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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

>What's next: Dorsey's next move remains unclear.

Do founders ever feel regret when they walk away from what they became known for? If you still have drive after you leave, I imagine there is a lot of pressure to reproduce your first success.

EDIT>>Removing reference to Dorsey only having one major success.

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One example is Pavel Durov. He created VK, which became the most popular social network in Russia. It was taken over by government-aligned oligarchs. Pavel left Russia and started Telegram which became even more successful.

He also runs Square, which is arguably more successful

You're right! Totally forgot about Square. Though I still maintain he is known for Twitter.

Clearly this person didn't want to do even a simple google search before commenting.

I don’t even think it is arguable. Square and CashApp are significantly more profitable than Twitter, I believe.

He was on the original Blogger team, too. It was pretty successful until Google bought it and left it to die on the vine, as they usually do.

I think it’s Evan Williams (the other Twitter co-founder) who was on the Blogger team, not Dorsey.

Williams was, for sure, but according to Wikipedia Dorsey was, in fact, a programmer for Pyra Labs (the creators of Blogger).

Hey, they recently redid the user interface for it!

I mean, yeah, the new interface is unusable with anything under a Xeon workstation, and it's very mobile editing focused, for a blogging platform, and it drove me and a variety of other people off Blogger entirely, but... they've not just left it alone. That would have been an improvement over what they did to it.

My extensive thoughts on their "improvements" here: https://www.sevarg.net/2020/10/10/end-of-blog-new-blogger-in...

Which is now a Jekyll based blog, hosted on my own hardware.

When you leave something you have put so much effort in, and the future doesn't look good then you feel regret. When the future looks good you are usually proud.

But no, you don't feel pressure to build it again. Because first this is a lot of work and second it is not even likely that you will succeed again at it. Especially in b2c

Tom from Myspace seems to be doing well. I think he's an outlier though.

Jack's at least a 2-hit wonder. Maybe 3 if you count Block's new direction.

Really? What do they do? And I mean practically speaking, not aspirationally

I also don't care about the stock price

What is the credit rating of Block, Twitter and Square? D- ? DD- ?

You don’t care about stock price. But credit ratings are the bastion of truth!

Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.

> But credit ratings are the bastion of truth!

It's the only market where you can make a direct comparison between company X or Y and the most solid entity in the world which is the US Federal Govt. for you cannot buy stocks in Uncle Sam, only bonds.

> Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.

Business isn't politics, you have to show profits or at least huge FCF to claim that you've made it. Xerox was the game changer with GUI , BlackBerry/PocketPC with smartphones, Myspace with social media etc...yet only historians of business remember such details. Changing the game isn't the name of the game. Signing off incredible amounts of quality of life for the American consumer, that's what it's all about.

GM has a higher credit rating than Tesla… despite being a company that went bankrupt and has declining sales across the board, has lower margins lower mar cap and a much shakier forward plan and heaps more debt.

So what are you talking about?

Unlike individual credit scores, prior bankruptcies don't really factor into corporate credit ratings. Strategic plans don't matter either. The rating agencies look mainly at financial metrics which are strongly correlated with default risk.

Prior default doesn't factor into default risk? There is something really wrong with rating agencies. I think you've convinced me more of my view rather than sway me. The credit scores are completely meaningless.

Why would it? it isnt a question of character. It is just assets and profit vs Debt. The same is true for individuals too. If you have enough collateral, no one gives a shit if you went bankrupt in the past.

It’s a question of governance. If they couldn’t manage it before… why can they now?

GM has a debt ratio of 1.7 compared with Tesla (the high growth new comer) of 0.9.

You put ANY metric between Tesla and GM that could justify GM having a higher credit rating. It’s ridiculous.

You seem to be deeply ignorant of basic finance. Have you ever actually read a bond rating from one of the big rating agencies? They explain the metrics they use.

If you think you have found an error in bond rating procedures then put your money where your mouth is. Go long Tesla bonds and short GM bonds, and make a fortune. Be sure to lever up to maximize your returns.

So which metric causes Tesla to be rated lower than GM?

Easy to call someone ignorant, but how about you show it.

Block/Square: BB

Twitter: Ba2

Telsa: A-AAA depending on the debt type

However, Telsa and Twitter are likely to have credit impacts if Musk acquires Twitter because of the structure of the deal. Musk is using $62 BN of Tesla stock to finance the Twitter buyout, which increases Telsa's debt leverage, and will introduce $13 BN of new debt for Twitter. Both companies could see a drop in credit ratings, at least temporarily.

But the market is fickle, and Musk is unpredictable, so...

Sources:

https://www.fitchratings.com/entity/square-inc-97197931

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-credit-faces-a-mul...

https://www.fitchratings.com/search?query=tesla

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