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Comment by buf | Hacker News Reader

Tiny is basically as advertised. A few years ago, I tried to sell one of my businesses to them (Zack) and he was straightforward in his reason to pass back then (profit too low). Took about a day once I had my metrics sorted.

The experience was positive and re-enforced my understanding of important growth metrics and product storytelling.

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Sounds good. An instant NO is better than a dragged out and expensive NO.

Also good dating advice.

Indeed. Bested only by ghosting.

Ghosting is better than no?

I have to disagree. Only in the rare case of potentially dangerous people with no way to hunt you down does ghosting seem appropriate. Everywhere else it strikes me as irresponsible, callous, and potentially damaging to the ghost's reputation.

Rejection does not have to be harsh. "I don't think we're a good fit," is easy to say, hard to argue with, and provides no concrete mistake for the rejected party to feel bad about, if that's something you want to avoid. (Personally, at least after sufficient time has passed, I prefer someone actually tell me what they didn't like, but not everyone feels safe doing that.)

Allow me to be cynical for a moment, for the sake of debate: if your business is profitable, why sell it for what Im assuming is going to be low multiple to a non-strategic buyer like Tiny?

Sometimes, a business is profitable, but doing something else may be more profitable (and that does not necessarily mean monetarily). When you have that insight, it's time to sell.

Maybe you are burned out of running a company and want to do something else with your life or another business adventure. Or maybe the fun part of the business is done (ie building) and now its optimizing.

Also maybe you dint see the future is as bright as the buyer. Lots of reasons to make a move.

All things being equal, you would not sell a _growing_ profitable business for a low multiple to a non-strategic buyer.

You would, perhaps, sell to a PE firm like Tiny when you believe you've exhausted growth.

That, or the traditional 3 D's: death, debt, divorce.

Maybe the business isn't profitable / exciting enough to make the founders want to continue dedicating their time to that particular company / business model, but could be appealing enough for another organization to add to their portfolio.

I run a profitable business (1.5m+ revenue at 90%+ margins). I would love to sell it and do something else. I even think you can grow it in relatively straightforward way, I just don't have the energy to make it happen. Sadly it's a niche business, might be difficult to run by outsiders. The reasons I want to sell are that I want to do something else and that I am already set for life (maybe not fully Fat Fire but very close).

With your experience do you think it is possible or how realistic it could be to put some talented person as a manager instead of yourself and thus allow yourself to do something else without actually selling it?

There for sure are tons of people willing to manage someones else business if you pay them well. However how talented or good they are is a totally different thing.

Yes, having been through situations like that you can feel bummed and dejected at the time because the deal didn't go through, but when you look back it can seem like a really positive learning experience.

What sort of profits are they looking for?

It is a little hard to judge what is "Tiny" when things called "Pre Seed" ( What is that anyway ? ) that goes up to millions.

From $500K to $30MM.

It's listed at the bottom of the page along with 3+ years operations, high margins, simple business, unique, and ethical.

>It's listed at the bottom of the page

Thanks. Somehow I completely missed it.

But Wow that isn't tiny at all to be honest. $30MM profits is massive.

> profit too low

> important growth metrics

> product storytelling

Yup. Everything that's wrong with (predominately US) modern business culture.

Product doesn't matter, storytelling is. Nothing matters, inflated growth metrics do. Profit doesn't matter unless it's high (for some definition of high), but even that doesn't matter if you have hyperinflated growth metrics.

And not actually caring about the problem at hand.

"Dude! We could make so much money if we made X!" - but do you actually care about X? Why is money the only reason people are setting up business and solving problems? It should be secondary, a happy side effect of solving hard problems (which people will thank you for with money.)

Because people want to pay their rent and eat. “Hard problems” take a lot of work and time and no one is going to pay me to ponder on a tricky algorithm [1]

[1] actually there is. It’s called “academia” and from what I’m told it’s pretty miserable to be in

Agree. Very hard problems or big investments (e.g. rail network, infrastructure at a country level, basic research with high risk of failure that will take decades) you usually have some form of state agency running it.

PS: have not heard a good word about academia from numerous friends in it. Might be regional (EU) but still...

> Agree. Very hard problems or big investments

Who said anything about hard problems or "big investments"? I never said that. Why are you saying that?

> Because people want to pay their rent and eat.

That's the wrong reason to set up a business, but the right reason to simply get a job.

> “Hard problems”

Who said anything about hard problems? Are businesses only designed to solve hard problems?

If someone solves a problem of mine because they're motivated by money instead of the problem domain I don't really care.

Are you upset that the gas station operator doesn't have a hobby about gas?

ppl aren't very good at solving problems they don't have. i imagine it's hard to design a good/efficient gas station if you've never used one before. service reps/tech support aren't very good if they don't use the product. software sucks/is slow to use unless the designers also use it on the daily and feel first-hand what the pain points are.

I can jive with the idea that people aren't "very good" at solving the problems they don't engage with, but I think it's important to acknowledge that plain old "good" can be enough.

To wit, I'm not going to be upset if tech support takes 3 minutes to process my question and reads out an answer from a pamphlet in monotone if it is indeed a solution to my problem. And there is some software that I use _despite_ its pain points because it solves problems I have.

> gas station operator

They didn't build the business. They're an employee.

It doesn't even matter if the business will have profits, it matters if the business will look to future investors like it will have profits.

If only this were Keyne's most famous theory. I believe he (or the greater school of thought built around him) did argue that stimulus through discounted interest rates should be balanced in a timely fashion. But I have to look around the world and wonder which - if any - of our leaders is brave enough to do this? The long trend downwards in interest rates everywhere has not had the desired effect and there are a lot of negative side-effects. But on paper the CPI is kinda OK so it's not a problem, right?

Without my glasses on, I read that as Kanye’s and was really confused for a good minute.

Keyne West is a well-known creative genius

Kind of like crypto, nfts, or stocks right?

The thing people (read: businesses) want to pay for is a) increased revenue or b) lowered costs. You better have a _very_ compelling story on why your product does one or the other, and why they should pick you and not one of your three competitors.

Everything that's wrong with (predominately US) modern business culture.

You're confusing "business" with "investment".

Business is the act of making money right now. Buying stuff, selling stuff, providing services, and making enough money to keep the lights on. That's really important stuff. That's how we pay our mortgages and buy food and XBoxes. When you're running a business that stuff should always be front and centre. It's what's important to employees, and the economy, etc.

Investment is the act of using money now in order to increase the amount of money you have in the future. Profit, product, and metrics right now are much less important if you're thinking about what happens in 1 or 2 or 5 years time. A company with a good-but-not-great product today could be the next Apple if they're able to realize the potential of the market - that's what investors are looking for. They don't really care how much a business is making today if they're thinking about where it could be in 5 years time.

> Business is the act of making money right now.

No idea what type of business you're running. Businesses always looks ahead (unless it's a scam-and-run operation, of course). And investment is also business.

However, the incentives have now been twisted beyond all recognition.

It seems to me that the opposite tendency would vastly decrease the pace of innovation

> vastly decrease the pace of innovation

What innovation?

They passed due to lack of sufficient profit so I’m not sure you’re point.

Product storytelling doesn’t mean smokes and mirrors.

They’re buying businesses so it seems like criticizing them for caring about high profit is misplaced.

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