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Comment by stephen | Hacker News Reader

> but we're not planning to "go away" or get acquired or something

If you've taken VC money, haven't you already gave up that choice? Despite pretenses, the VCs are going to want: a) IPO or b) acquisition.

Since you assert b) is not your plan, do you really think you can become a $100m/year company (IPO) by charging for something that Google/MS/everyone else provides for free?

Perhaps I am too pessimistic (or realistic?) about VC goals/control.

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To address the VC issue the poster and subposters are talking about:

> If you've taken VC money, haven't you already gave up that choice

> if your current VCs aren't able to change your mind, and they get angry as a result,

> Or exercise their Board powers and fire the CEO when push comes to shove.

> if your current VCs aren't able to change your mind, and they get angry as a result, just their absence alone from future funding rounds

Basically, you don't know what you're talking about. Look at the VCs involved, and try to make a case for how this could work!

Fuel Capital is a $20m fund. SVAngel doesn't take board seats. Data Collective does take board seats in A rounds, but its super unlikely they have one here. Crunchfund is a small seed fund.

All of these guys are microVCs/super angels, with <=$200m funds each. They don't take board seats in seed rounds, and I would wager a significant sum that they have basically no way to affect what Inbox wants to do. If the investors get a monthly email outlining the company's performance, they would consider themselves lucky.

who cares what they want? If they put in the money as a minority shareholder, their options are to follow the CEO or try to change his/her mind.

Note: they're very good at the latter.

To elaborate on this point: if your current VCs aren't able to change your mind, and they get angry as a result, just their absence alone from future funding rounds will make it nearly impossible to get other investors interested. So they basically have you by a chain.

Or exercise their Board powers and fire the CEO when push comes to shove.

Nobody spends millions of dollars on something to make themselves powerless in it.

That's what the parent poster is getting at. In SV, most founding teams retain control after a seed financing, and many continue to retain control after a Series A.

I think you're actually wrong about VC goals. Yes VCs look for acquisitions, but acquisitions only really move the needle when they're really big (>$100m). Anyone acquiring for those amounts aren't going to shut the product down.

It's pretty easy to name any number of >$100M acquisitions that have been shut down. Regardless, that's only a goal of VCs: there's no shortage of VC-funded companies that have been sold for far less than $100M when they couldn't raise the next round at a palatable price.

No startup company can make a defensible claim that their product will be around for the long haul.

> It's pretty easy to name any number of >$100M acquisitions that have been shut down.

In the B2B space in the last decade? Please go ahead! Name 5 off the top of your head and I'll concede the point.

> that have been sold for far less than $100M when they couldn't raise the next round

Sure, but the question was about what VCs _want_.

Not sure where the B2B constraint came from. That's a little more challenging, because B2B companies are more likely to have revenue and enterprise sales channels, etc., worth preserving, and it's not particularly relevant to your thesis (that products from VC-backed companies are less likely to get shut down).

Still, here's a few that came to mind where the product has been shut down or changed sufficiently to be the equivalent for many customers: dMARC FeedBurner AuthenTEC Face.com TellMe Wildfire

I'm sure I could come up with a few more if I thought about it a little longer. I'm pretty sure these are all >= 100M.

Vendor reliability is a problem at all levels. If you don't have a multi-year maintenance contract, all the more so.

I don't think the point is only about the product going away. If Inbox is acquired then it's no longer 'the email company' but the whatever-the-acquirer-wants company (which may well be advertising).

They're building a platform. They can make money by charging developers a percent of revenue made from apps built on the platform. No need to charge users for email directly.

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