Monday, November 25, 2013

Founders who sold or didn't sell reflect on their decisions

In the New York Times, this article provides a very cool window into the minds of entrepreneurs who sold (or didn't sell) their companies. The founders' recollections provide a glimpse into some deep stuff, including how our significant decisions look upon reflection, what is a mistake, etc. Here's PayPal co-founder Max Levchin recalling his next startup experience:

His next company, Slide, was a different story. It made social apps and sold to Google for $228 million. Google shut it down a year later.

“The honest truth about Slide was we were a five-year-old company that had wandered through the desert for a long time wondering what business to be in,” said Mr. Levchin, who later started a new software company, HVF. “I wanted to top PayPal and it didn’t work.”

And here's Ben Horowitz on selling the company he co-founded, Opsware:

“I spent eight years, all day every day, trying to build this thing, and all of a sudden it’s gone, it’s just over,” he said. “It’s a little bit like something dies.

“That decision was one of the most isolated and alone decisions you ever make,” said Mr. Horowitz, who now advises entrepreneurs as a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz. “On the surface it looked good, but I tell you after I sold the company I had total seller’s remorse.”

And Philippe Courtout on cc:Mail:

Mr. Courtot received a second acquisition offer, this time from Lotus Development for $55 million in cash.

Under Lotus, cc:Mail grew from four million users to 24 million, until IBM acquired Lotus in 1995 and shut down cc:Mail. Microsoft Mail eventually became Outlook.

“I should not have sold,” said Mr. Courtot, who is now chairman and chief executive of Qualys, a security company that went public last year. “That was my biggest regret. We could have moved much, much faster and brought it to the cloud. But such is life.”

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