That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M?
Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the acquisition happened. Conversations took place, but I'm not going to quote anyone.
Nothing wrong with that. I’d do the same.
So if you’re going to criticize capitalism, you should criticize it as an institution.
This doesn't have anything to do with capitalism. Any political or economical system that has institutionalized roles will have the same conflicts between duty and personal principles.
And history shows us, in fact, that capitalism has much fewer of such conflicts than any alternative.
This is not even close to true.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-...
So not only would you have to deprive that engineer but you would also have to explain to Sequoia why you weren’t going to give them a gargantuan return on their investment.
It is very possible to turn down money and avoid becoming a corporate animal.
Does it happen? Yes.
Does it happen very frequently? No.
No outside funding.
But of course, all of this is speculation - I can't look inside the man's head.
You would refuse $16 billions from Facebook?