5 ms·

"Fuck You money" is such a myth. More on this soon in another post.

steamboiler 17y ago
I was amused to see this comment on HN, a site run by Paul Graham.
fallentimes 17y ago
I look forward to it. Just remember I'm not saying they should do nothing, but rather they can work on something that doesn't need to be monetizable. I think the post will end up being contrarian just to be contrarian. This site and YCombinator were created as a result of "fuck you" money.
- jasonfried 17y ago
  "I think the post will end up being contrarian just to be contrarian." If your mind is already made up then you don't need to read it.
  - fallentimes 17y ago
    It's just a guess, not a certainty. Your mind seems pretty made up about Mint without knowing all the details surrounding the acquisition. What's kind of funny is the vast majority of the 37signals philosophy I agree with. Hell, we turned down VC funding in part because we really liked what you guys were able to do without it, and the fact that investor interests and founder interests often conflict. But to lambast someone for taking the payday of a lifetime without knowing all the circumstances surrounding not only their company, but their life, doesn't seem right.
swolchok 17y ago
Are you claiming that money does not have diminishing marginal utility? (i.e., the famous "s-curve"; it's in AIMA but I can't find a convenient picture with Google.)
- baguasquirrel 17y ago
  If you're the usual person that economics tries to model, then yes, money has diminish marginal utility that drops off quickly. The value of money drops off for everyone. If you ask me, 170 million doesn't buy a whole lot of votes in Congress. But this is irrelevant. What's valuable is the ability to create money, not the money itself. Investing is hard. You could probably ask pg about how hard it is. These guys had a really good investment, and these guys, bright as they are, may have very well killed their golden goose.
  - swolchok 17y ago
    It sounds like you're saying that society does not have a diminishing marginal utility of money, and/or that they shouldn't have axed the golden investment opportunity for everyone (had they IPOed). Is that right?
    - gjm11 17y ago
      The marginal utility of money is presumably diminishing for any entity. But the curve is stretched when you look at the whole of society (or any larger group) rather than an individual, for two reasons. 1. Having $1M isn't 1000 times as good as having $1K, but giving $1K to 1K people is about 1000 times as good as giving $1K to one person if all the people matter roughly equally. You're not moving so far along their utility curves. 2. There may be big projects that deliver lots of value at very high cost. (The fact that this is possible is basically a consequence of #1.) I'm not sure this has very much to do with whether the Mint guys would have done better to keep going independently rather than taking the $170M, though.
tjmc 17y ago
Tell that to Elon Musk. There'd likely be no Tesla and certainly no SpaceX if he hadn't sold PayPal to eBay. Anything customers 'lost' in PayPal's acquisition was vastly surpassed by the innovation of his subsequent companies.
zackattack 17y ago
Most of your blog posts strike me as you rationalizing why you aren't a hugely profitable company.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  You know they are not?
- abalashov 17y ago
  I think it's fair to say that 37 Signals' aspirations are, at best, orthogonally related to profit maximisation. They're there to enjoy building things they like, their way. No, I'm not some sort of Kool-aid drinking acolyte. But ultimately, I'm trying to do the same thing - to have fun and do what I find fulfilling, at the expense of considerably faster and more lucrative routes to making more money - so I can appreciate their general angle.
  - JabavuAdams 17y ago
    When you're working for yourself, you're still working for your customers. This notion that working on a fulfilling business can meet all of a person's needs is false. Working on something fulfilling, for money is good. Having the option of doing something fulfilling that doesn't need to make money is better. So, back to the OP's point: FU money is better than a happy income (depending on what you have to do to get to the FU stage).
  - nomoresecrets 17y ago
    On the other hand, the Mint guys worked for 3 years, earned $170m, and now they can 'enjoy building things they like, their way', for a long ass time without needing to answer to anybody except people who use their product. I'm not sure what's not to like about that. The real question is about what those 3 years were like. If they kind of enjoyed them, that's just gravy. (Of course, I'm aware of Survivor's Bias here. Not everyone gets bought for $170m.)
Virax 17y ago
Reminds me of something my uncle told me: "The rich are different from you and me: they have money...and you don't!" Seriously though - you can never have too much money, but this doesn't change the fact that it is way better to have, say $10M in net worth vs. $100,000. Of course if you have $10M you're still going to want to be a billionaire, but now you can choose to either work hard to become a billionaire or do something entirely different. You're still going to have to find your place in the world---everyone deals with this---but now you have a huge amount of freedom you didn't have before.
- gruseom 17y ago
  Reminds me of something my uncle told me: "The rich are different from you and me: they have money...and you don't!" This was a famous exchange between Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald said, "You know Ernest, the rich are different from you and me." Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." The phrase was lifted for the title of a book of anecdotes about rich people that I once saw a stack of on a coffee table at Restoration Hardware. I picked one up and it turned out to be freaking hilarious. I heartily recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotations/dp/067944386X http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotation... For example, there was the English aristocrat who, when told he could no longer afford to keep three pastry chefs (French, Danish, and one other), said "What? Can't a man have a biscuit when he wants it?" Then there was Christina Onassis' habit of sending her private jet out to get a twelve-pack of Diet Coke every time she ran out. The pilot was asked why he didn't just bring back a full load. His answer: "Because Madame does not want old Diet Coke." I could quote another dozen stories from memory and this book has been sitting in storage for like 10 years. A seriously hilarious book.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Too much money is that money that you had left when you died that you held on to for a day that never came. Money is a tool, not an end in and of itself. So, yes, you can have too much money.
webwright 17y ago
I think what we don't know here is the dream/ambition of the founders. Maybe their dreams were too expensive to chase or they otherwise didn't feel equipped to chase them. Fuck you money (for a lot of people) isn't "go buy a Caribbean island" money. It's "I can finally build the company I WANTED to build" money. (anticipating response of "Why not just build the company you're passionate about to begin with?") Some companies cannot practically be built without vast piles of money/power/connections/etc. As a previous commenter pointed out, you can't bootstrap the SpaceX prize. :-) Also-- people change! A guy I know's wife just got diagnosed with breast cancer. If he sold his startup tomorrow to chase a different dream, could you blame him?
- shiranaihito 17y ago
  I always thought that "fuck you" money meant never having to work again, and thus being able to say "fuck you" to a nasty boss, followed by "I quit".
  - fallentimes 17y ago
    That's what it does mean.
    - shiranaihito 17y ago
      Alright, but that's far from buying a Caribbean island, which was being discussed too.
  - webwright 17y ago
    It was a metaphor. In other words-- The Mint guys might take that FU money to enjoy a life of leisure. Or they might use it to work on what they REALLY want to work on. And obviously FU money here has a very different meaning than to punt a nasty boss-- given that they people who made the decision to sell here WERE the boss.
    - billswift 17y ago
      Owning your own company doesn't make you the boss; it means you have a lot more bosses, your customers. The advantage of working for yourself or your own company is that there is no ONE boss who can fire you. The disadvantage is having to deal with many more, if individually weaker, bosses.
davidw 17y ago
You're posting this on a site built by a guy who had the time and money to dedicate himself to helping create startups because it's a "cool hack". That certainly looks like FU money to me. And for what it's worth, I think YC is way cooler than ViaWeb.
- christofd 17y ago
  Hmm... there is a point where principle matters more than money. A company is not just a chunk of cash... how can you motivate people to spend their life with a company when it's just a payout? I grew up in Europe and there is something about taking a stance (if you can afford to). I like Jason Fried's general idea to focus on building good products.
umjames 17y ago
What would have happened if Mint had said no, and then Intuit made a bigger offer to Wesabe (and they accepted)? People who were already used to using Intuit products might be tempted to try out Wesabe instead of Mint, making it that much harder for Mint to convince such users to give them a try. That's not to say Mint did any of us a favor by accepting Intuit's offer, but their decision may not have come as easily as you think.
- boredguy8 17y ago
  I use Wesabe instead of Mint. Now I'm even happier I do.
delld 17y ago
Coudnt agree more. I'd say FU to FU money. FU money is the worst reason to do startups. Most startups which are driven by FU money as the goal, dont really get anywhere. They destroy lives and drain the best years of some of the brightest young people. The ones we hear about going big are really a very very small fraction - you are better of buying lottery tickets if you really want FU money. Do a startup by all means, but do it for the right reasons. There is no better life waiting for you after you get FU money. Do a startup only if running one is the best use you can think of your life.
iuguy 17y ago
"Fuck You money" is not a myth. I know a fair few that have accepted FU money and built companies specifically to get FU money. Hell, I'd sell up for $170 million. I'm shocked at how arrogant your comment comes across. Different strokes for different folks.
thisinspiresme 17y ago
I think we're discussing an attitude that is a symptom of something deeper. Currently, it is not really legal to not make money. So, the majority of people work out of necessity, and do jobs they wouldn't choose otherwise. Being able to stop working as an obligation and start working as an authentic contribution, passion and creation is an important and very, very satisfying lifestyle change.

I was amused to see this comment on HN, a site run by Paul Graham.

I look forward to it. Just remember I'm not saying they should do nothing, but rather they can work on something that doesn't need to be monetizable. I think the post will end up being contrarian just to be contrarian. This site and YCombinator were created as a result of "fuck you" money.

jasonfried 17y ago
"I think the post will end up being contrarian just to be contrarian." If your mind is already made up then you don't need to read it.
- fallentimes 17y ago
  It's just a guess, not a certainty. Your mind seems pretty made up about Mint without knowing all the details surrounding the acquisition. What's kind of funny is the vast majority of the 37signals philosophy I agree with. Hell, we turned down VC funding in part because we really liked what you guys were able to do without it, and the fact that investor interests and founder interests often conflict. But to lambast someone for taking the payday of a lifetime without knowing all the circumstances surrounding not only their company, but their life, doesn't seem right.

swolchok 17y ago

Are you claiming that money does not have diminishing marginal utility? (i.e., the famous "s-curve"; it's in AIMA but I can't find a convenient picture with Google.)

baguasquirrel 17y ago
If you're the usual person that economics tries to model, then yes, money has diminish marginal utility that drops off quickly. The value of money drops off for everyone. If you ask me, 170 million doesn't buy a whole lot of votes in Congress. But this is irrelevant. What's valuable is the ability to create money, not the money itself. Investing is hard. You could probably ask pg about how hard it is. These guys had a really good investment, and these guys, bright as they are, may have very well killed their golden goose.
- swolchok 17y ago
  It sounds like you're saying that society does not have a diminishing marginal utility of money, and/or that they shouldn't have axed the golden investment opportunity for everyone (had they IPOed). Is that right?
  - gjm11 17y ago
    The marginal utility of money is presumably diminishing for any entity. But the curve is stretched when you look at the whole of society (or any larger group) rather than an individual, for two reasons. 1. Having $1M isn't 1000 times as good as having $1K, but giving $1K to 1K people is about 1000 times as good as giving $1K to one person if all the people matter roughly equally. You're not moving so far along their utility curves. 2. There may be big projects that deliver lots of value at very high cost. (The fact that this is possible is basically a consequence of #1.) I'm not sure this has very much to do with whether the Mint guys would have done better to keep going independently rather than taking the $170M, though.

tjmc 17y ago

Tell that to Elon Musk. There'd likely be no Tesla and certainly no SpaceX if he hadn't sold PayPal to eBay. Anything customers 'lost' in PayPal's acquisition was vastly surpassed by the innovation of his subsequent companies.

zackattack 17y ago

Most of your blog posts strike me as you rationalizing why you aren't a hugely profitable company.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
aaronblohowiak 17y ago
You know they are not?
abalashov 17y ago
I think it's fair to say that 37 Signals' aspirations are, at best, orthogonally related to profit maximisation. They're there to enjoy building things they like, their way. No, I'm not some sort of Kool-aid drinking acolyte. But ultimately, I'm trying to do the same thing - to have fun and do what I find fulfilling, at the expense of considerably faster and more lucrative routes to making more money - so I can appreciate their general angle.
- JabavuAdams 17y ago
  When you're working for yourself, you're still working for your customers. This notion that working on a fulfilling business can meet all of a person's needs is false. Working on something fulfilling, for money is good. Having the option of doing something fulfilling that doesn't need to make money is better. So, back to the OP's point: FU money is better than a happy income (depending on what you have to do to get to the FU stage).
- nomoresecrets 17y ago
  On the other hand, the Mint guys worked for 3 years, earned $170m, and now they can 'enjoy building things they like, their way', for a long ass time without needing to answer to anybody except people who use their product. I'm not sure what's not to like about that. The real question is about what those 3 years were like. If they kind of enjoyed them, that's just gravy. (Of course, I'm aware of Survivor's Bias here. Not everyone gets bought for $170m.)

Virax 17y ago

Reminds me of something my uncle told me: "The rich are different from you and me: they have money...and you don't!" Seriously though - you can never have too much money, but this doesn't change the fact that it is way better to have, say $10M in net worth vs. $100,000. Of course if you have $10M you're still going to want to be a billionaire, but now you can choose to either work hard to become a billionaire or do something entirely different. You're still going to have to find your place in the world---everyone deals with this---but now you have a huge amount of freedom you didn't have before.

gruseom 17y ago
Reminds me of something my uncle told me: "The rich are different from you and me: they have money...and you don't!" This was a famous exchange between Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald said, "You know Ernest, the rich are different from you and me." Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." The phrase was lifted for the title of a book of anecdotes about rich people that I once saw a stack of on a coffee table at Restoration Hardware. I picked one up and it turned out to be freaking hilarious. I heartily recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotations/dp/067944386X http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotation... For example, there was the English aristocrat who, when told he could no longer afford to keep three pastry chefs (French, Danish, and one other), said "What? Can't a man have a biscuit when he wants it?" Then there was Christina Onassis' habit of sending her private jet out to get a twelve-pack of Diet Coke every time she ran out. The pilot was asked why he didn't just bring back a full load. His answer: "Because Madame does not want old Diet Coke." I could quote another dozen stories from memory and this book has been sitting in storage for like 10 years. A seriously hilarious book.
jacquesm 17y ago
Too much money is that money that you had left when you died that you held on to for a day that never came. Money is a tool, not an end in and of itself. So, yes, you can have too much money.

webwright 17y ago

I think what we don't know here is the dream/ambition of the founders. Maybe their dreams were too expensive to chase or they otherwise didn't feel equipped to chase them. Fuck you money (for a lot of people) isn't "go buy a Caribbean island" money. It's "I can finally build the company I WANTED to build" money. (anticipating response of "Why not just build the company you're passionate about to begin with?") Some companies cannot practically be built without vast piles of money/power/connections/etc. As a previous commenter pointed out, you can't bootstrap the SpaceX prize. :-) Also-- people change! A guy I know's wife just got diagnosed with breast cancer. If he sold his startup tomorrow to chase a different dream, could you blame him?

shiranaihito 17y ago
I always thought that "fuck you" money meant never having to work again, and thus being able to say "fuck you" to a nasty boss, followed by "I quit".
- fallentimes 17y ago
  That's what it does mean.
  - shiranaihito 17y ago
    Alright, but that's far from buying a Caribbean island, which was being discussed too.
- webwright 17y ago
  It was a metaphor. In other words-- The Mint guys might take that FU money to enjoy a life of leisure. Or they might use it to work on what they REALLY want to work on. And obviously FU money here has a very different meaning than to punt a nasty boss-- given that they people who made the decision to sell here WERE the boss.
  - billswift 17y ago
    Owning your own company doesn't make you the boss; it means you have a lot more bosses, your customers. The advantage of working for yourself or your own company is that there is no ONE boss who can fire you. The disadvantage is having to deal with many more, if individually weaker, bosses.

davidw 17y ago

You're posting this on a site built by a guy who had the time and money to dedicate himself to helping create startups because it's a "cool hack". That certainly looks like FU money to me. And for what it's worth, I think YC is way cooler than ViaWeb.

christofd 17y ago
Hmm... there is a point where principle matters more than money. A company is not just a chunk of cash... how can you motivate people to spend their life with a company when it's just a payout? I grew up in Europe and there is something about taking a stance (if you can afford to). I like Jason Fried's general idea to focus on building good products.

umjames 17y ago

What would have happened if Mint had said no, and then Intuit made a bigger offer to Wesabe (and they accepted)? People who were already used to using Intuit products might be tempted to try out Wesabe instead of Mint, making it that much harder for Mint to convince such users to give them a try. That's not to say Mint did any of us a favor by accepting Intuit's offer, but their decision may not have come as easily as you think.

boredguy8 17y ago
I use Wesabe instead of Mint. Now I'm even happier I do.

delld 17y ago

Coudnt agree more. I'd say FU to FU money. FU money is the worst reason to do startups. Most startups which are driven by FU money as the goal, dont really get anywhere. They destroy lives and drain the best years of some of the brightest young people. The ones we hear about going big are really a very very small fraction - you are better of buying lottery tickets if you really want FU money. Do a startup by all means, but do it for the right reasons. There is no better life waiting for you after you get FU money. Do a startup only if running one is the best use you can think of your life.

iuguy 17y ago

"Fuck You money" is not a myth. I know a fair few that have accepted FU money and built companies specifically to get FU money. Hell, I'd sell up for $170 million. I'm shocked at how arrogant your comment comes across. Different strokes for different folks.

thisinspiresme 17y ago

I think we're discussing an attitude that is a symptom of something deeper. Currently, it is not really legal to not make money. So, the majority of people work out of necessity, and do jobs they wouldn't choose otherwise. Being able to stop working as an obligation and start working as an authentic contribution, passion and creation is an important and very, very satisfying lifestyle change.