>In 1998, Yahoo! bought Viaweb for $49.6 million and renamed the service Yahoo! Store.
Note how PG seems bullish on VC growth and large exits, whereas his company didn't take much VC money and had an insignificant exit compared to today's standards (even after adjusting for inflation).
Not to mention that even before sold, ViaWeb had an actual business model and paying customers, as opposed to the model followed by lots of YC companies today.
Practically it's like PG created and sold something like Basecamp/37 Signals, rather than the kind of startups he advocates for...
I think it is a little unfair to expect that PG should have acted 17 years ago in a way that he might do today. Today he has 17 years worth of extra experience to call upon. If I look at code I wrote 17 years ago I do not judge it by the fact that today I could do it better. At the time it was the best I could.
Besides, there are more reasons for selling your company than simply maximising the financial return. Maybe his partners wanted to sell, maybe he was exhausted, maybe he lost his passion for the project, maybe he valued never having to work again by selling for a certain payoff now.
>I think it is a little unfair to expect that PG should have acted 17 years ago in a way that he might do today. Today he has 17 years worth of extra experience to call upon.
But t's not just "today" -- he's been advocating that for over a decade -- so the change was much less than 17 years ago.
>Besides, there are more reasons for selling your company than simply maximising the financial return. Maybe his partners wanted to sell, maybe he was exhausted, maybe he lost his passion for the project, maybe he valued never having to work again by selling for a certain payoff now.
Sure. So why do PG (and others alike) piss on that model that worked for him?
I don't know why you think PG/YC "piss on that model."
The YC website says:
> We try to interfere as little as possible in the startups we fund. We don’t take board seats or many of the other powers investors sometimes require. We offer lots of advice, but we can’t force anyone to take it. We realize that independence is one of the reasons people want to start startups in the first place. And frankly, it’s also one of the reasons startups succeed. Investors who try to control the companies they fund often end up destroying them.
> One concrete consequence is that Y Combinator funding lets you sell early, if you want to. It can sometimes make sense to sell yourself when you’re small for a few million, rather than take more funding and roll the dice again.
And maybe $50M was a pretty fucking nice luiqidation event in 1998 and Yahoo had a brand and user footprint very much larger than what Viaweb could have reasonable been expected to capture on their own.
>In 1998, Yahoo! bought Viaweb for $49.6 million and renamed the service Yahoo! Store.
Note how PG seems bullish on VC growth and large exits, whereas his company didn't take much VC money and had an insignificant exit compared to today's standards (even after adjusting for inflation).
Not to mention that even before sold, ViaWeb had an actual business model and paying customers, as opposed to the model followed by lots of YC companies today.
Practically it's like PG created and sold something like Basecamp/37 Signals, rather than the kind of startups he advocates for...