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Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

(medium.com)
2101 points jamesjyu | 3 comments | 07 Feb 19 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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holman ◴[07 Feb 19 16:22 UTC] No.19106188[source]▶
Really love this post. My favorite line is:

> Every month of less than 20% growth should have been a red flag.

I think that's pretty insightful. 20% growth is great for a normal business, of course; for a VC-backed startup it can show some warning signs about future hard decisions you might have to face.

I think there's certainly lots of discussion that has been had — and should be had — about "should I or shouldn't I raise money?", but there still are plenty of companies and founders who will raise VC, and paying attention to those early warning signs are important if that's the choice you make. It's important to worry about it each month and each week rather than the two months surrounding the raise of your next round.

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1. duxup ◴[07 Feb 19 16:37 UTC] No.19106282[source]▶
Yeah it appears this is a perfectly fine and successful business... it just went through an odd route for someone to figure that out.

Those charts and numbers, all pretty good IMO. If someone came to me and said "Hey I (or we) made this thing here is what it does and the numbers." I'd be all about high fives and such. And yet at times they didn't think so based on the route they went, very interesting.

I always wonder if there is value lost in companies that are shuttered because something isn't the next big hit, or some private equity decides they want to cash out / break up a company that otherwise... would be just fine and would have continued contribute.

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2. Anderkent ◴[07 Feb 19 21:49 UTC] No.19108919[source]▶
>I always wonder if there is value lost in companies that are shuttered because something isn't the next big hit, or some private equity decides they want to cash out / break up a company that otherwise... would be just fine and would have continued contribute.

Of course there is, but you have to compare it with the opportunity cost of working at something world-changing.

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3. duxup ◴[07 Feb 19 22:19 UTC] No.19109175[source]▶
For the individual maybe I get that.

But even from an individual perspective, I gotta think there are folks who would be fine working at a more ... not world changing business too. But these companies sometimes get shutdown or torn apart because they're not something else.