The Deal That Jeff Bezos Got on Basecamp | Hacker News Reader

The Deal That Jeff Bezos Got on Basecamp

m.signalvnoise.com

89 pointskyleblarson16 comments

The original announcement from 2006: https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests...

It's interesting to see how their expectations appear to have lined up well eleven years later.

Does anyone know if Jeff has made these types of investments in other companies? The return rate he got is really good. Granted, most other SaaS companies are not as successful or stick around as long as Basecamp but I wonder if that would be different if others worked out these types of investments vs taking VC.

I wonder what Bezos's goal was in making the investment?

Doesn't sound like a profitable exit via acquisition, and while it may have turned out to be an income/value sort of thing... it probably didn't look like that then.

I also wonder that if he knew then what he can know now, if he would have made the same investment.

I'm a little curious how it would stack up vs an index or Amazon stock.

I wouldn't say no to an investment that is 5x over 11 years.

That's 16% of annual return rate.

Though AMZN did considerably better over the same period.

It's not 5x though, it's more coz Jeff still has the ownership AND he has seen 5x cash back.

It's decent at 15%+ annual yield. But Basecamp has likely gone 5x up or more since in value as well. Highrise has gotten a boost since they semi spun it off with Nathan Kontny as the CEO.

At the very least he got optionality. No matter what road this thing traveled, he had a piece of ownership in its future, up until it had no future. Even then he had a mental stake in the founders, which is no small thing.

I'm not saying this happened here, but taking a stake can also be used to stop your competitors from acquiring a company.

I wonder if they talk to Jeff regularly, or have direct access to him if they want to discuss something.

If he's a partner in the LLC then they would have to speak at least once a year for the annual meeting.

They've said in various interviews over the years that access to Jeff is one of the reasons they did the deal and he's weighed in on decisions like renaming the company and changes to their product offerings a few years ago.

Is the actual amount invested known? Or the stake?

The article only states that each received, "a few million", so it's ambiguous. I can't easily find a clarifying number on a quick search, so it looks like it's not public info.

Does Amazon use basecamp internally?

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