A Funny Story about an Acquisition that Didn’t Happen | Hacker News Reader

A Funny Story about an Acquisition that Didn’t Happen

nathanlustig.com

Sounds like he came out ahead. Forget the money; the founder he describes sounds like a first-class jackass. No amount of money would make me want to be part of an organization that he ran.

Agreed. Unfortunately, for better or worse, this is often the type of personality that leads an organization. That "salesy" personality really rubs me the wrong way but it can somehow work on enough people and create enough excitement/momentum to move things forward.

I don't get it, this reads kind of weird. It kind of reads a little like jealousy, I guess? You spent 3/4 of the article slamming the guy in serious way then the last 2 paragraphs saying "I guess he became professional." Weird.

Hardly. Strongly disagree if that is the vibe you took from the article.

It just reinforces the:

"tough guys win, nice guys lose" mentality. (Albeit, the original poster didn't exactly lose).

People who try and juggernaut their way often possess traits which might allow them to steamroll through certain personalities. This BS pitch clearly didn't work on the OP, and at that point, that was all it was a BS pitch. But it clearly worked on other people.

I think the whole point is it might not be BS any more; the guy was selling smoke initially, but is now running a valuable business.

Or, "don't judge a book by its cover?"

"But the thing that people forget sometimes, is that even though appearances can be misleading, they're usually not."

Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality

Its clearly not BS anymore, Chegg is an incredible business now thats providing a great service. They pivoted both in business model and likely in business tactics.

I read this as one of the stories about a 'mistake' which was, from another perspective, not a mistake at all.

To reverse the OP, imagine reading an article by a lottery winner on how negative the expected value of a ticket is, how bad the odds are, what 1 in millions really feels like, how many you'd have to buy before a 50% odds of winning etc, all of which is impeccably correct and inarguable - followed by a discussion of how he won anyway. 'I came out ahead, for the wrong reasons', vs the OP's 'I came out behind, for the right reasons'.

Both are interesting to read, if only for imagining whether one would have the intestinal fortitude to stand by one's arguments despite the results.

I actually don't view it as coming out ahead or behind, just differently. I think its fun to look back and see how decisions at one point in your life would change where you end up. Not better, not worse, just different.

This assumes the same corporate/shareholding structure would have prevailed through the process of changing the business model. It is by no means certain this would have been the case as the "pivot" could have been done through a new company. So, given all the facts available at the time, sounds like the right decision was taken.

This is very true, it makes for a better blog post title to say it could have been worth a bunch of money today, but in reality, its likely the stock would have been diluted down to barely anything today.

Sounds like he made the right decision:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome_bias

Lots of people probably turned down Steve Jobs for similar reasons and now have similar regrets. It can be hard to tell the difference between a skilled hustler and a bullshit artist. Perhaps the only real difference is what they choose to sell.

Faced with a similar dilemma I would ignore much of what the hustler was telling me and talk to the other people involved (i.e. the technical co-founders) and try and base much of my impression and decision on them and how much trust they have in the hustler. Since they've done so well I have a feeling if you had done this you would have gotten something like 'ya ya he's a bit over the top but he's a really smart guy and we are doing great things here' etc. This may have led you to making a different decision.

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