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Comment by yapcguy | Hacker News Reader

> However, the minute you take institutional investment, hand out shares to employees, take on debt financing, etc., you are now bound by a fiduciary duty to do right by those other parties. You still can focus on other things, but only if they don't conflict with turning a profit.

This is not true. The shareholder value myth has been debunked by law professors.

"...shareholder primacy theory was first advanced by economists, not lawyers. This may explain why the idea that corporations should be managed to maximize shareholder value is based on factually mistaken claims about the law."

http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6482

"Contrary to myth, the sale of Ben & Jerry’s to corporate giant Unilever wasn’t legally required."

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_...

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Yeah, whatever. Academic. IANAL, but I'm guessing you aren't either, so let's leave that to the lawyers. I'm sorry I brought it up.

Bottom line, I've done a lot of work on npm over the last 4 years, and I've got some ideas about how to best take care of it in the future. Those ideas require money, and it's a lot easier to get money if you have a plan to turn it into MORE money. (This IS still a site about startups, right? ;)

If things keep expanding and growing like they have, then it's going to require more money. So, we've gotta earn our keep to be sustainable, and the way to do that is to provide stuff people will pay for.

Also, I like to make money. It's fun, and it keeps you grounded in reality, if you run it like a responsible business. So that's another nice plus of going this route. I still have full flexibility to carve things up however I want later on, and like I said, we're keeping every option on the table.

> This IS still a site about startups, right?

Yes, but this thread is still about a language.

> I like to make money.

Of course. And the main concern with npm, Inc is whether making money will at some point conflict with wanting to make npm better, no-strings-attached.

npm's "no strings attached" low-ceremony approach is the reason why it's taken off like it has. The purpose of all this is to keep that going.

If "make money" ever appears to be in conflict with the thing that puts us in a position to make money, then we're thinking about it wrong.

For example, imagine if Twitter were not from the get-go a for-profit company. If they got really popular, and then said, "Hey, guys, we can't keep the lights on without figuring how a monetization strategy, so we're gonna take some VC and do that." It wouldn't be wise to assume that "make money" was going to mean "charge to read or post tweets". Forget love or greed or good and evil, that wouldn't be a smart way to make money.

What is currently free will remain free, precisely because the free-ness of it is what makes npm interesting.

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