top-level manager already working at the company will do a better a job then someone who's only qualification is working there 18 years ago.
- asanwal 2y ago
  Author here 1. He died suddenly so would have been a good thing to explore and do with time. It certainly would have made my life easier :) 2. Building a business that is small to medium-sized with no brand recogntion in a tier 2 city in India doesn't afford you access to tier 1 talent. India's talent and talent preferences are incredibly different than the USA.
  - sebstefan 2y ago
    Similar vein question > Atlas has a great team with lots of experience. I assumed if I was doing something really really dumb, they’d tell me If that's the case why not sell it to them and make it a co-op?
    - asanwal 2y ago
      Didn't consider this for many reasons: 1. Most importantly, we didn’t have the talent internally to do that. Running the biz requires a set of generalist biz skills and the company was comprised of specialists. They could tell me about issues in their domain but business requires skills across many domains. And running a biz of this size in a location as challenging as Nasik/Sinnar requires someone being the top dog as decision by consensus wouldn't work (rarely does). 2. Capital availability / accessibility - The team just wouldn't have had it. Indian credit and debt markets would not be available. 3. Non-traditional structure would have required a lot of education - Even if capital was somehow available (0% chance), this would have been an exercise in 'herding cats' and wasn't something I had time for. I was running a business here in the USA plus had a wife and 2 young kids. My work hours were already insane just operating the businesses. I was optimizing for a simple, clean deal for many reasons and a co-op would have been an amount of 'brain damage' I wasn't game for especially given factors above. -- Finally, I'll say that I don't think this would have been feasible in India at the scale and location we were at for one other intangible and cultural reason. And that is because the employee to owner mentality transition would be non-trivial to impossible. The gulf is just too big. The reality is that reimagining yourself as a founder or owner requires a different mindset. There is no 'leaving the office' especially at the scale of Atlas (small/mid-sized). You're always on call to some extent and all problems seek you out (or you have to go find them). This is not the kind of responsibility and weight most people want at the end of the day.
tibbydudeza 2y ago
Amazing story - shows the importance of succession planning - worked for a family-owned company but the apples did not fall close to the tree - the sons and daughters could not match the father. Like what happened to Wang. Today they are technically bankrupt and reluctantly handed over control to seasoned management and they are spinning out parts of the company to raise capital to save the core business.
sspiff 2y ago
> While I don’t think most people would ever find themselves in a similar situation (I certainly hope not), I'm not sure what the author means by this. Sad though it may be, most people will experience their dad dieing. And inheriting control of a company sounds like a 1%'er problem if I ever heard one. What is OP wishing to spare the rest of us from, exactly?
- stavros 2y ago
  I think he meant "inheriting a company in a sector you know nothing about".
- jfdsaflkjv 2y ago
  I know exactly what the author meant by that. He meant losing a parent at a young age. It doesn't happen to most people.
- gus_massa 2y ago
  The difference is that usualy after a few days you resume your normal life. In this case, he was constantly reminded about his father death.
- diob 2y ago
  It'd definitely not something I can relate to. My parents will leave me nothing, and have spent most of their life taking from me.
mizzao 2y ago
> Candidly, my only qualification to run Atlas at this time was that I was the founder’s son. It seems like an even more important qualification was that the founder's son was also a founder. Otherwise this would have been much less likely to work.
- peter_l_downs 2y ago
  Maybe. Frankly this is a very impressive outcome that is attributable both to the Father's business and management practices, as well as the Son's business and management practices. No matter how good you are at running a web business, if you inherit a totally fucked business with poor practices, very unlikely you could engineer this outcome. My condolences to the OP and I was happy to read such a well-written article describing a fantastic outcome for his father's company.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- CPLX 2y ago
  It’s an odd sentence to be honest. Being the son of the founder of a business has been the strongest qualification for running that business for at least 3,000 years. On top of that he had worked in this same company for two years, had an Ivy League degree, had worked both in startups and large scale investment banking firms, and had founded and run an unrelated $100M+ enterprise.
  - OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
    Yeah, but other than that, ... ;-) The author was born/raised in the US which, not explicitly mentioned, means his father must have spent most of his time in India, away from the family, running the business. If so, that's a big sacrifice that the son amply reciprocated.
langsoul-com 2y ago
Wonder if the author could speak about how him already being a founder played into the equation. Let's say he was a software dev, no team lead, no manager, individual contributor. How would things play out?
- asanwal 2y ago
  Hi, Having founded and run CB Insights certainly helped mostly cuz I had some sense of where to focus. In this case, we had product-market fit to use a tech term. My dad's product was great. And so I didn't need to worry about that. If I had to worry about that, this probably doesn't unfold as it did. That meant I just had to worry about 2 things: 1. Making sure we were buying raw materials at rates that allowed us to sell the product profitably 2. 'Ringing the register' aka making sales. And that ultimately is not intellectually hard but just requires effort, i.e. researching, calling, emailing, etc.
  - sureglymop 2y ago
    Hey. This is completely unrelated but I wanted to ask if you provide an RSS feed for your blog? I did find a /feed page but I'm unsure if it's working.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - asanwal 2y ago
      I set this blog up 24 hours ago and just started moving old writings to it and still have another 200ish to go. So the honest answer is I don’t know. Tbh, getting on HN today was completely unexpected. I believe you can subscribe via email for updates. And hopefully I’ll figure out the RSS thing soon as well. Thanks
      - ziptron 2y ago
        OP here. @asanwal, in case you're wondering, a mutual connection of ours liked your LinkedIn post featuring this article. That's how I found this.
electrodank 2y ago
Left field comment but I’d love to be thrown into an MBA-like simulator (HBS?) and have to figure out the industry and the company and stabilize it/make it grow and whatnot within some time window. Great read, thank you to the author who took the time to write up all that, it was very insightful and must have been fucking difficult in many ways.
- asdflksdajvlkj 2y ago
  https://www.capitalismlab.com/ https://www.capitalismlab.com/
jacknews 2y ago
Wouldn't it have been better if ownership of the company, essentially comprised of the workers and managers, actually passed to the workers who knew what they were doing? To me this just highlights the absurdity of capitalist ownership.
- OJFord 2y ago
  For them sure, not for OP and family? It wasn't run on a total profit share before OP's father died, it would be weird (and very bad incentive) if that suddenly changed. No doubt that sort of thing happens sometimes, or especially donating an inheritance to charity, but it being the default would be more absurd to me, when it was already in 'capitalist ownership'.
- kbelder 2y ago
  The business exists in the first place because of capitalist ownership.
  - jacknews 2y ago
    in this particular instance. But you seem to imply that if capitalism didn't exist, nor would chemical companies, etc. Something like this business would still exist if there was a need for it under almost any political-economic system. There are numerous other ways for people to cooperate and work together, partnerships, co-operatives, etc, etc, that do not involve single individuals reaping all the profit of everyone's else's hard work. IMHO any collection of workers deserve that their 'owner' at least understand the nature of their work, and ideally they should themselves be owners.
    - x-complexity 2y ago
      There are a series of overlooked axioms in that train of thought, in that: - All people involved are capable of learning skills outside of their knowledge domain as quickly as those inside those domains (People interchangeability) - All people involved won't have ideological splits for the direction of the company - That everyone involved wants to partake in the risks of ownership (market uncertainties/shifts, illiquid buyout scenarios, dealing with ownership transfer headaches, new incoming co-owners, ownership dilution, etc.) - That there is time outside of their work to manage the overhead of this co-op - That the talent required to ease their workloads is receptive to the co-op concept, or cheap enough to hire (not likely) in cases where they just want a stable income (see point 3) - That the decision overhead from the co-op is lower than the standard corporate structure (possible, & likely the easiest axiom to fulfill out of the list, if the time of the co-owners is cheaper) The author of the post responded to a similar question made earlier: Certain mental, financial, & cultural logistics are just not there/available given the time-frame involved. The co-op ideal is wonderful, but it requires a series of fulfillments that not everyone is as receptive towards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40766367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40766367
johndhi 2y ago
This is incredibly well written (in addition to being substantively compelling). Bravo!
Ozzie_osman 2y ago
This was a great read. A few years out of school, I took a detour from tech/entrepreneurship to work in my family business (overseeing operations in a construction manufacturing facility, in Egypt), mostly with my Uncle. In my case, though I fully prefer tech as an industry, the deal-breakers were a dismal economic/political climate and an... interesting Uncle. Apart from that, a lot of the article resonated. A few other things that stood out and made the transition hard for me were: corruption (in the construction industry, hard to avoid) and culture/hierarchy.
- fasa99 2y ago
  Same here. I'm a big wheel at a big company (tech) everyone here has heard of. But My father passed a few years ago, he ran an old box factory in Tajikistan. I ran it into the ground. Sometimes you need to run a box factory in tajikistan to run in the ground to learn a thing or two about life.. things you don't never learn in silicon valley
renewiltord 2y ago
Sorry to hear about your dad. Seems to have been a good and smart man. This was a pretty insightful story. Thank you for sharing it.
skybrian 2y ago
This is quite a good story. Since it happened in 2018, I wonder what’s happened to the business since then?
amtamt 2y ago
Maharashtra has a long history of cooperatives, some of whichquite successful. I wonder if employees brought up or were given a option to form a cooperative, if immediate liquidity was not a major requirement.
- eldavido 2y ago
  I think these aren't more popular because actually, there are things that genuinely suck about small business ownership. Offhand: stress, uncertainty/having to make payroll, having a significant % of your net worth tied up in a single, undiversified investment that's near-impossible to sell. Given the choice, I think a normal cash-paying salary job (maybe with bonus) is vastly preferable to most people.
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
This is such a heartwarming story. Thank you for sharing about this Anand. I loved the part about how your dad’s legacy is all the children of employees who could continue their education.
didip 2y ago
Thank you for sharing this unique story. Some parts of your story resonated with my life, hope you don’t mind me sharing: * At times it felt like the true sons are the companies they started. They live and breathe in them. I have a strange detachment to my own family because of this. * Thus, they have serious attachment issues and zero succession plans. * My mom later passed away too soon and missed out much of the life experience she could have had. Glad that she did travel around the world before death. * Even after all that, my old man still doesn’t have succession plan. Dunno what’s gonna happen to all the people working for him. And the clock is ticking. * Like OP, I spent most of my life in the US, so I too would be useless in dealing with the businesses. Even the real estate company (something I know a bit in the US) is far too different back there. Also, blatant corruption is simply not my cup of tea. I tried to help them multiple times. I offered to sponsor them green card, but they consistently refused. I offered if they need help finding private equity to liquidate and just retire. Sometimes I wonder if my mom could have been saved with US quality healthcare. Oh well, I did my best, there was nothing I could have done.
OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
As a chemist I know what coumarin is but had no idea of its place in the chemical industry, least of all as a substitute for vanillin which looks nothing like it. Often, two molecules that are just sliiiightly different will have entirely different functions. Here, two molecules that are completely different can be substituted in some capacity. But, damn, what a fine piece of writing. A seamless connection of facts and reminiscences all taking me somewhere. The author tells his family's and their extended family's story, without all the contortions and schnookery involved in "telling a story" in our marketing-besotted culture. "Touching the product makes it different" is a remarkable turn of phrase.
- elevatedastalt 2y ago
  Vanilla bean != Vanillin, since the smell of natural vanilla bean has a many more components to it other than Vanillin which lend it that characteristic odor (sweet, animalic, slightly woody and herbaceous). Vanillin by itself is of course a principle component. However, coumarin and vanillin don't smell too similar. Coumarin has more of a herbaceous, 'hay' smell, quite different from vanillin itself.
  - OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
    Agreed. My use of "substitute" was a bad choice. I would not have thought that coumarin could/would be used as a component in vanilla substitutes. "They make glue out of horses. I don’t know who started that. Who saw that potential? That’s pretty amazing to me..." --- Jerry Seinfeld [1] [1] https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/jerry-seinfeld-im-telling-you-for-the-last-time-full-transcript/ https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/jerry-seinfeld-im-telli...
    - klodolph 2y ago
      I know it’s a rhetorical question—but I’m sure that someone discovered animal glues because they were cooking, left the animal products to cook in water, and then let it dry out. You cook it because it’s supposed to be food, but sometimes you’re left with this thick, sticky substance. Voilà, glue.
iamgopal 2y ago
Wow !! We have supplied machinery to this company, how wonderful to find such write up at other end of the spectrum. World is small and gol.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  Gol == round
confused_boner 2y ago
Pitch it to Bollywood, has script potential
prakhar897 2y ago
Great Story! I have a question. Why didn't you elevate someone from inside to the CEO position? Seems like a great way to maintain ownership (and take care of people) while also rewarding the best employees.
- asanwal 2y ago
  Unfortunately, didn’t have the talent internally to do that. Running the biz required a set of generalist biz skills and the company was mostly specialists.
  - statictype 2y ago
    Wasn’t your dad also a specialist in that sense (the technical founder as you put it)? Great writing, btw.
    - asanwal 2y ago
      Thanks. Dad was a specialist on the engineering/science side. He learned and grinded enough over time to become quite dangerous on the business stuff. I guess he'd be what some folks would call T-shaped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills
- jlg23 2y ago
  from the article: > Option 3 — Find a young, aggressive, ambitious person to run Atlas > [...] > This would have been an amazing opportunity for the right person, but it wasn’t in the cards.
boberoni 2y ago
> business is about growth or margin. > To grow, we could do 1 of 2 things: > - Sell more of our existing products, primarily Coumarin > - Add new products > If we focused on margin, that’d mean focusing on: > - Increasing efficiency in manufacturing > - Reducing expenses Good insights. I’m curious if there are other models of business that are just as simple and useful… :)
Umofomia 2y ago
I noticed the word 'jugaad' from his speech and looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad It seems like a very befitting word for the eponymous "hacker" ethos of this site.
- albert_e 2y ago
  But the same word has also been over used to provide cover or respectability for all types of anti-patterns from poor planning, to lack of any safety net or margins, to cutting corners, disregard for standards and regulations, and hustle culture where the ends justify means however questionable. So a pinch of salt needed when we hear this word.
- zem 2y ago
  see also "bricolage"
bprater 2y ago
"Plus, margin is hard to rally the team around." "Growth is tangible." Love the way he packaged this!
smrtinsert 2y ago
this was an absolute incredible story. I would absolutely watch a movie about this story. learning history and family through something that at its surface seems so cold and difficult to process is very intriguing, a triumph of small business, cultural differences (americanized indian returns to india), i sense a great film in this story. thanks for sharing!
wdb 2y ago
My father had a fragrance company (now owned by Givaudan) as client and every time he visited he came back with reproductions of famous perfumes (sampler size). I always found it interesting that they lasted longer or smelled nicer than the original. Of course, most of the time he only brought it back for mom. First time, I visited, the company with my dad, I was surprised in how much things a fragrance is used. From perfume, shampoo but also cleaning products. It's a fascinating business.
abledon 2y ago
heartwarming!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
billy99k 2y ago
My brother died almost 10 years ago and he ran his own software company. He had no plan, because he thought he could beat cancer. His wife had to get his passwords while he was on his deathbed. The day of his funeral, his wife begged me to look at his work laptop and help her out. She even mentioned us being partners in the company. I was already running my own successful company at the time and had almost no time do this. I found the time and saved her probably close to $150,000 in customers pissed off because my brother stopped handling support due to his illness, forgotten about purchase orders, and a website that he pre-paid for $20,000 and was never delivered because he died and never told them he was sick. They sent over the entire amount within a few days of me explaining the situation. I never expected any money for this work, I was just trying to clean up the business and get it back to a functional level. A few months later, when she had time to grieve and think about things, she wanted to talk partnership. Her first offer was to pay me $15/hour, which I rejected (and laughed about later with my wife). Her second offer was to give me 10% of the company and when her kids turned 18 in 8 years, they would get full control over the company (including my 10%). I was personally offended because she essentially wanted me to maintain and build up the entire company, take a very low percentage along the way, only to hand over the entire company to her kids (my nephews). When I explained this to her and rejected the offer, she told me that I had no skills beyond 'answering emails' and that I didn't 'understand how business worked'. Shortly after this, she found an email from my brother's old friend who was very religious. She had also recently found god and as a result, convinced this person that he needed to help her for free. For the last 6 or 7 years, the business has been in maintenance mode with this person answering emails, for free. I know the technical capabilities of this person and most responses are basically re-installing the software or rebooting the computer. I am also in the tech industry and the job this person has is about the level I was at when I was 15 (I'm 45 now). The result was as I expected: Most of his clients stopped re-purchasing licenses because there is no more support or bug fixes and you also just can't trust the security of software after it hasn't been updated in 10 years. She now has to work a minimum wage job making meals for the elderly (which isn't a bad thing) and the company is close to bankruptcy. It was good we were never partners, because I probably would not have been able to start my next business. It took my brother over a decade to build his successful company, and a few years for his wife to destroy it.
parker-3461 2y ago
The speech given to the Atlas team was really touching, I actually teared up a bit when reading through it. @asanwal thank you for sharing this.
starboyy 2y ago
I worked at CB Insights for a while. One of the best company to work for.
hajrice 2y ago
Very common that the children don't wish to run the family business – I always wondered why. Wonder how much things would have turned out differently had the Dad introduced the company to his son at a young age and "groomed" him to be the future leader of the organization.
- zem 2y ago
  interacting with parents as an adult is weird, you're expected to be perpetually deferential to them simply because you started your relationship that way. (perhaps even more so in asian cultures like mine and the author's). I'm not surprised that people would rather not have even their work lives pushed into that framework.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    it's a luxury that modern life affords us. Traditionally boys would go into what their father has done, as he did his father and his father before him. It’s only relatively recently that society affords children an opportunity to branch out from the circumstances of our birth. The idea of royal succession seems less weird when the rest of the whole world is also organized that way
towndrunk 2y ago
Anyone know of any similar stories like this one? I don't know why, but I really enjoy reading these and hearing the thought process and decisions made.

880 points by ziptron 2y ago

In case the author is reading this, I am wondering why Dad did not have a succession plan, and was it ever discussed in the family what should happen after? What was dad’s plan?

IshanMi 2y ago
The author mentions that his father was in touch with a PE-backed chemical company a month before he passed, who re-engaged a month after- sounds like that might have been his succession plan?
jalapenos 2y ago
From reading it, and the various references to various potential buyers his father had already been in discussion with, it appears his plan was to sell it before that. This is a big problem with these kinds of businesses. A lot of these solo owners who build up a business over the course of many decades serious underestimate how hard they are to sell, and have an unrealistic idea of what valuation they'll be able to get. There is a whole industry of those bottom feeders the author referred to, who's business is precisely waiting for these sole owners to either die, or better yet become incapacitated to the extent they are forced to sell their businesses (but not so much that they can't hold a pen and read a sales contract), so that they can swoop in and offer them 2x or 3x - "what's your best alternative?".
- amadeuspagel 2y ago
  If there's a whole industry of them, shouldn't there be lots of competition to buy these companies?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    A whole industry of bottom-feeders buyers, but the companies they are buying are not necessarily in the same markets as each other, at all.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    There's vastly more profit in buying a few companies at 33 paise on the rupee than in buying lots of companies at 99 paise on the rupee. And coordinated punishment of any newcomers - who try to disrupt a status quo of systematic underbidding - does not even require communication between the incumbents.
    - smcin 2y ago
      What exactly is the coordinated punishment of newcomers?
      - bell-cot 2y ago
        The simplest tactic is to bid up anything they're trying to buy to 101+ paise on the rupee.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Then who is buying at 33 paise? You are contradicting yourself. If something “worth” 1 rupee is not selling for 1 rupee,then the logical conclusion, absent collusion/cartel/monopsony behavior, is that it is not worth 1 rupee or even 99 paise, but rather the 33 paise that it is selling at.
        bell-cot 2y ago
        The established players - and occasional well-behaved newcomers - are buying at (say) 33 paise on the rupee. The "1 rupee" is what the business would be worth, in a highly efficient, open market. Which this market clearly is not. And the regulars are quietly colluding to keep it that way.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        The context of _rm’s post is not about the OP’s dad’s specific business in its specific regulatory environment which may or may not constitute a “highly efficient, open market”. > lot of these solo owners who build up a business over the course of many decades serious underestimate how hard they are to sell, and have an unrealistic idea of what valuation they'll be able to get. From this, I get the sense that _rm was talking about owners of niche businesses that are surprised to find a smaller market of interested buyers, and hence are surprised they cannot sell their business at a price they hoped to get. My point was simply that just because a seller cannot get a buyer to pay the price they hoped, that does not make the buyer a “bad” person.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  Yeah his father probably had been receiving lowball and unserious offers for years if one were to find the right email folder
- FredPret 2y ago
  I'm not commenting on OP or their family business, but a multiple of 2x or 3x could be more than fair for a hands-on small business. Consider that there are large public companies with established management systems that you can buy and hold, completely hands-off, for multiples of 5x - 10x. GM is trading at 5x, lots of banks are in that range, huge equipment rentals, mines, etc.
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    Doesn't a multiple of 5 basically mean the market is seriously worried that the business will shrink / go bankrupt?
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Perhaps, but investors are neither fully informed nor fully rational. People get overexcited about new trends, then everybody jumps on the bandwagon, and good but boring stocks are ignored. Doesn't mean these are weak businesses though.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Why are the buyers referred to in derogatory terms? By the same logic, the seller should also be referred to in the same derogatory terms, for holding out for too high of a price. Or one could do the sensible thing and leave emotion out of it, and realize business is just business. The market price is the price that results in a transaction.
  - chmod775 2y ago
    >Why are the buyers referred to in derogatory terms? Because they are taking advantage of the owner's impaired judgement due to their personal situation/ill health in trying to extract an unfair price. Such behavior is referred to as "morally reprehensible" at best, and is skirting the legal line of what would be considered a contract made under duress at worst.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      So no one should ever buy from someone who is dying or ill? That’s crazy. Supply and demand curves are in constant flux. The seller didn’t like the market prices when they were healthy, that does not mean they are entitled to a minimum price. Everyone gets ill and dies eventually, and everyone knows it. They are free to sell before that at the market price.
      - chmod775 2y ago
        > So no one should ever buy from someone who is dying or ill? You can do that. However there's an issue with basing a business around reaching out to people with bad-faith offers the week their parents died or they were hospitalized themselves.
    - gedy 2y ago
      > Because they are taking advantage of the owner's impaired judgement due to their personal situation/ill health in trying to extract an unfair price I think you are assuming way too much - a lot of older folks sell things "because they are done", and much is upside from when they purchased or started originally. Even when they are ill, many folks just don't care enough about the money enough to wait it out, negotiate, etc.
asanwal 2y ago
Hi - author here. This is a big question tbh and the lack of a succession plan is a function of many things: 1. This was my dad's baby. He loved the engineering and the science of it and so the idea of retiring from it was difficult for him to conceive. Doing that also requires thinking about one's mortality which I also believe was difficult for him. 2. This was a small market business in a tier 2 city in India. Attracting talent that could take it over was challenging. And myself and my siblings having been born and brought up in the States and being utterly clueless about the engineering/science of the company made us a non-starter. 3. As others have pointed out, he was thinking about succession/exit because he knew it was required for the biz to live on and grow. But life unfortunately had other plans and he was taken away from us unexpectedly. There are definitely lots of could haves, should haves, would haves, etc I've thought about afterwards, but this was clearly one of those "play the cards you're dealt" kind of situations. Thanks for reading.
- triyambakam 2y ago
  I'm curious if you can share: how were you raised in the US while your father was in India? You were raised by a relative, or your mother lived away from your father?
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Thanks for writing a great article. I was honestly impressed with how much you cared for your employees. The American way would be to just sell it to the highest bidder without any concern for anything else. Does India have a different social contract? I'd never expect a company to actually look out for my best interest. It seems like you really cared for your team. Are lifers common in India? Back in my grandpa's time, you worked at the same place for 20 years, they gave you a gold watch, and then you retired. Now your expected to jump ship often or your leaving money on the table.
  - asanwal 2y ago
    Thank you. I don't think there is an Indian social contract but having been born and brought up here in the USA, I'd be talking out of my a$$ on that topic :) This was maybe more of an implied or expected contract I had with my dad and mom who built the business and by extension the Atlas team. Job hopping is quite common in India, but that's probably more common in larger cities. In a tier 2 city like where my dad's business was, there are limited options for a plant engineer for example, and as far as I can tell, the skills they have in a fine chemicals plant may not be immediately transferable to a plastics manufacturer. And finally, many were with my dad for 10+ years so probably some amount of comfort in knowing the domain, the job, the boss, etc.
jfdsaflkjv 2y ago
The Dad probably expected to live longer and run the business until then. Sounds like it was a big part of his identity. Besides, most closely-held businesses don't have succession plans anyway.
codegeek 2y ago
This was in India where succession planning for small business is non-existent and if kids don't pick up their family business, it's over. However, even in America, this situation exists for small businesses. With so many baby boomers retiring from businesses like HVAC etc, their kids don't necessarily want to continue the business.

amadeuspagel 2y ago

Fascinating article, but reading it I kept asking myself: Why not promote someone to CEO? Surely any top-level manager already working at the company will do a better a job then someone who's only qualification is working there 18 years ago.

asanwal 2y ago
Author here 1. He died suddenly so would have been a good thing to explore and do with time. It certainly would have made my life easier :) 2. Building a business that is small to medium-sized with no brand recogntion in a tier 2 city in India doesn't afford you access to tier 1 talent. India's talent and talent preferences are incredibly different than the USA.
- sebstefan 2y ago
  Similar vein question > Atlas has a great team with lots of experience. I assumed if I was doing something really really dumb, they’d tell me If that's the case why not sell it to them and make it a co-op?
  - asanwal 2y ago
    Didn't consider this for many reasons: 1. Most importantly, we didn’t have the talent internally to do that. Running the biz requires a set of generalist biz skills and the company was comprised of specialists. They could tell me about issues in their domain but business requires skills across many domains. And running a biz of this size in a location as challenging as Nasik/Sinnar requires someone being the top dog as decision by consensus wouldn't work (rarely does). 2. Capital availability / accessibility - The team just wouldn't have had it. Indian credit and debt markets would not be available. 3. Non-traditional structure would have required a lot of education - Even if capital was somehow available (0% chance), this would have been an exercise in 'herding cats' and wasn't something I had time for. I was running a business here in the USA plus had a wife and 2 young kids. My work hours were already insane just operating the businesses. I was optimizing for a simple, clean deal for many reasons and a co-op would have been an amount of 'brain damage' I wasn't game for especially given factors above. -- Finally, I'll say that I don't think this would have been feasible in India at the scale and location we were at for one other intangible and cultural reason. And that is because the employee to owner mentality transition would be non-trivial to impossible. The gulf is just too big. The reality is that reimagining yourself as a founder or owner requires a different mindset. There is no 'leaving the office' especially at the scale of Atlas (small/mid-sized). You're always on call to some extent and all problems seek you out (or you have to go find them). This is not the kind of responsibility and weight most people want at the end of the day.

tibbydudeza 2y ago

Amazing story - shows the importance of succession planning - worked for a family-owned company but the apples did not fall close to the tree - the sons and daughters could not match the father. Like what happened to Wang. Today they are technically bankrupt and reluctantly handed over control to seasoned management and they are spinning out parts of the company to raise capital to save the core business.

sspiff 2y ago

> While I don’t think most people would ever find themselves in a similar situation (I certainly hope not), I'm not sure what the author means by this. Sad though it may be, most people will experience their dad dieing. And inheriting control of a company sounds like a 1%'er problem if I ever heard one. What is OP wishing to spare the rest of us from, exactly?

stavros 2y ago
I think he meant "inheriting a company in a sector you know nothing about".
jfdsaflkjv 2y ago
I know exactly what the author meant by that. He meant losing a parent at a young age. It doesn't happen to most people.
gus_massa 2y ago
The difference is that usualy after a few days you resume your normal life. In this case, he was constantly reminded about his father death.
diob 2y ago
It'd definitely not something I can relate to. My parents will leave me nothing, and have spent most of their life taking from me.

mizzao 2y ago

> Candidly, my only qualification to run Atlas at this time was that I was the founder’s son. It seems like an even more important qualification was that the founder's son was also a founder. Otherwise this would have been much less likely to work.

peter_l_downs 2y ago
Maybe. Frankly this is a very impressive outcome that is attributable both to the Father's business and management practices, as well as the Son's business and management practices. No matter how good you are at running a web business, if you inherit a totally fucked business with poor practices, very unlikely you could engineer this outcome. My condolences to the OP and I was happy to read such a well-written article describing a fantastic outcome for his father's company.
deleted 2y ago
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CPLX 2y ago
It’s an odd sentence to be honest. Being the son of the founder of a business has been the strongest qualification for running that business for at least 3,000 years. On top of that he had worked in this same company for two years, had an Ivy League degree, had worked both in startups and large scale investment banking firms, and had founded and run an unrelated $100M+ enterprise.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
  Yeah, but other than that, ... ;-) The author was born/raised in the US which, not explicitly mentioned, means his father must have spent most of his time in India, away from the family, running the business. If so, that's a big sacrifice that the son amply reciprocated.

langsoul-com 2y ago

Wonder if the author could speak about how him already being a founder played into the equation. Let's say he was a software dev, no team lead, no manager, individual contributor. How would things play out?

asanwal 2y ago
Hi, Having founded and run CB Insights certainly helped mostly cuz I had some sense of where to focus. In this case, we had product-market fit to use a tech term. My dad's product was great. And so I didn't need to worry about that. If I had to worry about that, this probably doesn't unfold as it did. That meant I just had to worry about 2 things: 1. Making sure we were buying raw materials at rates that allowed us to sell the product profitably 2. 'Ringing the register' aka making sales. And that ultimately is not intellectually hard but just requires effort, i.e. researching, calling, emailing, etc.
- sureglymop 2y ago
  Hey. This is completely unrelated but I wanted to ask if you provide an RSS feed for your blog? I did find a /feed page but I'm unsure if it's working.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - asanwal 2y ago
    I set this blog up 24 hours ago and just started moving old writings to it and still have another 200ish to go. So the honest answer is I don’t know. Tbh, getting on HN today was completely unexpected. I believe you can subscribe via email for updates. And hopefully I’ll figure out the RSS thing soon as well. Thanks
    - ziptron 2y ago
      OP here. @asanwal, in case you're wondering, a mutual connection of ours liked your LinkedIn post featuring this article. That's how I found this.

electrodank 2y ago

Left field comment but I’d love to be thrown into an MBA-like simulator (HBS?) and have to figure out the industry and the company and stabilize it/make it grow and whatnot within some time window. Great read, thank you to the author who took the time to write up all that, it was very insightful and must have been fucking difficult in many ways.

asdflksdajvlkj 2y ago
https://www.capitalismlab.com/ https://www.capitalismlab.com/

jacknews 2y ago

Wouldn't it have been better if ownership of the company, essentially comprised of the workers and managers, actually passed to the workers who knew what they were doing? To me this just highlights the absurdity of capitalist ownership.

OJFord 2y ago
For them sure, not for OP and family? It wasn't run on a total profit share before OP's father died, it would be weird (and very bad incentive) if that suddenly changed. No doubt that sort of thing happens sometimes, or especially donating an inheritance to charity, but it being the default would be more absurd to me, when it was already in 'capitalist ownership'.
kbelder 2y ago
The business exists in the first place because of capitalist ownership.
- jacknews 2y ago
  in this particular instance. But you seem to imply that if capitalism didn't exist, nor would chemical companies, etc. Something like this business would still exist if there was a need for it under almost any political-economic system. There are numerous other ways for people to cooperate and work together, partnerships, co-operatives, etc, etc, that do not involve single individuals reaping all the profit of everyone's else's hard work. IMHO any collection of workers deserve that their 'owner' at least understand the nature of their work, and ideally they should themselves be owners.
  - x-complexity 2y ago
    There are a series of overlooked axioms in that train of thought, in that: - All people involved are capable of learning skills outside of their knowledge domain as quickly as those inside those domains (People interchangeability) - All people involved won't have ideological splits for the direction of the company - That everyone involved wants to partake in the risks of ownership (market uncertainties/shifts, illiquid buyout scenarios, dealing with ownership transfer headaches, new incoming co-owners, ownership dilution, etc.) - That there is time outside of their work to manage the overhead of this co-op - That the talent required to ease their workloads is receptive to the co-op concept, or cheap enough to hire (not likely) in cases where they just want a stable income (see point 3) - That the decision overhead from the co-op is lower than the standard corporate structure (possible, & likely the easiest axiom to fulfill out of the list, if the time of the co-owners is cheaper) The author of the post responded to a similar question made earlier: Certain mental, financial, & cultural logistics are just not there/available given the time-frame involved. The co-op ideal is wonderful, but it requires a series of fulfillments that not everyone is as receptive towards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40766367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40766367

johndhi 2y ago

This is incredibly well written (in addition to being substantively compelling). Bravo!

Ozzie_osman 2y ago

This was a great read. A few years out of school, I took a detour from tech/entrepreneurship to work in my family business (overseeing operations in a construction manufacturing facility, in Egypt), mostly with my Uncle. In my case, though I fully prefer tech as an industry, the deal-breakers were a dismal economic/political climate and an... interesting Uncle. Apart from that, a lot of the article resonated. A few other things that stood out and made the transition hard for me were: corruption (in the construction industry, hard to avoid) and culture/hierarchy.

fasa99 2y ago
Same here. I'm a big wheel at a big company (tech) everyone here has heard of. But My father passed a few years ago, he ran an old box factory in Tajikistan. I ran it into the ground. Sometimes you need to run a box factory in tajikistan to run in the ground to learn a thing or two about life.. things you don't never learn in silicon valley

renewiltord 2y ago

Sorry to hear about your dad. Seems to have been a good and smart man. This was a pretty insightful story. Thank you for sharing it.

skybrian 2y ago

This is quite a good story. Since it happened in 2018, I wonder what’s happened to the business since then?

amtamt 2y ago

Maharashtra has a long history of cooperatives, some of whichquite successful. I wonder if employees brought up or were given a option to form a cooperative, if immediate liquidity was not a major requirement.

eldavido 2y ago
I think these aren't more popular because actually, there are things that genuinely suck about small business ownership. Offhand: stress, uncertainty/having to make payroll, having a significant % of your net worth tied up in a single, undiversified investment that's near-impossible to sell. Given the choice, I think a normal cash-paying salary job (maybe with bonus) is vastly preferable to most people.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

This is such a heartwarming story. Thank you for sharing about this Anand. I loved the part about how your dad’s legacy is all the children of employees who could continue their education.

didip 2y ago

Thank you for sharing this unique story. Some parts of your story resonated with my life, hope you don’t mind me sharing: * At times it felt like the true sons are the companies they started. They live and breathe in them. I have a strange detachment to my own family because of this. * Thus, they have serious attachment issues and zero succession plans. * My mom later passed away too soon and missed out much of the life experience she could have had. Glad that she did travel around the world before death. * Even after all that, my old man still doesn’t have succession plan. Dunno what’s gonna happen to all the people working for him. And the clock is ticking. * Like OP, I spent most of my life in the US, so I too would be useless in dealing with the businesses. Even the real estate company (something I know a bit in the US) is far too different back there. Also, blatant corruption is simply not my cup of tea. I tried to help them multiple times. I offered to sponsor them green card, but they consistently refused. I offered if they need help finding private equity to liquidate and just retire. Sometimes I wonder if my mom could have been saved with US quality healthcare. Oh well, I did my best, there was nothing I could have done.

OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago

As a chemist I know what coumarin is but had no idea of its place in the chemical industry, least of all as a substitute for vanillin which looks nothing like it. Often, two molecules that are just sliiiightly different will have entirely different functions. Here, two molecules that are completely different can be substituted in some capacity. But, damn, what a fine piece of writing. A seamless connection of facts and reminiscences all taking me somewhere. The author tells his family's and their extended family's story, without all the contortions and schnookery involved in "telling a story" in our marketing-besotted culture. "Touching the product makes it different" is a remarkable turn of phrase.

elevatedastalt 2y ago
Vanilla bean != Vanillin, since the smell of natural vanilla bean has a many more components to it other than Vanillin which lend it that characteristic odor (sweet, animalic, slightly woody and herbaceous). Vanillin by itself is of course a principle component. However, coumarin and vanillin don't smell too similar. Coumarin has more of a herbaceous, 'hay' smell, quite different from vanillin itself.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y ago
  Agreed. My use of "substitute" was a bad choice. I would not have thought that coumarin could/would be used as a component in vanilla substitutes. "They make glue out of horses. I don’t know who started that. Who saw that potential? That’s pretty amazing to me..." --- Jerry Seinfeld [1] [1] https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/jerry-seinfeld-im-telling-you-for-the-last-time-full-transcript/ https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/jerry-seinfeld-im-telli...
  - klodolph 2y ago
    I know it’s a rhetorical question—but I’m sure that someone discovered animal glues because they were cooking, left the animal products to cook in water, and then let it dry out. You cook it because it’s supposed to be food, but sometimes you’re left with this thick, sticky substance. Voilà, glue.

iamgopal 2y ago

Wow !! We have supplied machinery to this company, how wonderful to find such write up at other end of the spectrum. World is small and gol.

noisy_boy 2y ago
Gol == round

confused_boner 2y ago

Pitch it to Bollywood, has script potential

prakhar897 2y ago

Great Story! I have a question. Why didn't you elevate someone from inside to the CEO position? Seems like a great way to maintain ownership (and take care of people) while also rewarding the best employees.

asanwal 2y ago
Unfortunately, didn’t have the talent internally to do that. Running the biz required a set of generalist biz skills and the company was mostly specialists.
- statictype 2y ago
  Wasn’t your dad also a specialist in that sense (the technical founder as you put it)? Great writing, btw.
  - asanwal 2y ago
    Thanks. Dad was a specialist on the engineering/science side. He learned and grinded enough over time to become quite dangerous on the business stuff. I guess he'd be what some folks would call T-shaped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills
jlg23 2y ago
from the article: > Option 3 — Find a young, aggressive, ambitious person to run Atlas > [...] > This would have been an amazing opportunity for the right person, but it wasn’t in the cards.

boberoni 2y ago

> business is about growth or margin. > To grow, we could do 1 of 2 things: > - Sell more of our existing products, primarily Coumarin > - Add new products > If we focused on margin, that’d mean focusing on: > - Increasing efficiency in manufacturing > - Reducing expenses Good insights. I’m curious if there are other models of business that are just as simple and useful… :)

Umofomia 2y ago

I noticed the word 'jugaad' from his speech and looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad It seems like a very befitting word for the eponymous "hacker" ethos of this site.

albert_e 2y ago
But the same word has also been over used to provide cover or respectability for all types of anti-patterns from poor planning, to lack of any safety net or margins, to cutting corners, disregard for standards and regulations, and hustle culture where the ends justify means however questionable. So a pinch of salt needed when we hear this word.
zem 2y ago
see also "bricolage"

bprater 2y ago

"Plus, margin is hard to rally the team around." "Growth is tangible." Love the way he packaged this!

smrtinsert 2y ago

this was an absolute incredible story. I would absolutely watch a movie about this story. learning history and family through something that at its surface seems so cold and difficult to process is very intriguing, a triumph of small business, cultural differences (americanized indian returns to india), i sense a great film in this story. thanks for sharing!

wdb 2y ago

My father had a fragrance company (now owned by Givaudan) as client and every time he visited he came back with reproductions of famous perfumes (sampler size). I always found it interesting that they lasted longer or smelled nicer than the original. Of course, most of the time he only brought it back for mom. First time, I visited, the company with my dad, I was surprised in how much things a fragrance is used. From perfume, shampoo but also cleaning products. It's a fascinating business.

abledon 2y ago

heartwarming!

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billy99k 2y ago

My brother died almost 10 years ago and he ran his own software company. He had no plan, because he thought he could beat cancer. His wife had to get his passwords while he was on his deathbed. The day of his funeral, his wife begged me to look at his work laptop and help her out. She even mentioned us being partners in the company. I was already running my own successful company at the time and had almost no time do this. I found the time and saved her probably close to $150,000 in customers pissed off because my brother stopped handling support due to his illness, forgotten about purchase orders, and a website that he pre-paid for $20,000 and was never delivered because he died and never told them he was sick. They sent over the entire amount within a few days of me explaining the situation. I never expected any money for this work, I was just trying to clean up the business and get it back to a functional level. A few months later, when she had time to grieve and think about things, she wanted to talk partnership. Her first offer was to pay me $15/hour, which I rejected (and laughed about later with my wife). Her second offer was to give me 10% of the company and when her kids turned 18 in 8 years, they would get full control over the company (including my 10%). I was personally offended because she essentially wanted me to maintain and build up the entire company, take a very low percentage along the way, only to hand over the entire company to her kids (my nephews). When I explained this to her and rejected the offer, she told me that I had no skills beyond 'answering emails' and that I didn't 'understand how business worked'. Shortly after this, she found an email from my brother's old friend who was very religious. She had also recently found god and as a result, convinced this person that he needed to help her for free. For the last 6 or 7 years, the business has been in maintenance mode with this person answering emails, for free. I know the technical capabilities of this person and most responses are basically re-installing the software or rebooting the computer. I am also in the tech industry and the job this person has is about the level I was at when I was 15 (I'm 45 now). The result was as I expected: Most of his clients stopped re-purchasing licenses because there is no more support or bug fixes and you also just can't trust the security of software after it hasn't been updated in 10 years. She now has to work a minimum wage job making meals for the elderly (which isn't a bad thing) and the company is close to bankruptcy. It was good we were never partners, because I probably would not have been able to start my next business. It took my brother over a decade to build his successful company, and a few years for his wife to destroy it.

parker-3461 2y ago

The speech given to the Atlas team was really touching, I actually teared up a bit when reading through it. @asanwal thank you for sharing this.

starboyy 2y ago

I worked at CB Insights for a while. One of the best company to work for.

hajrice 2y ago

Very common that the children don't wish to run the family business – I always wondered why. Wonder how much things would have turned out differently had the Dad introduced the company to his son at a young age and "groomed" him to be the future leader of the organization.

zem 2y ago
interacting with parents as an adult is weird, you're expected to be perpetually deferential to them simply because you started your relationship that way. (perhaps even more so in asian cultures like mine and the author's). I'm not surprised that people would rather not have even their work lives pushed into that framework.
- fragmede 2y ago
  it's a luxury that modern life affords us. Traditionally boys would go into what their father has done, as he did his father and his father before him. It’s only relatively recently that society affords children an opportunity to branch out from the circumstances of our birth. The idea of royal succession seems less weird when the rest of the whole world is also organized that way

towndrunk 2y ago

Anyone know of any similar stories like this one? I don't know why, but I really enjoy reading these and hearing the thought process and decisions made.