Letting Go - An Irish startup goes from idea to sale

destraynor.com

27 points·raganwald··5 comments

"Bigulo started off as 800 lines of broken code, that we were always told that "anyone could have written". But we did, and that's usually the difference."

I can't underline those words heavily enough. Anybody could do such-and-such, but somebody actually did and that is the difference.

Yep. Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen - really, the idea is the EASY part.

"Lesson 4: To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski - if your code can get people laid, you're off to a good start."

Say what you want, but it's true.

Does anyone else assume that whenever the price of an acquisition isn't flaunted that it must be some very low number and that "acquisition" really means cutting your losses and taking whatever you can get?

perhaps, but I also try to remember that the vast majority of startups don't have any exit of any description. Getting even a dollar of goodwill is a small victory.

The only time I would look askance at a modest exit is when the founders were tricked out of making a lot more money. In other words, if this company run by these founders could have fetched 10x as much, then it's a loss. But if they've made as much as could be reasonably made given the idea and circumstances... Then selling for market value so they can move on to a better idea is good business.

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