13 ms·

Speaking candidly here -- perhaps this is one of many (MANY) reasons why I will never be a billionaire entrepreneur, but I can wholeheartedly say that if Facebo

Speaking candidly here -- perhaps this is one of many (MANY) reasons why I will never be a billionaire entrepreneur, but I can wholeheartedly say that if Facebook came to my startup, no matter how popular, and said "here's 3bn, please give us your users" -- I would without question sign on the dotted line as fast as possible (and probably for A LOT less earlier in the game). And to be honest, I probably wouldn't care how badly they may maul my creation, I'm either: a) sitting on a beach in Costa Rica b) giving a completely different project a shot with my new found riches Maybe I just completely lack vision, but what happens in two years when Snapchat likely isn't cool anymore and all the kids are onto the next thing. Where will the money be?

seivan 13y ago
I'd take 1% of that even.
- OnyeaboAduba 13y ago
  They already got that from their last round. Both founders took 10 million of the table just so they wouldnt be seduced by a offer like this.
  - seivan 13y ago
    Wow. Suddenly their business model doesn't seem so shitty.
    - gaadd33 13y ago
      What is their business model?
      - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
        Turn down the big money and wait for their one-tricky pony to die a slow death as it falls out of fashion?
phillmv 13y ago
Whelp, diminishing marginal utility of the dollar, I suppose. With a billion dollar valuation, the founders will have found ways to make themselves rich - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591017-93/snapchat-founders-reportedly-pocket-$20m-from-funding-deal/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591017-93/snapchat-founde... - and if you already cashed out fuck-you money, then you might as well keep going and see where it lands. If I was broke and offered $3b, sure. But if I had $10-20mil sitting in the bank… anything I do after that point is 100% risk-free. Mind you, I'm really racking my brain on how this isn't all totally insane.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  >> Mind you, I'm really racking my brain on how this isn't all totally insane. That's the best I have come up with too.
- hnalien 13y ago
  Exactly. If you have anything more than $10m in the bank and are still not 30, you'll be too naive NOT to take more risks (considering you don't plan to touch the $10m in the bank).
- espadagroup 13y ago
  Definitely disagree, there IS a difference between $10 - $20 Mil and $1 - $1.2 Bil
  - garybizzle 13y ago
    massive difference. decent retirement money versus 'do whatever you want for the rest of your life' money
    - clarky07 13y ago
      uh, pretty sure 10-20 million is in fact "do whatever you want for the rest of your life" money. Certainly do anything normal that you want. perhaps you can't buy a jet. damn. 10million * 3% dividend stocks = 300k per year just having it sit there. Maybe not entirely risk free, but not too risky either.
dmak 13y ago
They're trying to buy them out because SnapChat is a problem, just like how Instagram was. At some point, everyone was just posting a link to their Instagram photos in their status. In other words, it is validation that you are being disruptive, and you should definitely hold on.
nicholassmith 13y ago
I think it depends on how risk averse you are, if you're willing to press on you may potentially end up with a higher valuation or it could start going wrong and you've got no chance of getting as strong an exit. Also depends on your motivation about building a business, if it's about money then taking a strong early exit is a sensible idea, if it's about building the business and exploring it's future then selling and seeing your vision disappear is probably a worst fate than losing out on the money. I'd personally sell and I'm not very risk adverse, I always push for more when I'm gambling, but if you're exiting at a $1bn value you're going to have enough to explore most ideas without worrying about outside investment.
OnyeaboAduba 13y ago
I might be in the minority here but I think snapchat is totally worth 3 billion. And the article says they have a company interested in a round valuing them at 4 billion . If Instagram would have held out longer and not accepted the deal from facebook (They didnt need it the just closed a nice round of funding a couple months before)they would probably be worth North of 6 billion
- perbu 13y ago
  Instagram would be worth north of $6B based on what, exactly? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe it is because I live in Europe and Instagram is ad-free here so I can't really see it changing peoples lives.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Right now, I would agree. It's just that the reason for using this app (it forgets stuff) is something that is easy to implement, and lock-in doesn't seem to be much of a worry. So it seems like the barriers to entry are very low. I like these people, I'm rooting for them and all, but still.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- cylinder 13y ago
  Those valuations are really not that significant. We don't know the motivations of the investors. They are buying a small piece of the company at a certain price, often for strategic purposes other than simply the investment itself. So, if I buy 3 shares of YCombinator at a price that would value YC at $5 billion, because I want to make connections or explore a strategic partnership with them, does that mean PG could sell YC for $5 billion tomorrow? No way. If Instagram were to sell 100% of itself today, who would buy it, other than Facebook? There are only a handful of players who can afford $3 billion+ for a speculative acquisition of a company with 0 cash flow. They definitely would not be able to IPO anytime soon, and waiting that long involves a significant amount of risk (by the time they are mature they could be abandoned and worthless). And remember, even if you do IPO, you can't just dump your shares right when the lockup period ends, if you're an executive or insider. You need to disclose your sales and if you're still involved with the company and try to sell all your shares, the stock will likely plummet. The best you can do is buy insurance on the value or borrow against shares. Same goes for Pinterest. Who would all of the company at that valuation or anywhere near it? Other than maybe Facebook, I can't imagine anyone else.
gkoberger 13y ago
Only slightly related, but I'm sitting on a beach in Costa Rica right now. The Internet is fast, it's beautiful (although it just rained), and is cheaper than SF (where I'm from). You don't need a billion dollar company for A.
- cylinder 13y ago
  I've heard the opposite - internet connectivity is quite suspect in Costa Rica. Where exactly are you and what kind of connectivity package/price do you have?
  - gkoberger 13y ago
    Right now, I'm in a restaurant on the beach. Internet is pretty good here (and everywhere else I've been -- way better than the average coffee shop / hotel / etc internet in the US). I use StrongVPN and haven't had any problems yet. I Skype and watch Netflix all the time with no issues at all. Here's a speed test (while off my VPN and at a restaurant rather than my house): http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3099024113 http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3099024113
    - adventured 13y ago
      Doesn't sound like a very accurate description of Costa Rica's Internet: http://www.ticotimes.net/Business/Internet-slow-but-speeding-up-in-Costa-Rica_Friday-March-08-2013 http://www.ticotimes.net/Business/Internet-slow-but-speeding... Costa Rica has among the slowest Internet speeds and least broadband access in South America.
      - benologist 13y ago
        It's slow as in you're not going to find a 20 megabit connection all to yourself. Normal speed is probably closer to 1 megabit, but you can easily get a bit better than that these days (I'm on 5).
      - lowkeykiwi 13y ago
OnyeaboAduba 13y ago
One article I read that always stuck with me was Peter thiel recalling the day Mark Zuckerberg turned down yahoos 1 billion dollar acquistion offer . Thiel said he remembered saying, "We should probably talk about this. A billion dollars is a lot of money." They hashed out the conversation. Thiel said he and Breyer pointed out: "You own 25 percent. There's so much you could do with the money." Thiel recalled Zuckerberg said, in a nutshell: "I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have." This is probably how the SnapChat guys feel there is no different project down the road this is it and if you feel that way you never sell http://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-luck-day-facebook-turned-down-billion-dollars.html http://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-...
- clarky07 13y ago
  yeah, but for every Facebook there are 1000's of other companies who should have taken the money. Like myspace perhaps. snapchat also doesn't have the depth that facebook has. I could see snapchat being omgpop just as easily as the next facebook or twitter. 3 billion? take the money man.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    MySpace did take the money. We'll never know what they could have developed into had they not become part of News Corp.
- 001sky 13y ago
  He (also) turned down google as well for someting like $8B, then got MSFT to invest in @$15B before taking it to $100B and an IPO. So this is a very good point.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Facebook is an outlier among outliers though. You shouldn't really use it as justification for anything.
joelrunyon 13y ago
Tangentially related question: What's the best country to hang out on with a beach & super fast wifi? Costa Rica always gets thrown around - but wondering if there's anything better/warmer/cheaper/faster.
- seiji 13y ago
  San Diego with an LTE hotspot? Cheap, warm, fast, pick three.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    Touche.
  - angrybits 13y ago
    San Diego is cheap, hmm. Who knew?
    - clarky07 13y ago
      right. i guess cheap is in the eye of the beholder? perhaps compared to new york or san fran.
    - enraged_camel 13y ago
      It can also get fairly chilly in comparison to Latin American countries.
  - druiid 13y ago
    It's cheap to live in San Diego? Please tell that to my landlord. Certainly cheaper than SF proper, but really you end up paying a lot for gas (Because you drive everywhere) and food. At the end of the day, you probably aren't saving much.
- 1p1e1 13y ago
  A month ago, I arrived in Morocco to work on my startup after I quit my job back in Belgium. I'm living in Taghazout, which is a very small fishing/surfing village. It's quite touristic, so rent prices are high. I'm paying ~$400 per month. However, food is extremely cheap. I easily live on $25 per week when cooking at home. My studio has a direct view towards the beach with opportunity for spectacular sunsets. The beach is 1 minute away, so I hear the sound of the ocean 24/7. The bays in the area give you more than enough beaches for sunbathing or surfing. It's definitely warm, more or less around the calendar. The internet that I have is extremely slow though. That would be a 0.25 Mbps connection. It's enough for working, but any forms of procrastination i.e. YouTube, cat browsing in reddit are nearly impossible. You can find 4 Mbps connection in some houses, but it is extremely rear. My guess is that in the big cities like Agadir, there will be fast wifi. If you have questions, shoot me an email - filipminev [at] gmail
jonnathanson 13y ago
Option B worked really well for Mark Cuban, for example. He sold a company with a <$50M run rate for close to $6B, probably recognizing that he'd gotten really damned lucky. But he didn't take the one-way ticket to Costa Rica; he parlayed his lottery payout into a continuous string of successful businesses. I'm not saying everyone gets a multi-billion-dollar exit (and even getting there in the first place is fucking tough; certainly a lot tougher than it was in the '90s). But there are worse paths through life than being a serial entrepreneur who's in it for the love of the game.
- ryguytilidie 13y ago
  That is the problem I always have with this argument. It turns into "do you want to have fuck you money and do whatever or keep your baby"? Why not take 3b and start whatever venture you want? Why not 6 different ventures?
- sireat 13y ago
  Mark Cuban also sold his first company for 7 figures (I think) figuring it would be enough before starting broadcast.com . He is a great(and rather rare) example of bootstrapping your money upwards. Most people only get lucky/good once.
segmondy 13y ago
No the reason you will may never be a billionaire enterpreneur is that you are probably yet to build something. If you did build it, and Facebook offered you $3bn. You are damn near a billionaire if not. Who's still counting? $500million or $1billion. I don't know that I can tell the difference or feel it in my lifetime.
andrewhillman 13y ago
What separates the "billionaire entrepreneurs" and the "other entrepreneurs" is that the billionaire entrepreneurs know something others don't (market insight). With this being said, I believe if you knew something others didn't understand you would not be doing a) or b).
downandout 13y ago
I absolutely agree. I can see this article being reposted on HN in a few years as a laughable cautionary tale for unrealistic entrepreneurs. Snapchat gained a significant user base quickly with very few resources. The next popular app will do the exact same thing and curtail Snapchat's growth and prospects.
jasonwilk 13y ago
There is a theory called "When the founder drives a porsche", which refers to already wealthy entrepreneurs who have much more appetite for risk to go for the big exit. Evan has taken at least $30-40M off the table in subsequent financing rounds. He has enough stacked away to go for an exit that deems him a billionaire which my guess at this point would need to be a $5B acquisition (assuming cap gains tax for his piece)
- boyter 13y ago
  Even so your quality of life is going to increase a lot more from $30 million to $1 billion, then $1 billion to $3 billion. I always liked the quote from Entrapment "What can you do with 7 billion that you can't do with 4?"
bruceb 13y ago
The argument could be made that 2nd acts in tech rarely go well. See youtube founder getting sued by Kanye and others. There are of course exceptions. Does anyone know the name of the instagram founders? Not really. They got money but only a little fame. If Evan sells out then maybe he is less known. Gamble but a chance at legendary status.
- salemh 13y ago
  I guess goals matter. What is "reputation" and what does it mean, except for your future goal execution. If you want to start more companies, meeet more people, retire, etc. I don't understand "legacy" or "legendary" status at all. Bill Gates may get a footnote in history, but what are you really chasing after for "legendary"? Do most people even know the YouTube founders? Does being a dead artist with legions of fans mean anything? Now I'm getting existential, but I don't understand your comment on "fame." They should break into movies with their $20MM or so, or music if they so desire "fame."
aet 13y ago
I agree -- I'm starting to think all social media sites have a half-life. I guess I'm too old to understand snap chat. Like -- isn't it just text messaging w/ pictures? Aren't there already a million ways to do that without ads? Any youths want to weigh in?
- sharkweek 13y ago
  It's the first app or whathaveyou that I completely don't understand (at the ripe age of 28). I was early to FB, a little late to Twitter, but I love it now, loved Instagram... etc. But Snapchat? Nah, "that's for the kids"
- antocv 13y ago
  Its picture chatting and that hasnt been done before that well, so instantenous and fleeting. The others cant compare, its not a chat with oh send a file or upload picturr click here there herr and there. ugh.
- drharris 13y ago
  I'm 30 and didn't really understand it, but I work with teenagers quite a bit. My generation was very excited about putting things online, permanently, a monument to our selves. Things like blogs, facebook, even twitter are pretty much permanent; you're putting your information and ideas out there for anybody to see. What I gather from kids now is that they don't care about permanence so much as connecting with people. So they're leaving FB for the most part, for ephemeral services like Snapchat and Whatsapp (another one I don't understand). They like the idea they can communicate with a single person and have it disappear. They won't be haunted by a bad picture (or naughty ones) the rest of their lives. They don't have to "think" about what they're doing (which I see as a problem, but they think this way). Nothing's permanent, so it's all about the raw conversation. That said, as a tech guy, every one of the kids I talk to says something like "but I wish it did ___" or "but I'd really rather use ___ if it worked a certain way". I believe Snapchat is successful for maybe one more year, tops, until some other startup gets even more in touch with the latest trends. I would have taken the $3bn and run. FB's and Twitter's days are also numbered, judging by the teenager beliefs today. For those wanting a good idea (I don't care about this space enough), teenagers are really interested in micro-celebrity. Some of their favorite bands, actors, etc. are local to them, are generally not big hits, etc. but communicate individually with them (even through Snapchat). One of Twitter's big reasons it worked was because of big celebrities communicating directly to fans. Kids now seem to not care at all about big celebrities. If you can find a way to even more easily connect smaller celebrities/bands to young fans and allow personalized interaction, you just found a potential next big thing.
pmarca 13y ago
If Thomas Watson, Dave Packard, Ken Olsen, Bill Gates, Bob Noyce, Ben Rosen, Michael Dell, Jim Clark, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, John Sidgmore, Ross Perot, Steve Case, Steve Jobs, Irwin Jacobs, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Jerry Yang, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, and Ben Silbermann all thought like that, I don't think our industry would even exist today.
- svmegatron 13y ago
  I actually wonder how many of them might have taken this offer (or its equivalent), if it was on the table.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    Virtually every super-successful tech franchise company got big offers at this stage.
    - svmegatron 13y ago
      I did not know that, thanks! It's hard to imagine SnapChat in such rarefied company as the ones you mention, but I guess that's the point - there was a similar time in all of those companies' pasts, hard though it may be to recall it now that they are successful.
      - clarky07 13y ago
        i get what you're saying, but i'm not sure that's actually true. once you are getting offers in the billions it's pretty clear you have something. obviously no guarantees, but certainly you have some potential. that being said, the market potential for a google is quite obviously higher than the potential for snapchat i think. I can't imagine a future world where snapchat is worth more than google, and if it is, it's almost certainly because they used that valuation to pivot and make something more worthwhile.
        pmarca 13y ago
jotm 13y ago
I don't think you lack vision: I think you simply see what many others see - that Snapchat will be one of the many Myspaces of mobile. Even if it stays afloat, it will soon be valuated much, much lower than it is now.
crassus 13y ago
With $3 billion, you could put a rocketship on Mars, do serious research into gene-modifying medicine, start new cities on the ocean, make automated laboratories that shrink the cost of medical research - you know, sci fi shit. I'd trade a teen messaging startup for that any day.
- nationcrafting 13y ago
  Exactly. It's funny that on a network of primarily tech founders, everyone seems to be looking at this as spending money, when the real pleasure is in using wealth as capital to really "make a dent in the universe".
dgregd 13y ago
> "here's 3bn, please give us your users" 3 bn is not cool anymore. You known what's cool? 10 bn!
frigg 13y ago
You are forgetting that Mark Zuckerberg is already a millionaire.

seivan 13y ago

I'd take 1% of that even.

OnyeaboAduba 13y ago
They already got that from their last round. Both founders took 10 million of the table just so they wouldnt be seduced by a offer like this.
- seivan 13y ago
  Wow. Suddenly their business model doesn't seem so shitty.
  - gaadd33 13y ago
    What is their business model?
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      Turn down the big money and wait for their one-tricky pony to die a slow death as it falls out of fashion?

phillmv 13y ago

Whelp, diminishing marginal utility of the dollar, I suppose. With a billion dollar valuation, the founders will have found ways to make themselves rich - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591017-93/snapchat-founders-reportedly-pocket-$20m-from-funding-deal/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591017-93/snapchat-founde... - and if you already cashed out fuck-you money, then you might as well keep going and see where it lands. If I was broke and offered $3b, sure. But if I had $10-20mil sitting in the bank… anything I do after that point is 100% risk-free. Mind you, I'm really racking my brain on how this isn't all totally insane.

the_watcher 13y ago
>> Mind you, I'm really racking my brain on how this isn't all totally insane. That's the best I have come up with too.
hnalien 13y ago
Exactly. If you have anything more than $10m in the bank and are still not 30, you'll be too naive NOT to take more risks (considering you don't plan to touch the $10m in the bank).
espadagroup 13y ago
Definitely disagree, there IS a difference between $10 - $20 Mil and $1 - $1.2 Bil
- garybizzle 13y ago
  massive difference. decent retirement money versus 'do whatever you want for the rest of your life' money
  - clarky07 13y ago
    uh, pretty sure 10-20 million is in fact "do whatever you want for the rest of your life" money. Certainly do anything normal that you want. perhaps you can't buy a jet. damn. 10million * 3% dividend stocks = 300k per year just having it sit there. Maybe not entirely risk free, but not too risky either.

dmak 13y ago

They're trying to buy them out because SnapChat is a problem, just like how Instagram was. At some point, everyone was just posting a link to their Instagram photos in their status. In other words, it is validation that you are being disruptive, and you should definitely hold on.

nicholassmith 13y ago

I think it depends on how risk averse you are, if you're willing to press on you may potentially end up with a higher valuation or it could start going wrong and you've got no chance of getting as strong an exit. Also depends on your motivation about building a business, if it's about money then taking a strong early exit is a sensible idea, if it's about building the business and exploring it's future then selling and seeing your vision disappear is probably a worst fate than losing out on the money. I'd personally sell and I'm not very risk adverse, I always push for more when I'm gambling, but if you're exiting at a $1bn value you're going to have enough to explore most ideas without worrying about outside investment.

OnyeaboAduba 13y ago

I might be in the minority here but I think snapchat is totally worth 3 billion. And the article says they have a company interested in a round valuing them at 4 billion . If Instagram would have held out longer and not accepted the deal from facebook (They didnt need it the just closed a nice round of funding a couple months before)they would probably be worth North of 6 billion

perbu 13y ago
Instagram would be worth north of $6B based on what, exactly? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe it is because I live in Europe and Instagram is ad-free here so I can't really see it changing peoples lives.
badman_ting 13y ago
Right now, I would agree. It's just that the reason for using this app (it forgets stuff) is something that is easy to implement, and lock-in doesn't seem to be much of a worry. So it seems like the barriers to entry are very low. I like these people, I'm rooting for them and all, but still.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cylinder 13y ago
Those valuations are really not that significant. We don't know the motivations of the investors. They are buying a small piece of the company at a certain price, often for strategic purposes other than simply the investment itself. So, if I buy 3 shares of YCombinator at a price that would value YC at $5 billion, because I want to make connections or explore a strategic partnership with them, does that mean PG could sell YC for $5 billion tomorrow? No way. If Instagram were to sell 100% of itself today, who would buy it, other than Facebook? There are only a handful of players who can afford $3 billion+ for a speculative acquisition of a company with 0 cash flow. They definitely would not be able to IPO anytime soon, and waiting that long involves a significant amount of risk (by the time they are mature they could be abandoned and worthless). And remember, even if you do IPO, you can't just dump your shares right when the lockup period ends, if you're an executive or insider. You need to disclose your sales and if you're still involved with the company and try to sell all your shares, the stock will likely plummet. The best you can do is buy insurance on the value or borrow against shares. Same goes for Pinterest. Who would all of the company at that valuation or anywhere near it? Other than maybe Facebook, I can't imagine anyone else.

gkoberger 13y ago

Only slightly related, but I'm sitting on a beach in Costa Rica right now. The Internet is fast, it's beautiful (although it just rained), and is cheaper than SF (where I'm from). You don't need a billion dollar company for A.

cylinder 13y ago
I've heard the opposite - internet connectivity is quite suspect in Costa Rica. Where exactly are you and what kind of connectivity package/price do you have?
- gkoberger 13y ago
  Right now, I'm in a restaurant on the beach. Internet is pretty good here (and everywhere else I've been -- way better than the average coffee shop / hotel / etc internet in the US). I use StrongVPN and haven't had any problems yet. I Skype and watch Netflix all the time with no issues at all. Here's a speed test (while off my VPN and at a restaurant rather than my house): http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3099024113 http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3099024113
  - adventured 13y ago
    Doesn't sound like a very accurate description of Costa Rica's Internet: http://www.ticotimes.net/Business/Internet-slow-but-speeding-up-in-Costa-Rica_Friday-March-08-2013 http://www.ticotimes.net/Business/Internet-slow-but-speeding... Costa Rica has among the slowest Internet speeds and least broadband access in South America.
    - benologist 13y ago
      It's slow as in you're not going to find a 20 megabit connection all to yourself. Normal speed is probably closer to 1 megabit, but you can easily get a bit better than that these days (I'm on 5).
    - lowkeykiwi 13y ago

OnyeaboAduba 13y ago

One article I read that always stuck with me was Peter thiel recalling the day Mark Zuckerberg turned down yahoos 1 billion dollar acquistion offer . Thiel said he remembered saying, "We should probably talk about this. A billion dollars is a lot of money." They hashed out the conversation. Thiel said he and Breyer pointed out: "You own 25 percent. There's so much you could do with the money." Thiel recalled Zuckerberg said, in a nutshell: "I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have." This is probably how the SnapChat guys feel there is no different project down the road this is it and if you feel that way you never sell http://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-luck-day-facebook-turned-down-billion-dollars.html http://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-...

clarky07 13y ago
yeah, but for every Facebook there are 1000's of other companies who should have taken the money. Like myspace perhaps. snapchat also doesn't have the depth that facebook has. I could see snapchat being omgpop just as easily as the next facebook or twitter. 3 billion? take the money man.
- pmarca 13y ago
  MySpace did take the money. We'll never know what they could have developed into had they not become part of News Corp.
001sky 13y ago
He (also) turned down google as well for someting like $8B, then got MSFT to invest in @$15B before taking it to $100B and an IPO. So this is a very good point.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Facebook is an outlier among outliers though. You shouldn't really use it as justification for anything.

joelrunyon 13y ago

Tangentially related question: What's the best country to hang out on with a beach & super fast wifi? Costa Rica always gets thrown around - but wondering if there's anything better/warmer/cheaper/faster.

seiji 13y ago
San Diego with an LTE hotspot? Cheap, warm, fast, pick three.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Touche.
- angrybits 13y ago
  San Diego is cheap, hmm. Who knew?
  - clarky07 13y ago
    right. i guess cheap is in the eye of the beholder? perhaps compared to new york or san fran.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    It can also get fairly chilly in comparison to Latin American countries.
- druiid 13y ago
  It's cheap to live in San Diego? Please tell that to my landlord. Certainly cheaper than SF proper, but really you end up paying a lot for gas (Because you drive everywhere) and food. At the end of the day, you probably aren't saving much.
1p1e1 13y ago
A month ago, I arrived in Morocco to work on my startup after I quit my job back in Belgium. I'm living in Taghazout, which is a very small fishing/surfing village. It's quite touristic, so rent prices are high. I'm paying ~$400 per month. However, food is extremely cheap. I easily live on $25 per week when cooking at home. My studio has a direct view towards the beach with opportunity for spectacular sunsets. The beach is 1 minute away, so I hear the sound of the ocean 24/7. The bays in the area give you more than enough beaches for sunbathing or surfing. It's definitely warm, more or less around the calendar. The internet that I have is extremely slow though. That would be a 0.25 Mbps connection. It's enough for working, but any forms of procrastination i.e. YouTube, cat browsing in reddit are nearly impossible. You can find 4 Mbps connection in some houses, but it is extremely rear. My guess is that in the big cities like Agadir, there will be fast wifi. If you have questions, shoot me an email - filipminev [at] gmail

jonnathanson 13y ago

Option B worked really well for Mark Cuban, for example. He sold a company with a <$50M run rate for close to $6B, probably recognizing that he'd gotten really damned lucky. But he didn't take the one-way ticket to Costa Rica; he parlayed his lottery payout into a continuous string of successful businesses. I'm not saying everyone gets a multi-billion-dollar exit (and even getting there in the first place is fucking tough; certainly a lot tougher than it was in the '90s). But there are worse paths through life than being a serial entrepreneur who's in it for the love of the game.

ryguytilidie 13y ago
That is the problem I always have with this argument. It turns into "do you want to have fuck you money and do whatever or keep your baby"? Why not take 3b and start whatever venture you want? Why not 6 different ventures?
sireat 13y ago
Mark Cuban also sold his first company for 7 figures (I think) figuring it would be enough before starting broadcast.com . He is a great(and rather rare) example of bootstrapping your money upwards. Most people only get lucky/good once.

segmondy 13y ago

No the reason you will may never be a billionaire enterpreneur is that you are probably yet to build something. If you did build it, and Facebook offered you $3bn. You are damn near a billionaire if not. Who's still counting? $500million or $1billion. I don't know that I can tell the difference or feel it in my lifetime.

andrewhillman 13y ago

What separates the "billionaire entrepreneurs" and the "other entrepreneurs" is that the billionaire entrepreneurs know something others don't (market insight). With this being said, I believe if you knew something others didn't understand you would not be doing a) or b).

downandout 13y ago

I absolutely agree. I can see this article being reposted on HN in a few years as a laughable cautionary tale for unrealistic entrepreneurs. Snapchat gained a significant user base quickly with very few resources. The next popular app will do the exact same thing and curtail Snapchat's growth and prospects.

jasonwilk 13y ago

There is a theory called "When the founder drives a porsche", which refers to already wealthy entrepreneurs who have much more appetite for risk to go for the big exit. Evan has taken at least $30-40M off the table in subsequent financing rounds. He has enough stacked away to go for an exit that deems him a billionaire which my guess at this point would need to be a $5B acquisition (assuming cap gains tax for his piece)

boyter 13y ago
Even so your quality of life is going to increase a lot more from $30 million to $1 billion, then $1 billion to $3 billion. I always liked the quote from Entrapment "What can you do with 7 billion that you can't do with 4?"

bruceb 13y ago

The argument could be made that 2nd acts in tech rarely go well. See youtube founder getting sued by Kanye and others. There are of course exceptions. Does anyone know the name of the instagram founders? Not really. They got money but only a little fame. If Evan sells out then maybe he is less known. Gamble but a chance at legendary status.

salemh 13y ago
I guess goals matter. What is "reputation" and what does it mean, except for your future goal execution. If you want to start more companies, meeet more people, retire, etc. I don't understand "legacy" or "legendary" status at all. Bill Gates may get a footnote in history, but what are you really chasing after for "legendary"? Do most people even know the YouTube founders? Does being a dead artist with legions of fans mean anything? Now I'm getting existential, but I don't understand your comment on "fame." They should break into movies with their $20MM or so, or music if they so desire "fame."

aet 13y ago

I agree -- I'm starting to think all social media sites have a half-life. I guess I'm too old to understand snap chat. Like -- isn't it just text messaging w/ pictures? Aren't there already a million ways to do that without ads? Any youths want to weigh in?

sharkweek 13y ago
It's the first app or whathaveyou that I completely don't understand (at the ripe age of 28). I was early to FB, a little late to Twitter, but I love it now, loved Instagram... etc. But Snapchat? Nah, "that's for the kids"
antocv 13y ago
Its picture chatting and that hasnt been done before that well, so instantenous and fleeting. The others cant compare, its not a chat with oh send a file or upload picturr click here there herr and there. ugh.
drharris 13y ago
I'm 30 and didn't really understand it, but I work with teenagers quite a bit. My generation was very excited about putting things online, permanently, a monument to our selves. Things like blogs, facebook, even twitter are pretty much permanent; you're putting your information and ideas out there for anybody to see. What I gather from kids now is that they don't care about permanence so much as connecting with people. So they're leaving FB for the most part, for ephemeral services like Snapchat and Whatsapp (another one I don't understand). They like the idea they can communicate with a single person and have it disappear. They won't be haunted by a bad picture (or naughty ones) the rest of their lives. They don't have to "think" about what they're doing (which I see as a problem, but they think this way). Nothing's permanent, so it's all about the raw conversation. That said, as a tech guy, every one of the kids I talk to says something like "but I wish it did ___" or "but I'd really rather use ___ if it worked a certain way". I believe Snapchat is successful for maybe one more year, tops, until some other startup gets even more in touch with the latest trends. I would have taken the $3bn and run. FB's and Twitter's days are also numbered, judging by the teenager beliefs today. For those wanting a good idea (I don't care about this space enough), teenagers are really interested in micro-celebrity. Some of their favorite bands, actors, etc. are local to them, are generally not big hits, etc. but communicate individually with them (even through Snapchat). One of Twitter's big reasons it worked was because of big celebrities communicating directly to fans. Kids now seem to not care at all about big celebrities. If you can find a way to even more easily connect smaller celebrities/bands to young fans and allow personalized interaction, you just found a potential next big thing.

pmarca 13y ago

If Thomas Watson, Dave Packard, Ken Olsen, Bill Gates, Bob Noyce, Ben Rosen, Michael Dell, Jim Clark, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, John Sidgmore, Ross Perot, Steve Case, Steve Jobs, Irwin Jacobs, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Jerry Yang, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, and Ben Silbermann all thought like that, I don't think our industry would even exist today.

svmegatron 13y ago
I actually wonder how many of them might have taken this offer (or its equivalent), if it was on the table.
- pmarca 13y ago
  Virtually every super-successful tech franchise company got big offers at this stage.
  - svmegatron 13y ago
    I did not know that, thanks! It's hard to imagine SnapChat in such rarefied company as the ones you mention, but I guess that's the point - there was a similar time in all of those companies' pasts, hard though it may be to recall it now that they are successful.
    - clarky07 13y ago
      i get what you're saying, but i'm not sure that's actually true. once you are getting offers in the billions it's pretty clear you have something. obviously no guarantees, but certainly you have some potential. that being said, the market potential for a google is quite obviously higher than the potential for snapchat i think. I can't imagine a future world where snapchat is worth more than google, and if it is, it's almost certainly because they used that valuation to pivot and make something more worthwhile.
      - pmarca 13y ago

jotm 13y ago

I don't think you lack vision: I think you simply see what many others see - that Snapchat will be one of the many Myspaces of mobile. Even if it stays afloat, it will soon be valuated much, much lower than it is now.

crassus 13y ago

With $3 billion, you could put a rocketship on Mars, do serious research into gene-modifying medicine, start new cities on the ocean, make automated laboratories that shrink the cost of medical research - you know, sci fi shit. I'd trade a teen messaging startup for that any day.

nationcrafting 13y ago
Exactly. It's funny that on a network of primarily tech founders, everyone seems to be looking at this as spending money, when the real pleasure is in using wealth as capital to really "make a dent in the universe".

dgregd 13y ago

> "here's 3bn, please give us your users" 3 bn is not cool anymore. You known what's cool? 10 bn!

frigg 13y ago

You are forgetting that Mark Zuckerberg is already a millionaire.