Ask HN: What do you do with golden handcuffs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you do with golden handcuffs?

4 pointstossertwenty10 comments

Ok gang, high quality problem time for Friday afternoon

I spent >12 years building a company with 2 other co-founders and a lot of investor money

We just wrapped up a year long process of getting acquired for unicorn $$$

I have a two year earn out that is heavily backend weighted, eg about 75% of my total compensation will be in the last year.

The money is "guaranteed" but I am responsible for showing up, driving the company integration, etc

Here's the rub - I just got finished with my first month of DD, lawyers, compliance meetings, etc.

It's clear that the next two years of my life are going to be captive to corporate bull@#!t, bizarre power grabs, etc - all the stuff I've spent my life avoiding like the plague by being an entrepreneur

Integration to the acquirer meant "fitting a square peg into a round hole"

I went into this with open eyes, but it is exhausting and demoralizing

I am grateful for the opportunity, I am also old, tired, and ready for a break not two more years of toeing the line :)

What have others done in similar situations?

> It's clear that the next two years of my life are going to be captive to corporate bull@#!t, bizarre power grabs, etc…

There’s a process of letting go—-

Stop accepting 2/3rds of your current meeting invites immediately.

Of course, available for high-level consultation, on an as-needed basis.

Direct your focus and energy on to projects that interest you.

If you haven’t already done so, start identifying and mentoring individuals who might replace you in the business. Shift your responsibilities/workload to them now.

Think of yourself as a consigliere, whispering advice in their ears.

Assuming you’ve got good people, in 12 months reduce your time commitment to 1-2 days a week.

Then quietly disappear. Good luck!

It's only two years. Buckle down and give a good-faith effort to do it right.

Be careful about becoming adversarial with the acquirer. I watched one acquired founder lose a lot of money by actively fighting against the new parent company and not really doing his job (e.g. avoided meetings, fomented discontent in his teams, secretly encouraged his team to leave). Any negative comments you make in public or private can be used against you, so refrain from saying anything bad about the parent company in any context, no matter how tempting.

What PragmaticPulp said.

I also watched an acquired founder act out. Although in my case they exited without leaving a bunch of money on the table, they made life unpleasant for people in both the acquired and acquiring company before and after they left. There are people who worked with them for years who would never join another startup with them because they were so self-indulgent.

It’s only 104 weeks for (presumably) a lot of money, and you are (presumably) getting a lot more out of this than the rest of the employees at your acquired company who (presumably) didn’t get a lot of say over who acquired them (unlike you).

Bury your ego and focus on creating the best possible outcome for the people who bet on you when your company was young and success was not assured. Presumably some of them are planning to stay with the acquiring company long-term; don’t create a situation where they get branded as “troublemakers” because of something you do now.

You might have the opportunity to be personally influential in the strategic direction of the (bigger) acquiring company. That might not be your first choice of long-term career, but right now you have an opportunity to do something different that might actually be fun (for a while).

Even if you don’t and your job is literally “integration” for the next two years just suck it up and do the best job you can for your people.

If you are planning to exit ASAP then even the politics can be fun because they don’t really impact you long term. Spend your time figuring out who the players are, who has the power, what motivates them. Find the team that was trying to build whatever you are now providing (and who hate you with a passion for taking the money they could have used) then defang them or co-opt them. At the very least make sure that your team don’t inadvertently walk into the middle of some political fight.

That said, this is also your opportunity to be literally irresponsible. You were in charge of a startup. You couldn’t really unplug and the buck stopped with you. Now (presumably) you are a couple of layers down in the org. Enjoy the new luxury of showing up late on Monday, leaving early on Friday, having a regular lunch break, disconnecting over the weekend, taking all your PTO.

I agree with everything except for this part:

> Enjoy the new luxury of showing up late on Monday, leaving early on Friday,

Was part of an acquisition where the acquired founder did exactly this: Showed up late every morning, disappeared early every afternoon. Forced everyone else to worked around his schedule, which made things unnecessarily difficult for everyone else. Also got our department branded as lazy and uncooperative, even though the rest of us were putting in the hours.

Be professional. Don't do anything out of the ordinary that makes life difficult for people around you. Not everyone has the luxury of a giant bank account to fall back on if this job doesn't work out.

Boy this is hitting home in particular the taking care of the people that helped us make it thank you

90% of life is just turning up for many people, dog it a bit, be a little less reactive, let go and you might possibly find no adverse outcomes occur.

You want to be doing the new owners a favour by tapering off into transition, if anyone says anything just tell them that, it would be no lie.

> 90% of life is just turning up for other people

I have to agree with that statement even though I find it disagreeable

Are you able to hire team members at your new gig to help you do the integration etc?

Consider taking a few weeks off too and recharge.

Great comment regarding taking time off has been a long time

Back off - do not be emotionally involved - do the minimum required to get the payout - then take the money and walk away.

If you can, hire someone to do the job you don't want ... if you care, pay them well.

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