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Comment by foxandmouse | Hacker News Reader

I expected this when the terraform license changed. Not IBM specifically but it was obvious they weren't interested/ able to continue with their founding vision.

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Hashicorp had a $14 billion IPO in Dec 2021 and was trading at ~$4.7 billion right before the acquisition announcement. At that point it doesn't matter what the company or its founders want or what their long term vision is. Shareholders are in charge and heads are going to roll if the price doesn't get back up quick by any means necessary.

Yet another example of why I think it's a mistake to take your company public. If I put in the work to build up a successful business, no way would I ever let it be turned into a machine that ignores long term health for the sake of making the stock price go up.

You have no idea what decisions you'll make if you ever were to get that successful.

I'm sure you've broken many promises to your younger self.

If companies didn’t go public regular people would not be able to invest in innovation. As much as people hate it, public markets democratize access to investments

True but no company has a vested interest in the democratization of investment. IPOs are purely about getting paydays for founders.

*and early investors. Mostly early investors in many cases.

crux of the problem is the SV model is completely broken and leads to these cycles. wish it were more about sustainable progression and not rapid half-baked innovation to achieve paydays for greedy founders/investors

Huh, they won't get pay day if no one use their products. And there are plenty of examples of failed products. If people have idea and execution capability for sustainable progression they can very well try outside the valley. It is not like companies don't start outside valley.

which is why the majority of the startups fail and then a lucky unicorn comes and funds the next cycle. look at how many poor ideas got massive investment on the bet of payout; so many blockchain companies and none solved a real world problem. lots of potential investment in things that could have greatly helped many more people in the world, but instead invested into a technology looking for a problem.

I agree that the vast majority of the blockchain companies were "technology looking for a problem," (or at least, technology looking for another problem besides money ledger) but blockchain really was (is) a pretty damn good technology. The most unfortunate part of it is that the only thing it may really stick for is DRM :-(

I guess it's not possible to fuel "hypergrowth" this way, but why not just issue debt? Let the market buy in to your growth with a healthy dividend and reduced risk.

This is misguided and myopic. There are many valid reasons for a company to go public besides “pay day to founders”, here are a few

1. Easier access to capital markets and liquidity in general 2. Marketing/publicity provided by equity research coverage 3. Legitimacy / transparency and trust building for customers (public filings, outsides can gauge health of business) 4. Thanks to number 3, companies have an easier time getting larger corporations as clients or partners

Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it bad

Yeah, they sure innovated with all that public money they got over...three years? What did the release in the last three years exactly?

Also, what "democratic access" did people get? The ability to buy at $80 a share and then eventually sell it at $30?

Does anyone really believe this kind of stuff anymore?

What is there to believe?

Capitalism is not a religion, there is no belief involved.

I'm referring to the parent comment, but pithy reply.

If I put in the work to build a successful business and someone offered me a hundred million dollars for it, I’d have a hundred million dollars.

While I would think that, realistically most of my principles are for sale for a few billion dollars.

If anyone is listening, I'll gladly undercut this guy by a few orders of magnitude

You need to let some head space for the inevitable bargaining, let's act as sensible cartel members and not undercut ourselves in a race to the bottom, capisce?

> Yet another example of why I think it's a mistake to take your company public. If I put in the work to build up a successful business, no way would I ever let it be turned into a machine that ignores long term health for the sake of making the stock price go up.

It's a mistake if you care about the long term health of a company. But... why should you?

Hashicorp had a great run, and contributed a lot of great open source products over the years. Today, their products have large user bases and healthy forks seem likely. The founders and early employees cash out, and it's a win for everybody involved.

Nothing lasts forever.

if you go thru VC you are expected to go public to generate returns for the early investors. its baked in

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