Has anyone just completed an exit?

http://www.igeejo.com

by iiijjjiii • 17 years ago

30 26 17 years ago

igeejo.com

shafqat• 17 years ago

What was the actual startup that they exited?

pxlpshr4• 17 years ago

porchlight.ca - an ISP.

I don't think a 13-year business with under $3M in revenue is a startup, sounds more like a lifestyle business. It's also not something VCs would be interested in. This falls under super-laid back, and not something most people on HN would likely be attracted either. The serial entrepreneurs I admire have done 2-4 businesses in 10 years, all with exits well over $50M.

steve___5• 17 years ago

I started the business as a hobby in 1995 while I completed high school. In 1999 I met Jim and became much more focused. I didn't have the 'startup' concept until 2005 when I read Paul Graham's essay, "How to Make Wealth". In hindsight we should have exited the company somewhere between 2003 and 2005.

re: not something VCs are interested in - we didn't require VC money. I do not think VC money is always necessary in starting a company. If anything I believe it adds a layer of complexity which could hurt founders especially with their first go at it.

re: laid back - I guess this is relative. I do know things were much more stressful and frantic in 2001. I also know we are more focused today and complete far more in 10 hours now than we did back then.

Luc• 17 years ago

The entrepreneurs I admire have built long-lasting businesses that continue to pay out dividends year after year. I don't see why flipping half-baked businesses would be a more noble goal than that. Also, I don't care what VCs are interested in and don't believe even small businesses are 'super-laid back'. Besides, if you admire statistical outliers you are likely to end up with nothing.

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

I don't think flipping businesses is a model to admire.

They aren't creating any more value than some guy selling a get rich quick scheme.

And given the amount of attention DHH receives for taking the counterpoint to your argument here, I'd disagree that "most people on HN" would not be interested in this.

paraschopra• 17 years ago

Did anybody understand what the post is about? Are they funding new startups from the money they got from exit or they are they want to talk to startups to know if the exit was in the right range? No offense, but I couldn't understand the motivation of the post.

steve___5• 17 years ago

We recently sold our company. Our goal now is to try and meet up with a group of two or three founders, people in a situation similar to ours, who have have worked together and founded a successful startup in the past. It's our hope to work together on a new startup.

Asa-Nisse• 17 years ago

They only work with other people that have exited a startup.

Funny stuff.

pwnstigator3• 17 years ago

Note: insisting that your co-founders have "completed an exit" is not going to make you any friends here, because you're suggesting that you're better than others less experienced or less fortunate who have not.

Success is obviously preferable to failure, and we all believe that we're talented to a degree that gives us a high enough likelihood of success for startups to be worth pursuing. However, this sort of extreme personalization of results is not attractive.

davidw• 17 years ago

As someone whose closest proximity to a successful exit was a bunch of stock options in failed dot.com Linuxcare, I don't take umbrage at the requirement. They want to use that as a filter, let them. They'll miss out on some good people, but that's their choice, and as good as any in terms of screening people.

steve___5• 17 years ago

Yeah, it is difficult to know exactly how to go about it. As Jim said above we ran into the problem of too much noise when we presented the idea locally.

No one wants to be excluded. On the same breath, when I started out I had many preconceived notions about the best way to run a company based on what I thought was common sense. Only by trying things and tracking the results was I able to see that the right approach wasn't always intuitive. I understand things now that I couldn't have known without the actual experience of starting the company and taking it through to the exit. I'd prefer to start the next venture with people already at that stage, if possible.

All that said, we're really most interested in people who are good friends; who have worked closely together and understand each other very well.

iiijjjiii4• 17 years ago

If you pose a general question to a startup crowd "Are you interested in joining a startup" you get everyone and their grandmother responding. The "completed an exit" requirement acts as a filter. We're hoping it will improve the signal to noise ratio.

pwnstigator3• 17 years ago

"Are you interested enough in a startup to be willing to work for X months for mostly equity, knowing full well that the project has a risk of failure?"

There's your filter.

webwright3• 17 years ago

Strongly disagree. It might be unattractive to SOME, but it's probably attractive to the people they are filtering for, who (among other things):

- Are proven to be able to build a business - Probably have the cash to actually work for equity INDEFINITELY. Most people have a very finite amount of time they can work for equity before they start getting hungry and have to pick up a day job or some consulting work. - Probably don't need startup education... i.e. they know about the highs, the lows, the shifting landscapes, etc. - Aren't currently deeply engaged with another project.

Personally, I'm still iffy on the "founder personal ad", whatever the filter. It's like advertising for a wife... I think it'd be better to advertise that you're interested in "dating" and seeing where it leads. But if you're going to go this route, veteran founders with a track record seems like an obvious filter.

iiijjjiii4• 17 years ago

How would you go about finding co-founders?

We've run a decent company in the past. We're going to start another. We're looking for 2 or 3 co-founders. We've tried different things, posting on startup blogs but the responses were generally from people with little experience or others who were fixed on a pet project they've been working on after hours. So we created a website with info and posted a link here hoping for some constructive feedback.

Do you have any other suggestions?

AsmodeusB• 17 years ago

I'm amused that a lot of the comments here have missed the point that this is their wishlist, not some draconian HR checkbox exercise. They come off as fairly sane to me, so I doubt they'd go "No previous exits? Don't want you."

Has anyone just completed an exit?

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