7 ms·

Congratulations. I'm curious... what do people do after something like this? Vacation?

by duxup 2y ago

nico 2y ago
“I am rich and I have no idea what to do” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873
- andrepd 2y ago
  [flagged]
dylan604 2y ago
I would hope some time off is possible, but I could totally see myself self-funding the next thing immediately after that time off. I'm guessing the bootstrapping types would get bored and look for the next thing
klik99 2y ago
I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had. A year on he hadn’t moved out of his small apartment, still contracted, still used the same cheap phone, and hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc. it struck me as the smartest move, take your time to come up with a plan and don’t just dive into recklessly spending it. I also know a founder couple I was close friends with who had a sizeable exit, who moved to Costa Rica where they could spend little and focus on writing, a side interest that ended up leading to their next company. I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
- criddell 2y ago
  > I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed. It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do. When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. Lots of it would be spent on hiring experts to teach me things.
  - mrsilencedogood 2y ago
    Imo, it's mostly because our brains are still hunter-gatherer brains. While things like language acquisition and culture-instilling do fundamentally change us, our base hardware is still pre-currency pre-agriculture (pre-pretty-much-everything) hunter-gatherer. In Sapiens, it's noted that if a homo sapiens from 100k years ago ended up on an autopsy table in the modern day, you would never know anything was amiss anatomically. You might notice the teeth are unusually straight and free of decay (pre-grain diet, with huge amounts of chewing strengthening the jaw and allowing teeth to properly align), well-trained body with low body fat, and similarly free of many of the scourges of our modern diet and lifestyles). But that's it. So, people suddenly get taken out of "the grind" which was their only approximation of the drive-reward cycle that their brain depends on. So what now? Unfortunately, they've been freed to confront man's ultimate foe: philosophy. And lots of people aren't cut out or ready for that. (One could even say most philosophers aren't, given how much many of them suffered).
  - conductr 2y ago
    As somewhat of a counterpoint, my experience was we often romanticize these things that we’d like to do if only we had the time/money/etc. But sometimes you’ll find once you do have the opportunity to explore those things, it’s not as interesting as we had hoped. It might keep you busy for a year or so, but then boredom and lack of fulfillment rear their head again. I think this is why serial entrepreneurship is a pretty common thing.
  - dr_kiszonka 2y ago
    > When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. I buy lotto tickets for the same reason! Their expected value is very low but the maximum value is thought-provoking. For me, $50k would be life-changing. One billion is hard to imagine.
    - applied_heat 2y ago
      What would you do with $50k that would make such a difference in your life?
- thwarted 2y ago
  > I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had Is there a word missing in this? How did they join after acquisition and have a meaningful financial windfall? And being an early employee?
  - hapidjus 2y ago
    They met a year after.
  - klik99 2y ago
    It's very ambiguously phrased in multiple ways because I don't edit my HN posts, but it is technically correct, just vague! He was one of the first employees at King, and I met him a year after King was acquired. The "they" in "after they were acquired" is ambiguous which I think led to your confusion.
    - fuzztester 2y ago
      Related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow%3B_fruit_flies_like_a_banana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow%3B_... Linked from the above: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis
- nojvek 2y ago
  > hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc You'd be surprised how far you get ahead with S&P 500 + Treasury inflation adjusted securities. It's really hard to beat S&P500. Most funds after fees don't beat it. If S&P500 goes to shit, inflation adjusted securities give you guaranteed returns. The richest IMO people are those who live a modest lifestyle only from their interest, never having to touch the principle. Maximizing who and what they spend their time on.
  - klik99 2y ago
    Yeah I didn't mean to talk that down, it's just the most no-brainer thing to do. As in, it's so obviously a good idea that any good portfolio will have a chunk devoted to that.
- Take8435 2y ago
  > I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed. Agreed. It should happen to more & more people.
gregschlom 2y ago
I have a couple of friends in this exact situation. In their mid-thirties, no kids. They bought a very very nice house in the mountains after their startup got acquired, and spend most of their time travelling around the world. It's pretty awesome.
jborden13 2y ago
I bought a steel bike, grabbed my hammock, and went on a 4 day 250 mile solo adventure through the Texas hill country. Riding through empty valleys at sunset with a herd of deer pacing alongisde me was enough to break me into tears. It's what I needed to move on.
- duxup 2y ago
  It is interesting how many stories in a way involve running or moving away from the lifestyle that ... bought them a new lifestyle.
  - hipadev23 2y ago
    Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
    - sebmellen 2y ago
      There is a luxury class at both ends of the economic spectrum, as Veblen observed.
      - tasuki 2y ago
        *leisure, I suppose. I'd love to read more on that. Is that from "The Theory of the Leisure Class"?
        klik99 2y ago
        I don't remember that particular observation being in the book since it's very much about the upper class, but that book is amazing. I used to keep an rss feed of new project gutenberg books and when that popped up I read it just based on the name and was amazed how pertinent it was a hundred years later. I haven't read anything else by him, but that one is absolutely worth it. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833 Also since it was written when the vestiages of european feudal system still had some tiny amount of power, some of the observations about lords who owned massive estates but had no money and would refuse to take on any work, considering it "beneath them" while they starved was fascinating. It's both of it's time and timeless
samiv 2y ago
Just because the company was sold for a bunch of money doesn't mean the people (yes even the founders) got a huge payout. Liquidation preference and other schemes can make sure that when the investors get their money there's nothing to left to share between other share holders including the founders. (Not saying that this is the case here, just pointing that out) EDIT: As some are already pointing out, yes the title says "bootstrapped". I missed that initially, so apologies.
- Klonoar 2y ago
  This particular OP notes they were bootstrapped. That term might mean any number of things here, but I would imagine they had less exposure to losing out. Or at least, I hope they did. What a fantastic win for them.
- fourseventy 2y ago
  The title of this post literally says "bootstrapped"
- robryan 2y ago
  To note as well the Techcrunch article specifically says 71% ownership.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anonzzzies 2y ago
I had this 25 years ago when I was 25; the amount was lower but it was enough to never do anything ever again. I went hiking, got 1 billion ideas during walking for new companies and products, so started making some of them. Still am.
- joering2 2y ago
  please share if there is something you can show to public.
soheil 2y ago
Typically PE deals require the founders to very much stay involved in the daily operations of the business unless they are near retirement age and that is the primary motive they are selling in the first place.
- paraschopra 2y ago
  I'll be involved as a director on the board, but won't have operational involvement.
amrrs 2y ago
He is already running a hacker house in bangalore with cohorts of researchers and practiontioners getting together - https://turingsdream.co/ https://turingsdream.co/ so probably it's picking one of those ideas or investing in it!
mooreds 2y ago
I know one founder that worked a few days a week at the company and took a lot of vacations.
paraschopra 2y ago
Well, I posted a thank you note on HN and went to sleep! I was financially independent even before this sale (benefit of running a bootstrapped company is that it _has_ to be profitable). Moreover, I had been gradually reducing my operational involvement in the company for years by grooming the team. So, day to day, not much changes. But I do have a nice chunk to do crazy-ass experiments in future, which I fully intend to do.
- zafka 2y ago
  Congratulations Paras!! When I first started this post I was going to comment: Congratulations on your overnight success!! but held off :) Anyhow, I love that your plan is to do crazy ass experiments. I hope to read about them in the near future. I plan to do similar things, albeit with a slightly smaller budget-but sometime constraints can make you more creative. All the best!!!

Congratulations. I'm curious... what do people do after something like this? Vacation?

by duxup 2y ago

Congratulations. I'm curious... what do people do after something like this? Vacation?

nico 2y ago

“I am rich and I have no idea what to do” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873

andrepd 2y ago
[flagged]

dylan604 2y ago

I would hope some time off is possible, but I could totally see myself self-funding the next thing immediately after that time off. I'm guessing the bootstrapping types would get bored and look for the next thing

klik99 2y ago

I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had. A year on he hadn’t moved out of his small apartment, still contracted, still used the same cheap phone, and hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc. it struck me as the smartest move, take your time to come up with a plan and don’t just dive into recklessly spending it. I also know a founder couple I was close friends with who had a sizeable exit, who moved to Costa Rica where they could spend little and focus on writing, a side interest that ended up leading to their next company. I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.

criddell 2y ago
> I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed. It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do. When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. Lots of it would be spent on hiring experts to teach me things.
- mrsilencedogood 2y ago
  Imo, it's mostly because our brains are still hunter-gatherer brains. While things like language acquisition and culture-instilling do fundamentally change us, our base hardware is still pre-currency pre-agriculture (pre-pretty-much-everything) hunter-gatherer. In Sapiens, it's noted that if a homo sapiens from 100k years ago ended up on an autopsy table in the modern day, you would never know anything was amiss anatomically. You might notice the teeth are unusually straight and free of decay (pre-grain diet, with huge amounts of chewing strengthening the jaw and allowing teeth to properly align), well-trained body with low body fat, and similarly free of many of the scourges of our modern diet and lifestyles). But that's it. So, people suddenly get taken out of "the grind" which was their only approximation of the drive-reward cycle that their brain depends on. So what now? Unfortunately, they've been freed to confront man's ultimate foe: philosophy. And lots of people aren't cut out or ready for that. (One could even say most philosophers aren't, given how much many of them suffered).
- conductr 2y ago
  As somewhat of a counterpoint, my experience was we often romanticize these things that we’d like to do if only we had the time/money/etc. But sometimes you’ll find once you do have the opportunity to explore those things, it’s not as interesting as we had hoped. It might keep you busy for a year or so, but then boredom and lack of fulfillment rear their head again. I think this is why serial entrepreneurship is a pretty common thing.
- dr_kiszonka 2y ago
  > When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. I buy lotto tickets for the same reason! Their expected value is very low but the maximum value is thought-provoking. For me, $50k would be life-changing. One billion is hard to imagine.
  - applied_heat 2y ago
    What would you do with $50k that would make such a difference in your life?
thwarted 2y ago
> I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had Is there a word missing in this? How did they join after acquisition and have a meaningful financial windfall? And being an early employee?
- hapidjus 2y ago
  They met a year after.
- klik99 2y ago
  It's very ambiguously phrased in multiple ways because I don't edit my HN posts, but it is technically correct, just vague! He was one of the first employees at King, and I met him a year after King was acquired. The "they" in "after they were acquired" is ambiguous which I think led to your confusion.
  - fuzztester 2y ago
    Related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow%3B_fruit_flies_like_a_banana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow%3B_... Linked from the above: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis
nojvek 2y ago
> hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc You'd be surprised how far you get ahead with S&P 500 + Treasury inflation adjusted securities. It's really hard to beat S&P500. Most funds after fees don't beat it. If S&P500 goes to shit, inflation adjusted securities give you guaranteed returns. The richest IMO people are those who live a modest lifestyle only from their interest, never having to touch the principle. Maximizing who and what they spend their time on.
- klik99 2y ago
  Yeah I didn't mean to talk that down, it's just the most no-brainer thing to do. As in, it's so obviously a good idea that any good portfolio will have a chunk devoted to that.
Take8435 2y ago
> I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed. Agreed. It should happen to more & more people.

gregschlom 2y ago

I have a couple of friends in this exact situation. In their mid-thirties, no kids. They bought a very very nice house in the mountains after their startup got acquired, and spend most of their time travelling around the world. It's pretty awesome.

jborden13 2y ago

I bought a steel bike, grabbed my hammock, and went on a 4 day 250 mile solo adventure through the Texas hill country. Riding through empty valleys at sunset with a herd of deer pacing alongisde me was enough to break me into tears. It's what I needed to move on.

duxup 2y ago
It is interesting how many stories in a way involve running or moving away from the lifestyle that ... bought them a new lifestyle.
- hipadev23 2y ago
  Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
  - sebmellen 2y ago
    There is a luxury class at both ends of the economic spectrum, as Veblen observed.
    - tasuki 2y ago
      *leisure, I suppose. I'd love to read more on that. Is that from "The Theory of the Leisure Class"?
      - klik99 2y ago
        I don't remember that particular observation being in the book since it's very much about the upper class, but that book is amazing. I used to keep an rss feed of new project gutenberg books and when that popped up I read it just based on the name and was amazed how pertinent it was a hundred years later. I haven't read anything else by him, but that one is absolutely worth it. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833 Also since it was written when the vestiages of european feudal system still had some tiny amount of power, some of the observations about lords who owned massive estates but had no money and would refuse to take on any work, considering it "beneath them" while they starved was fascinating. It's both of it's time and timeless

samiv 2y ago

Just because the company was sold for a bunch of money doesn't mean the people (yes even the founders) got a huge payout. Liquidation preference and other schemes can make sure that when the investors get their money there's nothing to left to share between other share holders including the founders. (Not saying that this is the case here, just pointing that out) EDIT: As some are already pointing out, yes the title says "bootstrapped". I missed that initially, so apologies.

Klonoar 2y ago
This particular OP notes they were bootstrapped. That term might mean any number of things here, but I would imagine they had less exposure to losing out. Or at least, I hope they did. What a fantastic win for them.
fourseventy 2y ago
The title of this post literally says "bootstrapped"
robryan 2y ago
To note as well the Techcrunch article specifically says 71% ownership.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

anonzzzies 2y ago

I had this 25 years ago when I was 25; the amount was lower but it was enough to never do anything ever again. I went hiking, got 1 billion ideas during walking for new companies and products, so started making some of them. Still am.

joering2 2y ago
please share if there is something you can show to public.

soheil 2y ago

Typically PE deals require the founders to very much stay involved in the daily operations of the business unless they are near retirement age and that is the primary motive they are selling in the first place.

paraschopra 2y ago
I'll be involved as a director on the board, but won't have operational involvement.

amrrs 2y ago

He is already running a hacker house in bangalore with cohorts of researchers and practiontioners getting together - https://turingsdream.co/ https://turingsdream.co/ so probably it's picking one of those ideas or investing in it!

mooreds 2y ago

I know one founder that worked a few days a week at the company and took a lot of vacations.

paraschopra 2y ago

Well, I posted a thank you note on HN and went to sleep! I was financially independent even before this sale (benefit of running a bootstrapped company is that it _has_ to be profitable). Moreover, I had been gradually reducing my operational involvement in the company for years by grooming the team. So, day to day, not much changes. But I do have a nice chunk to do crazy-ass experiments in future, which I fully intend to do.

zafka 2y ago
Congratulations Paras!! When I first started this post I was going to comment: Congratulations on your overnight success!! but held off :) Anyhow, I love that your plan is to do crazy ass experiments. I hope to read about them in the near future. I plan to do similar things, albeit with a slightly smaller budget-but sometime constraints can make you more creative. All the best!!!