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Comment by blazespin | Hacker News Reader

The problem with selling isn't the money, the problem is what do you do with the rest of your life. If you sell, that is most likely your peak. This is what zuck and the Snapchat guy was thinking. If they sell, that's it, they are done. Life is over as they know it.

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I'm sure most entrepreneur types run off the "thrill of the chase", and a big exit would momentarily dilute the initial mission. But you are waayyy overstating that effect.

You've suddenly got a massive amount of capital to execute on the things you've been dreaming up along the way but have never been able to do before. Zuck sure had a company of thousands of employees to look after. And even if your mission was always just to exit... get a new vision.

Do I really need to invoke Elon and his first acquisitions here?

Bill Gates had to go, he was dragging MSFT down after the court case. Besides, he'd being doing it a looong time. He probably already hit Peak Bill and he knew it.

Elon is an outlier of grand proportions.

Your comment makes very little sense to me. One obvious counter-example is Bill Gates, who left Microsoft and went on to do much more important work with the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. I'm also sure that Mark Zuckerberg has plenty of things to do with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

I don't know anything about Evan Spiegel, but I just read about the Snap Foundation - https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/02/snap-inc-snap-foundation...

I just saw simonrobb's comment, and of course the best example is Elon Musk. That's how you sell a company and do something with the rest of your life.

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