Sell your startup for half a billion and get nothing (2021)

Re:Sell your startup for half a billion and get nothing (2021) by fakedang on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:03AM (#39600999)

> No, it won’t have a 1 bil payout, but you make your own rules and you’ll get a healthy cash out from the dividends after only 1 year or so.

Actually, it just might. RightNow was a bootstrapped startup back in the dotcom heydays, which managed a 9 digit exit after selling to Oracle. Midjourney is a unicorn without a cent of VC funding. Zapier raised just $2m, and they only got into YC on their second try.

The old maxim of "build something people want" is crap honestly - it's more appropriately worded as "build something people will pay for".

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Re:Sell your startup for half a billion and get nothing (2021) by agentgumshoe on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:18AM (#39601510)

Which... Is the same maxim still

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Re:Sell your startup for half a billion and get nothing (2021) by fakedang on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @05:33AM (#39601617)

Nope. A lot of people and businesses "want" something. But they're barely ready to pay a reasonable market rate it. Whether it be a $2 pm SaaS or a $100m blockbuster drug compound.

They would still want it though, if they got the drug compound at a heavy discount, or the SaaS for free. And they'll keep telling you they want something that does exactly what those products do.

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Re:Sell your startup for half a billion and get nothing (2021) by aetherspawn on Tuesday March 05, 2024 @04:22PM (#39609304)

There are two ways to do this. Build something that a lot of people will pay a small amount for, or in my experience the better self bootstrapping business is to build something that a few people will pay a LOT for (a super niche product).

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