4 ms·

Why would a billionaire, proven operator and executor raise a round?

• traskjd 13y ago
  Could be to get people who he respects around the table looking at it? Nobody is an island and I've see plenty of folks who raise money more to get talent at the higher end (e.g. Atlasssian raised $60m, to get the right people to help it continue growing and assist in the speculated IPO to come).
• js2 13y ago
  Which raises the question: Why is Williams taking outside capital at all? Williams, in an interview earlier this week, cited a few reasons: As Medium scales, taking money from multiple investors is a signal of long-term thinking and diversification to the company’s employees; and the more parties that have a stake in Medium outside of Williams, the more they have a stake in the company’s success.
  • dclara 13y ago
    That's really true. Even if the company has sufficient fund to run by itself, it still needs to go for VC and IPO in order to attract more users, more talent and have a secure exit.
• nedwin 13y ago
  To reduce his risk. Now he has a bunch of other smart people who have some skin in the game. They have motivation to help him succeed - which should encourage them to help him grow and eventually to find an exit of some sort. He might be a multi-billionaire but that doesn't mean he's going to throw his money around on 6-packs of rolexes like all the other billionaires.
• shin_lao 13y ago
  He's probably building a team.