Recycling startups?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52062

by ratsbane • 19 years ago

4 7 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Some startups, YCombinator or otherwise, aren't going to succeed, at least not enough to prevent their founders from taking other jobs or going back to school.

Another team might be able to take over and push the thing forward to another level, thereby giving some value to the founders and seed investors as well as a head start for themselves.

Kiko, which sold on eBay for $258K is the only example of this I'm aware of, at least from YC. While it may not have been as much of a success as the founders intended, it did produce quite decent value.

It's encouraging to think that there is some reward, even in the long tail.

Who might be interested in taking over another startup? Who might be interested in selling and moving on? Does YC facilitate?

yamada• 19 years ago

There are quite a few semi-retired executives and management consultants who become "turnaround" experts. Usually they associate themselves with private equity firms or semi-formal investment syndicates. But they tend to focus on more established companies. A more startup-oriented version of this would be "Entrepreneurs-in-residence" at VC firms. They claim to be developing ideas, but in reality they have some association with VCs who want to keep them around for whatever reason so they just hang around until they come across an idea and then the VCs invest on the basis that the E-i-R is the "lead managing entrepreneur." But like most women, they tend to be suspicious of anybody that wants to have anything to do with them and tend to go for people/companies who don't even know they exist. It's a sick world that we live in.

danw• 19 years ago

It's an interesting idea. I've seen a few startups have their teams replaced in an attempt to save the company and I haven't seen it succeed once. Anyone seen this work? What happened to kiko after sale?

Theres certainly some interesting YC companies that have gone missing that I would love to see revived. Jump Chat for example.

Does YC accept companies doing the same idea as a previous YC company?

dood2• 19 years ago

Whatever happened to the Kiko fellows? Last I heard they had the wackiest idea in the game.

pg• 19 years ago

http://justin.tv

dood2• 19 years ago

Hah, I hadn't realised it was the same guys, good for them.

sbraford• 19 years ago

Good, randomly found, motivated marketing people seem hard to find. (or maybe I just don't know where to look)

i.e. let's say you've developed a little site. it launched with a little buzz but then tapered off. you've added a bunch of features and a lot of the site/code infrastructure is in place to take it to the next level, but you've done very little marketing / etc.

What to do next in this case? I have a site like that which is kind of rotting on the vine... a few k in revenue each month gradually sloping downward without anymore work on it from my part.

Biggest problem: managing people part-time can be a huge pain.

ratsbane• 19 years ago

That's just the sort of thing I was thinking about. Would you be interested in selling it, bringing in new partners, or something like that? I'm not saying I'm interested myself (I shouldn't be; plenty of other stuff I am/should be working on) but perhaps someone is. I have been thinking about the value of mildly successful web projects and I have an interest one too.

Recycling startups?

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