4 ms·

With all due respect - there is a lot of selection bias here. I'm willing to wager that for every situation in which a founder/ceo turned down a healthy offer,

With all due respect - there is a lot of selection bias here. I'm willing to wager that for every situation in which a founder/ceo turned down a healthy offer, and then went on to great success, that I can find at least one (if not two) in which mgmt. turned down an offer that, in hindsight, was actually quite lucrative. I have close personal experience with an acquisition being turned down, and then a couple years later an IPO occurring at 1/4 the acquisition price. And I'm sure a lot of us on HN have experienced down-rounds followed by a diluted public offering, in which everyone but the preferred shareholders take a bath. BTW, this is not to say that the central thesis of the article, that great companies are run by founders who have a vision for the future, and are relentless towards making that vision a reality, isn't correct. But, turning down an acquisition needs to be done on merit, not just because, "Great founders turn down $1B acquisition offers."

Semaphor 14y ago
> Great founders turn down $1B acquisition offers. I don't think that was even hinted at as qualification. It seems the focus was only on "Great founders have a very specific idea about where they are headed and what they want to do." The turning down of $1B was just in relation to Yahoo as an anecdote why it might not might stupid and generally about products that didn't exist in this form before and thus are impossible to truly valuate.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  It was hinted at (at least with regards to Yahoo $1B offers) - "His only partial rationalization at the time was that in the history of Yahoo, it had made two $1 billion offers that were also turned down. And those were to eBay and Google. "At least I could actually make a pseudo-scientific argument that in every case Yahoo offered $1 billion and it was rejected, it was the correct thing to do," said Thiel."
  - jimbokun 14y ago
    Did he have to put a smiley next to that comment, to make clear it was tongue in cheek?
    - Semaphor 14y ago
      Yeah, I think that was pretty much to convince himself back then "okay, that guy isn't totally stupid. I hope. And maybe he is just extremely smart and we could have the next ebay/google. Please let it be that way!"
redthrowaway 14y ago
>I'm willing to wager that for every situation in which a founder/ceo turned down a healthy offer, and then went on to great success, that I can find at least one (if not two) in which mgmt. turned down an offer that, in hindsight, was actually quite lucrative. Google's $6B offer for Groupon springs to mind, although I suppose some of the more prescient shareholders may have liquidated their holdings at the IPO and tripled up.

Semaphor 14y ago

> Great founders turn down $1B acquisition offers. I don't think that was even hinted at as qualification. It seems the focus was only on "Great founders have a very specific idea about where they are headed and what they want to do." The turning down of $1B was just in relation to Yahoo as an anecdote why it might not might stupid and generally about products that didn't exist in this form before and thus are impossible to truly valuate.

ghshephard 14y ago
It was hinted at (at least with regards to Yahoo $1B offers) - "His only partial rationalization at the time was that in the history of Yahoo, it had made two $1 billion offers that were also turned down. And those were to eBay and Google. "At least I could actually make a pseudo-scientific argument that in every case Yahoo offered $1 billion and it was rejected, it was the correct thing to do," said Thiel."
- jimbokun 14y ago
  Did he have to put a smiley next to that comment, to make clear it was tongue in cheek?
  - Semaphor 14y ago
    Yeah, I think that was pretty much to convince himself back then "okay, that guy isn't totally stupid. I hope. And maybe he is just extremely smart and we could have the next ebay/google. Please let it be that way!"

redthrowaway 14y ago

>I'm willing to wager that for every situation in which a founder/ceo turned down a healthy offer, and then went on to great success, that I can find at least one (if not two) in which mgmt. turned down an offer that, in hindsight, was actually quite lucrative. Google's $6B offer for Groupon springs to mind, although I suppose some of the more prescient shareholders may have liquidated their holdings at the IPO and tripled up.