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Fuck you, Money

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186 pointsantongm110 comments

I have to say, I nearly threw this article across the proverbial room after reading the second paragraph:

> Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?

I'm sorry, but that's just offensive. The fact that you can't imagine a "wage-slave" contemplating these questions is probably closely linked to why you can't imagine a successful startup founder getting off the treadmill either. If you were willing to take your $4.2M or whatever and be happy, you'd also be able to understand that you can live a good life without that kind of money too. (Free hint: it's not the 48-inch TV that makes your life fulfilling.)

I think perhaps you're interpreting what he wrote too harshly.

I took it to mean that once you have FU money, you have to confront these questions because there's nothing left for you to worry about. Much of our time and mental effort is spent dealing with and worrying about survival. (Not survival in the hunter-gatherer sense, but making sure you have enough money in the next few days/weeks/months/years to live on.) When you worry about that every day, it's easier to not think about the big stuff. When only the big stuff is left, it's hard not to think about it.

Scott, that's exactly what I was getting at.

My only fear about making it as a startup is having to one day answer that existential question myself. I frankly don't know what I'd decide to do.

Fair enough, I respect that you're willing to admit that. But please don't call me a "wage slave" because of your fears and uncertainties.

"wage slave" is a pretty well-known, long-standing term for someone that works for another. It's not intended to be depreciating towards those enslaved, it's attacking the idea of using your labor to enrich someone else's life rather than your own.

Now, you may disagree with that, and that's fine...

"Wage slave" is always, in my experience, used in one of two derogatory ways:

1) In the original usage, as a condemnation of the whole capitalist system, or

2) In the sense that's more common in this crowd, to describe anyone who doesn't want to be a startup founder.

Applied to technology workers (typically privileged & upper middle class), the term is offensive on multiple levels.

Even if tech workers are upper middle class, that doesn't mean that they're not bound to their job. The conditions may be better, it's true, but if they lost their job, they'd end up just as destitute.

I only say this because it's something I've though a lot about recently, mostly while investigating the arguments of usage #1 up there. My parents are solidly middle class; but for most of my childhood, they basically lived paycheck to paycheck. When times get tough... things start to get ugly. Granted, not as ugly as 'real' slavery... but I think that the analogy is a good one.

I could quit my job right now. I'd need to get another one eventually, maybe in 6 months, maybe in a year, depending on how tightly I budgeted myself. I've chosen to live within my means; to build up enough savings that I don't need to be terrified of losing my job. I'd venture to say that virtually any other tech worker could do the same. If you feel bound to your job, and that you're at imminent risk of becoming destitute if you lose it, that's because of your own choices. The slavery exists only in your head.

Just because your in a better situation, and are on the way to pulling yourself up out of wage slavery doesn't mean that you're not still in the situation that you're in.

I had an analogy here to drug dealers working their way out of a ghetto, and decided it was slightly hyperbolic.

So your definition of wage slavery is anyone who is not independently wealthy?

THE definition of 'wage slave' (from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery) is:

> Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially in a total and immediate way.

So, yes, someone who's independently wealthy is not a wage slave, but someone who is self-employed or who owns a significant stake in the business they work for is also not a wage slave. It's about the boss/worker relationship, the power an employer has over an employee.

You're still a cash slave. But calling people these names is silly.

It's not silly. It's important to think about the situation that you're in, and try to improve.

What technology worker spends all day worrying about survival? It's not hard to save up a couple years living expenses on a software engineer salary, and it's not hard to find another job (or even found a successful company) if you have a couple years to do it.

With or without kids + family? I don't worry about those things, but 'it's not hard to save up a couple years living expenses' depends a lot on your ... dependents.

My experience is without kids, but it applies with kids as well. Half of American families manage to get by on $50K/year or less. If you make $100K/year and live like that, then for every year you work, you've saved up a year of security. That even assumes that your spouse doesn't work.

Whether you will do this depends a lot on your priorities. Some people want to get their kids the best toys, clothes, and vacations that money will buy. Others would rather give them the gift of parents that are not totally stressed out and have time to make it to their soccer games. There's not a right answer to this, but as someone whose family's household income hovered around the $50K mark for most of my childhood, I can say that you don't really suffer from not being able to afford a trip to Europe every summer.

$50k a year in salary doesnt sound like enough to send your kids to college with their tuition paid for. Being able to do that enables them to not have to worry about student loans and decades of debt after they graduate. IMHO, that is something to strive for.

It's not - I had virtually no college savings when I went to college, my parents borrowed almost the full amount (mostly in their names, so that my sister and I would be mostly debt-free when we graduated). Five years after graduation, it's paid off in full.

$50K/year is, however, low enough that you can get some really generous financial aid if you manage to get into an elite college. Nowadays it'll give you a full ride at Stanford/MIT/Amherst; in my time it was more like a 2/3-ride. Or a full-ride merit scholarship at a state school, if you could otherwise get into an elite college.

Also, weren't we talking about making $100K/year and spending like you have $50K/year? If you do that, in 4 years you've got your kid's college education fund.

Keep in mind that taxes and such scale non-linearly with income: if you make $100k a year, you'll take home less than 2x what you'd take home making $50k a year. It doesn't invalidate your argument by any means, but it's something worth mentioning.

You'd be amazed at how fast everything can change.

I was always someone who made more money than I could figure out how to spend. Even when I was a starving grad student. Then my wife and I grew up, we had kids, and she got injured.

Do you have any idea how much it costs for full-time childcare when you're working and your wife is unable to take care of the kids? (Luckily most of the medical bills were taken care of by worker's comp, and now medical insurance. Not all, but most.)

Family could be a great help in a situation like mine, but you can't choose your family, and in our case that hasn't worked out.

Yeah, I know how fast things can change.

My father got sick and died last fall. For that whole time period, my bank account (which had been monotonically increasing since I got my job) just stayed flat and even decreased a bit. Airline tickets are remarkably expensive when you're flying between coasts every couple of weeks and often don't know the days when you'll need to jet out. Plus I wasn't working for much of that period; I'm lucky that my employer has a generous family leave policy that continues to pay, though at a reduced salary.

The point of this thread, though, is that what could've been a financial disaster was merely a financial inconvenience. I was set back by roughly a quarter financially; big whoop. If I'd been living paycheck-to-paycheck, I'd have to dig myself out of debt for a while afterwards, or worse, wouldn't have been able to go home when my family needed me.

That's the type of security I'm talking about here. For many people in America, a family medical emergency means that they're screwed. Their life completely comes apart, and if they ever manage to dig their way out, it can take decades. That's not the case - or shouldn't be the case - for most people working in technology, where most jobs come with health insurance and salaries are well above the median. You can cover the vast majority of emergencies with a few tens of thousands in the bank, and knowing that you have the security of being able to do so is often worth a lot more than other uses for those few tens of thousands.

For a short time, yeah. But when you have a long-lasting change in life circumstance, as I did, your savings cushion suddenly changes dramatically for the worse. A cutback in the 2008 financial crisis cost me a few months of paychecks.

The result? A decade ago I had your attitude. I now have a very different view of the world.

There are insurance policies that cover a lot of these situations. Depending on your coverage they can go from reasonable to ridiculously expensive but it's really a question of how much risk are you willing to take?

Edit: This assumes you will find work while capable of working. But, 6 months of savings does not have to be a ridiculously large number and six months of savings + low paying job can last you for a long time.

How large a number 6 months of savings is depends greatly on your expenses.

But, 6 months of savings does not have to be a ridiculously large number and six months of savings + low paying job can last you for a long time.

How large a number it is depends on expenses.

What would have been 6 months of savings back for my wife and I when we were in our 20s might last us 2 months now. Adding a low paying job would not help much since I'd be paying more in child care than I am earning. Getting rid of the child care I have would make finding new good child care very difficult - been through that already, don't want to do it again.

At this point we have several months of savings and are slowly saving again. But what used to be a good cash surplus fund now isn't.

Many people with wage-based jobs adjust their lifestyle so that they're always living, roughly, paycheck to paycheck. Also, I tried to get across that I mean survival in the sense of "What do I need to do in the short and long term to make sure I can get by?"

I have found my spending has decreased as my salary has increased. Granted, I have not gotten any major pay bumps in the last few years, but having bought a lot of the things I wanted to buy and I don't need to keep spending money getting a better version of the same thing. But, it's more than just stuff, spending 60$ at a restaurant is fun the first few times, but after a while there is little novelty in it. You also build up equity, I went from an 18 year old car 100$ trade in value to buy a new one and now that my new car is almost paid off I don't see a reason to replace it anytime soon or get an upgrade with my car “equity”.

PS: IMO, unless you have children there is little stopping the average developer from retiring at 45.

Except that he then goes on to argue that the people who get FU money won't confront those questions because they can't be happy that much money, they'll have to keep going because of their "insatiable hopes of yet greater scores". And, if that's how you think, you're just as trapped as any "wage slave".

(Incidentally, I think the author is wrong, and skewed by his time at Goldman. I personally know substantially more people who have either had "small" payoffs, or have lifestyle businesses or passive income streams, and their desire doesn't seem to be to collect still more money, but rather to spend their time travelling or backpacking or what have you. But, I'm probably just as skewed by living in Portland as the author is from living in Manhattan.)

I think your argument here almost supports his hypothesis though - he argues that there is a correlation between large payouts and a desire to continue and earn even better. So the idea that those people who have smaller payoffs don't still have a burning avaricious desire is consistent with his suggestion.

The question is, /if/ his hypothesis is true and there is a correlation, what is the causation? Does winning big give you a taste for it and make you want to try again? Or is it (more likely in me eyes) that only those with such a strong drive to beat out the odds will ever make it to the really big payouts without cashing in early for less.

I remember one of my favorite philosophy professors talking about the various philosophers' ideas of "first philosophy", where first philosophy meant which philosophy is the root of all other philosophy (e.g. for Aristotle it is Metaphysics). Midway through the lecture the professor finally said something along the lines of "...this is nice and all, but what really should be first philosophy is figuring out a way to live in this world such that you can concern yourself with philosophy at all." I agree.

Philosophy is all about "figuring out a way to live in this world" at least the philosophy I have studied anyway, which includes Aristotle.

  Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
  None but ourselves can free our minds.

Bob Marley

EDIT: Based on a speech by Marcus Garvey

I accidentally downvoted this on my phone, meaning to upvote. Sorry about that, the quote is really appropriate.

This line irritated me too.

Every now and then, I read another article about how we're slaves to money. Has anyone else noticed that these articles almost always use some variant of a television (plasma, 48 inch, etc...) as an example of an unnecessary material comfort that distorts a person's view of what is truly important.

I'm definitely a wage slave, and I assure you, I don't do it for a big tv. I don't have a big tv. I don't want a big tv.

What I do have is a family that depends on my continued employment for such trivialities as a place to live (my two small children share a room with a bunkbed in our small 2br house), trips to the pediatrician, and preschool (education isn't "free" in the US until kindergarten, though one of my children now in public elementary school).

The "stuff" like tv's isn't even a rounding error in the brutally high cost of living in SF. I could have the "big tv", nor not, makes no difference in my life. A bigger difference would be leaving San Francisco and moving to a cheaper place, but by living in SF, I get to live where I grew up, and my kids and I get to visit my parents and siblings almost daily. That's worth it.

But no, it's not the tv. I don't think anyone puts up with this for a tv. These writers need to stop about the tv.

Lol. Gee dude you really are angry about the telly huh?

I think the TV is just a symbol to communicate a bigger picture. It is not about the TV per se, but the fact that you can afford the TV. So if you can afford such telly, then you can afford a great house too, so that your kids won't have to share a room, you would not have to worry about making trips to the pedriatician or pre-school education, basically, finances would not be a problem.

Having one problem less is not such a bad thing. Sure life is more than money, but not having to worry about money gives you more time to develop friendships, send your kids to a good school, etce...

I think these guys might be the best trolls I've ever seen on the web. First the NY Sucks article, and now this.

Everything from the title, to the giant fuck you to "wage slaves" in the 2nd paragraph, to the fuck you to investors in the 4th paragraph to the fuck you to the Goldman folks later on, screams, "I'M GOING TO PISS YOU OFF SO YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ME."

Bravo!

Might I suggest a topic for your next essay? "Are you a creative type? FUCK YOU! Non-creative type? FUCK YOU, TOO!"

Agreed. He even admits as much in one of the essays he linked to:

"What’s work like now? Writing code. Worrying about everything from our credit card billing to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink that will give us all diptheria some day. Writing linkbait blog posts to get us free PR (like the one you’re reading now)."

http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-z...

Followed closely by " 'Fuck you?' FUCK YOU TOO"

the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million.

I'm not sure the OP has grasped the complete psychology of FU money. Surely the value of FU money is not to allow one to stop working, it is in the emotional pay-off for the security it represents. This is a big deal, especially for people who, for example, experienced financial insecurity as children. I am guessing there are also tangible social benefits to reaching that stage, even if you changed nothing in your life upon achieving it.

FU money also empowers you to work on riskier and riskier ventures without as much pressure to succeed as the first success presented.

Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together.

Who worked to make $X million dollars and then just stops working? You just work on different things, you never stop working all together.

Actually I think there are plenty of such people out there. But you rarely hear about them, because they have no reason to publicise themselves. Surely someone must be out there, appreciating expensive luxury goods all day long?

There's Felix Dennis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyefDseVCZk

I'm not sure how many luxury goods he consumes, but he does write good startup poetry: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/404957/money.txt

In the world of high-stakes poker, it is commonly understood that the only way to make a million dollars playing poker is not to want to make a million dollars. If you care about the money, your lizard brain takes over and stops you from taking the risks you need to take. As soon as you see the chips on the table as dollar bills, you're finished. Practically the definition of greatness in poker is the ability to play the same for pennies as you would for millions - as far as the great players are concerned, it's not really money, it's just how you keep score.

I think the OP is making a similar argument about startup founders - if you're emotionally invested in the payoff, your ability to make the right decisions will be impaired. You'll choose smaller markets, less ambitious products, make safer design decisions. You think too much about making money and not enough about growing a business. I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page and Brin and Zuckerberg never really intended to start businesses. I think it's no accident that Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in his old suburban house.

You're exactly right. If I had thought of the poker analogy, I would have included it.

I'm glad someone on here agrees with me...;)

I think it's no coincidence that the likes of Page and Brin and Zuckerberg never really intended to start businesses. I think it's no accident that Warren Buffett still drives an old Cadillac and lives in his old suburban house.

I can think of a few counter-examples - Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Felix Dennis.

There are a lot of examples on an even much larger scale. I know two folks who have sold businesses and now live in Hawaii doing practically nothing. It's really not that uncommon. It's just that those folks fade into memory while the workaholics continue to work and increase in overall profile.

It really feels a lot like the 90 hour work week insanity of the tech boom. For years after that I encountered business-types who would enthusiastically tell me during interviews that they're "the type of company where developers keep a sleeping bag under their desk". Apparently that's the key to success, except that very few of the startups I've encountered actually operate that way.

A bunch of startups that I've encountered operate that way, but there seems to be a strong negative correlation between sleeping at the office and the eventual success of the startup. The ones I know that succeed work hard, often 9-10 hour days, but their employees have weekends and aren't at the office all night long.

Bill Gates had a $5m trust fund when he started Microsoft. He never had to worry if his next rent check would bounce. He had peace of mind to do whatever he wanted and if it didn't work out, ah well, nothing lost. That a whole different position (mentally) to start in as someone who will destroy his own life as well as his families when his company tanks.

The others I don't know, maybe they are truly 'self-made', like Oprah.

These days, it seems the most common way to win a million dollars playing poker is to play with some else's money.

> In the world of high-stakes poker, it is commonly understood that the only way to make a million dollars playing poker is not to want to make a million dollars.

Hence the saying; never play poker with scared money.

Interestingly I find a similar drive within myself. Many years ago I told myself I'd start a business when I had $10k in hand. Then it became $20k, then $50k, then $100k, now it's more...

Of course I realize that there's no good time to leave a good job -- just like there's no good time to have a baby. It's a moving target -- and if you want to do something, you just have to jump the nest and do it.

Because our minds work on a relative basis ("I make good money but he makes more") and because our dopamine payoff from money is never as good as we anticipate it to be ("no, winning the lottery will not make you happier"), it makes sense that more is never enough.

I try to frame it in terms of skills learned: "I'll start my next company when I've learned X and Y and tangibly accomplished Z." This is also a moving target, but at least it takes effort to move the goalposts, in the form of figuring out what your next goal is. At that point, you have to think about it anyway, so if the rational choice is "It's time to leave and start my company now," that should at least enter into your mind.

"Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now?"

Actually long before the point of becoming a startup founder and possibly making to "fuck you money", you can ask that question.

Other options prior to "fuck you money" that I've considered, and having worked in a startup still might make me enjoy my life more (while working at a good "wage-slave job" 9-5)

1) Building a boat. It wouldn't be worthwhile economically, but it sure would be fun.

2) Dropping out of society and becoming a ski bum, and doing absolutely nothing every single day but ski. (did it, it was really fun, but eventually it becomes boring)

3) Working for a big established company on research that wouldn't be possible at a startup (crazy thought I know, but sometimes the big companies actually have advantages)

4) Going down the ph.D. route and becoming a professor

5) Skipping all of it and being a high school teacher and inspiring youth the way I was inspired, and coding FOSS stuff at nights and during the summer

All of them lead to meaningful and fun lives in the manner that working on stupid web app designed to sell some ad impressions so I can make 8 million bucks of "fuck you money" just doesn't, at least for me.

Now a startup that actually changes the world, well I'd do that for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with "fuck you money".

How about "fuck you living", as in, I get to do what I want and say fuck you to anyone who says otherwise (including this guy), and it has nothing to do with how much money I have in the bank. It all comes down to the decisions you make.

I stopped reading at "wage-slave". Let's not use language that implies that working for a wage is slavery. Slavery is always forced on you, you have no choice but to work, not because you need to eat, but because the man with the whip says so. It's offensive to compare the situation of a slave and someone who earns a salary.

Slavery is force, not from nature, but from another human being, if you can't see the the distinction between adapting to our environment (sure, we have to eat) and being forced by another human being to work, or die, then sorry, I won't bother reading whatever it is you want me to read.

Hierarchy of needs: air, food, shelter. If you live in the USA and want food and shelter, you cannot get it without paying the man taxes. Even if you own your own land, you must pay taxes on it.

The counter argument (that one could be a homeless person), is no more useful than pointing out that a slave could choose to die: yes a hard choice, but a choice non the less.

So the creation of a tax system, whereby a person is forced to pay taxes, a percentage of which goes to the rich that hold government debt, is a system where everyone is forced to work by men with guns. That's slavery.

But you can believe that you're not a slave just because there are slaves, or have been slaves, who have even less choices than you do.

I was attacking the term "wage-slave" I have no problem with identifying taxes as forced on you. I even mentioned that force from another human being is what constitutes slavery, not from nature. Government is not nature, it's human beings, they use force on you, thereby enslaving you.

You can leave anytime though. Slaves can't.

You can leave your job, sure. And then default on your mortgage. Or be unable to pay your rent. And not be able to buy food. (or, if you mean "leave America," then you can move somewhere else... and you _still_ have to either work for yourself, or for someone else.)

There's an illusion of choice, but choosing to work between McDonalds and Burger King isn't really a choice.

Freedom is not the same as having no responsibilities. Slavery is not the same as having responsibilities. Environmental constraints are not the same as having no choices. Consequences for one's choices are not the same as oppression.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't work to eat; just that working for someone else isn't preferable to working for yourself.

It's much more efficient, you get to keep all of your economic output, rather than giving it to someone else.

You're always working for someone else; that's why they pay you. The difference between employment and entrepreneurship is whether you're working for one person or for many people.

While that's a cute phrase (and true), you're missing the point: it's about collecting all of the fruits of your labor, rather than just some of it.

That's the human condition. You can sit on your ass instead of hunting or gathering, but then you'd go hungry and be shunned by your tribe. You can sit on your ass instead of working your fields, but then your crops won't grow and you'll go hungry. You can sit on your ass instead of going to work at the mill every day, and then you won't be able to afford any food and you'll go hungry.

I'm grateful we can sit in meetings and type code into computers in air-conditioned offices for our supper. Of course, building a business and having supper for life would be fantastic.

See my response to rfrey above; I'm not saying that people shouldn't work, just that keeping all of your economic output is preferable to giving some of it to someone else.

You equate the chains of oppression with the completely voluntary choice to excel in life?

Where did I say that? At all?

If you don't make any money, you won't have to pay taxes. If you don't have any bills, you won't need to make any money.

Taxes are not what creates the issue you refer to, bills are.

The individual really controls those expenses. That is why any comparison to slavery is asine, out of touch, and offensive. Rolling in TAXES == SLAVERY is the icing on the cake.

You control your own expenses. I've lived very cheap. Give up your car, your house, your savings, your retirement account, you restaurent budget, your going out budget. The only thing left is rent and food. I lived for a whole winter as a ski bum with a couple guys, you split up rent in a cheap cabin and shop at the grocery store and it becomes almost free.

There is a reason people can ski all day and get by just by waiting tables or cleaning toilets - it is because they have found out that the thing holding most people into day to day salaried jobs are self imposed. If you give all of that up to do something you want, you are completely free.

So don't say it can't be done, because I have lived through it and enjoyed every minute of it.

I've known plenty of people like this in the climbing community. When you drop out of society, it is amazing how little you need.

There is a huge difference between having to work for one particular person and having to work.

Warren Buffett once said that the ideal amount of money to leave your children is "Enough so that they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing." Just because you have to do something doesn't make you a slave. You have the freedom to decide what that something is.

A lot of people who are frustrated with being a "wage-slave" believe that other humans are forcing them to work or die. The distinction they view between "slavery" and "wage-slave" is that there are a few more options in the type of work you do.

This is probably why they don't just call it "slavery" and have given it a different name which is understood to be less harsh.

There's a reason it's "wage-slave" and not just "slave"; the point is that it's not the same as 'regular old fashioned slavery,' just using the imagery to make a point.

Maybe 'wage-indentured-servitude' would be more to your liking, since indentured servants made a (more clear-cut) choice to enter into the life they have?

This comparison goes the whole way back to Aristotle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

From the comma in the title, I thought the article was about recognizing money isn't a guarantee of happiness. As in, "Say, "Fuck you" to money itself. And instead focus on living life (and running a company) that doesn't rely on a purely materialistic metric of success."

Sadly, that's not what the article was about.

I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million.

If that's the case, then why do so many start-ups sell to bigger companies? Every month we hear about another one. The "swing for the fences" companies that go through to IPO (Facebook, Google) or massive acquisition (Youtube) are more and more rare.

The Angel's question is meaningless unless you also know how optimistic you are about the company's chances of growing enough to deserve a much better deal.

Yeah, this guy worked at Goldman and believes that "rapacious greed" is necessary for success. Well, I don't doubt that's true in the financial world. But in the wider world there are more types of motivations. As an investor, it's reasonable to favor greed, but it's silly to think that money is the only thing that puts fire in a person's belly. Consider Stallman and Torvalds for instance... I'd argue they've added more value to the world than any partner at Goldman ever has.

I'm not sure how typical the angel quote is, most angels would be happy as long as the founders were happy with a buy-out.

An exit of 15 million which yields $500K to the investor after putting up $100K means that the angel only holds about 3% of the company anyway.

Also, as a rule you don't blog or write about your verbal agreement, you wait until the agreement is in writing and the money is in the bank and you've agreed with your investors that you can go public with the news.

Some people will back out of a deal if you go public like this, even if they're not mentioned by name.

A deal isn't done until the money is in the bank.

And essentially he write that he told the guy just what he thought he wanted to hear, and now blogs that he is baffled by this and and that he didn't tell him the truth.

Let's hope that said 'angel' doesn't read that blog.

The company valuation he’d get in on would mean that such an acquisition would represent a 5x return, over something like three months. That’s a gargantuan return on an annualized basis.

You're totally missing the part where angels invest in companies that give them zero return. Even the worst stocks give you some money back. Unfair comparison.

"Before anything else, let’s do the numbers: money market funds yield around 4%."

What? The Vanguard Prime Money Market Fund (VMMXX) is yielding about 0.13% right now, and I think that's fairly typical.

"Right now" is a weird time for US dollar assets. Take a longer-term view and 4% is reasonable.

Incidentally, my savings account in Australia is still paying 4.6%.

The best money market account rates in the US are actually around 1-1.3% now (Ally, Capital One, Discover, ING, AIG).

Definitely not 4%. That was in 2005.

To answer the authors question. Absolutely sell out, if your first success buys you the freedom to fail a thousand more times it is worth selling. He said those that would sell out are those that don't already have FU money, that they aren't in the club. Those founders that hold out might already have that FU money and are free to risk holding out. Each founder in those cases can't be compared.

A man asked me to follow him into a startup I didn't believe in, he could go in and fail completely and come out the other side without a scratch because of his previous success. The risk was too high for me because I didn't already have FU money to cushion a complete failure.

Going in to a start-up with founders that have different risk profiles is a great way to get in to very bad situations.

Can you elaborate?

Sure. Let's say that your partner has a ton of money in the bank and you are dirt poor. (Exaggerated, but that makes it easier to see where the problems can come from).

After a year or two the business makes some money and you now have a steady living. Your majority partner decides to make an all-or-nothing ploy, it fails and you lose your living. He doesn't care because he already had his steady life. Of course, it could have gone the other way but the more risky a move the bigger the chance that it will fail so that's not a 50/50 thing.

It's just one of hundreds of variations to the theme but I think it clarifies the point sufficiently.

If all the partners in a business have a similar risk profiles then they are all going to be behind most of the strategic decisions, which in turn will help with both morale and explaining things to the home front (if you have one).

This is an interesting contrast to the article by A Smart Bear about why he 'sold out': http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html

Very good, well written article.

Can someone with a wide breadth of experience like pg comment on whether the equation of rapacious greed with likelihood of getting fuck-you money out of the startup game is actually correct empirically?

Startup founders are in the unique position of having to seriously ask themselves the following cocktail party question

No, really, absolutely not. There are a lot more people able to retire and live comfortably than you think (people running simple brick and mortar businesses I know of, for instance).

And one point: FU money is not the same amount for everyone.

For me, FU money (if I had to live until 100 with my wife and son) is around 1.000.000 €, based on our standard of living.

>it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion.

Oh man, spoken like someone who has never earned less than $20K/year. I don't have any experience supporting myself on less (as before I made it to that tax bracket, I was living with my parents) but I imagine the transition from $1/day to $2/day is even more dramatic.

Granted, my experiences living in that income tax bracket without parental support were mercifully short, but there's a pretty dramatic difference between making $10K/year and making $30K/year.

Also, I think your perceived earning ability has a lot to do with comfort levels. Right now, I'm paying myself maybe $30K year... but I think it'd take about 20 minutes to get a $100K+/year job, if I could convince someone I was ready to work for them rather than for myself, which I think makes me quite a bit more comfortable than I would be otherwise... I have a safety net. Maybe not quite as much of a safety net as a couple million in the bank, but it's still a pretty cushy net, and I use that net from time to time. No matter how badly I fail, I know I can go get a cushy job that pays me far more money than I need without requiring me to work that hard.

> So, will you sell out for fuck-you money?

I'm not sure if the writer is serious in his use of "sell out". I think it very funny. If you sell your company for a mere $10M you're a "sell out" but if you want more and more then you're the real thing.

A somewhat irresponsible and hypothetical goad.

A truly bankrupt sense of self-worth would be refusing 15MM for a germ of a business. It’s one thing to entertain delusions of grandeur, but to rationalize it by concluding you’re an interchangeable cog who fell backward into a successful startup is disheartening. The rapacious quality you speak of would not preclude the acceptance of an exit; rather, it would fuel it.

"if you think of the astronomical economic gap between, say, a Malian subsistence farmer and a one-man economy like Rupert Murdoch, it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion"

This is clearly written by someone who's never spent time living on less than $5 per day.

There is a "binary phase change" at $1/day and another at $2/day.

Earning less than $1/day, like over 1 BILLION people do, is a constant struggle for survival. The moment you earn over $1 day, the most basic needs of food and water are much more likely to be met.

There's another phase change at $2/day, at which point shelter becomes a real option and survival rates increase significantly.

I know this isn't an article on international development, but don't bring up the Malian subsistence farmer if you think his life is somehow just as easy as that of a $100,000k "wage slave".

If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d hanker for $50MM.

That's a spurious comparison, because these guys aren't motivated by "buying stuff". Sure they do buy stuff, but for them, money is about keeping score, like who's scored the most goals in a football team.

I know several people who have made FU money (several millions). From my observations, their lives are not much different from the rest of us.

Who a person marries, how fulfilling the days (work or non-work) are seems to matter more than pure amount of money.

Time is limited and never enough. Money is not.

I thought this blog was going to elucidate on "fuck you, money" but it just reverted down to "fuck you money." The comma makes all the difference in the world. Really, disappointing.

But Scott Fitzgerald called this out in Gatsby eons ago: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Wow, this sounds like the screed of a collage freshman who just discovered that the adult world is like, totally fake and shallow, man.

Tell me more about this collage freshman. Or is this a subtle suggestion hinting at a broad but nonspecific makeup of his persona...

Money is a funny thing.

First you want it so that you could do whatever it is that you really want to do. Then when you have eventually got the money, you're likely to be in a position where money is no longer the priority—but rather the priority is what you really want to do. Sure, you take the money, you have the money, and you value the money's worth but it's not the thing that's driving you.

> Crunching more realistic numbers, ‘fuck-you money’ is about $4.2MM for a 30 year old guy who plans on dying at 70 and wants to make $200K/year.

...assuming no bad decisions with the money (unrealistic).

...assuming you don't go on a spending spree (which everyone says they won't do, but a significant majority of people who find themselves in cash do in fact do).

...and so on.

one thing he doesn't factor in is that when you get FU money, you suddenly find that you have a cadre -- a virtual entourage -- of friends, family, and hangers-on who you never realized were (according to them) supporting you for years with your crazy dreams, and therefore are morally justified in expecting you to enrich their lives along with your own.

This can happen in more subtle ways than "yo gimme some cash for dinner". You find that scads of folks have their own zany startup ideas; your wife is ready to fulfill her dream of big-home ownership; your peers expect you to send your kids to the same fancy schools they send theirs to (and your kids agree).

People have written about this, esp. wrt lottery winners, but the same mechanics apply to the Silicon Valley lottery.

Well written, thought provoking, but nonethless nonsense.

i dont can't hack the ethernet telkomflash who can help me?????

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

—Alexis de Tocqueville

I agree with everything in this post 100%—it's spot on and well worth meditating on over the course of several years, combined with some serious reading in the ancient philosophers.

Ultimately, ain't it a bitch that the law of diminishing marginal utility causes the demand curve to have a negative slope!?

IMHO, that happens to be the best proof that a gift culture is a higher ideal to aim for than an efficiently allocated capitalist society premised on the FUD illusion of artifical scarcity. It is better to give than to receive(or accumulate) after all. (I recommend the writings of Buckminster Fuller more than nearly anything).

Everything that everyone thinks matters, doesn't. I can't wait for the day when American "culture" gains the escape velocity to free itself from its own materialism. On the bright side, the American Empire is well on the way to smashing into the rocks, and shattering into an impoverished 3rd world nation. At least our collective happiness, sanity and basic decency will be restored.

The phrase is a disgrace to the idea it conveys.

I disagree. The phrase nakedly demonstrates it's about financial freedom - the freedom from ever having to worry about money every again. It's when you don't need your paycheck that you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off. People who depend on their paycheck can't do that.

> you can tell people you work with or work for to fuck off.

As said. A disgrace.

I think you're confusing having the power to say something with having the obligation to say it.

If I had the power/money to tell someone anything I wanted, I think that I could muster a few brain cells to come up with something more meaningful or creative.

In some circumstances - if you're being exploited - it's the appropriate response.

Yes, but how many people reading HN are truly exploited. Only if you let them...

Exploited to me smacks of child labor and indentured servitude. I highly doubt there are child laborers and true slaves reading HN. But they do exist, and in larger numbers than you probably thought possible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Current_situation

That's more than the population of many countries.

exploited

to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploited

Some people are exploited in ways that are horrific compared to how other people are exploited. But until we have words specifically to describe white-collar workers, I'm going to use the available words that I think are most apt.

"Some people are exploited in ways that are horrific compared to how other people are exploited. But until we have words specifically to describe white-collar workers, I'm going to use the available words that I think are most apt."

I realize that some white-collar works are truly exploited. However, most of the people that I see complain about being "exploited" just don't have the balls to quit their job.

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