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Comment by blizkreeg | Hacker News Reader

I realize the conversation in the thread pertains to exits and funded companies. But I keep thinking why is there a general negative perception or often a sense of ignorance/neglect towards successful, ongoing, revenue-generating businesses (that haven't taken any or very little funding before reaching profitability) whereas even a minor exit (acqui-hire) will often put you in the metaphorical league of 'successful' founders?

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Because most tech start ups in the valley are funded by private investors, and for them usually the best outcome is either an exit or an IPO. When the industry is dominated and controlled by this kind of funding, these goals end up idolized because that's just what rules the land. The VC wants to flip it to Google, the entrepreneur just hopes that he doesn't fuck up and that his investor gets his outcome.

The dynamic you're talking about is intrinsic to the mathematics of funding startups. It's not a value judgement.

There are plenty of us here running profitable tech companies bopping along doing our thing and who don't have to deal with investors.

While the perception is HC as a community is negative towards these sort of companies, the reality (at least from my experience) is it is pretty interested and supportive of such startups.

Agree, there seems to be a standard path that startups are "supposed" to follow. Though in this case, I imagine it is probably just because any other measure of success would be difficult to measure.

Where do you see that? I don't see that anywhere! Obviously, the higher the exit the more successful you are. However, exiting once and getting fyou money (e.g., PG and viaweb) makes a lot of sense. Once you have bank then you can spend the rest of your life working for an IPO. It's really up to you.

The OP said:

> whereas even a minor exit (acqui-hire)

How is viaweb anything like that? First off. Compared to the avg modern startup, in pretty sure viaweb took little in funding so founders likely had most of the ownership. And they got $50M in stock of a company that would keep going up for another 1.5 years. And $50M back then is like $75M or more in today's value. That's not an acquire or even a small/minor exit.

Also you said fyou money. A minor/small exit wouldn't give you that. A million or two isn't fyou money.

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