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Comment by throwaway95118 | Hacker News Reader

I raised $10M and it wasn’t going to work. We had spent 20%. Board wanted to change course, I said let’s give the money back. I said you’ll have to fire me if you want to keep raising money and change course and they did.

4 years later after they raised another $60M they sold the company for $15M.

Sometimes you don’t win.

Sometimes it’s better to back out and start anew.

Give it all you can but there’s no honor in dying trying for something that won’t work.

There’s a song lyric by Matt Johnson of TheThe:

If you can't change the world. Change yourself. If you can't change the world. Change yourself. And if you can't change yourself....change the world.

If you can change the world I will work with you.

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“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw

"I don't start new businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put all their money and their friends' money into starting them. They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. They're what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them; and they haven't enough financial experience. In a year or so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or sell out to a new lot of fellows for a few deferred ordinary shares: that is, if they're lucky enough to get anything at all. As likely as not the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in more money and a couple of years' more work; and then perhaps they have to sell out to a third lot. If it's really a big thing the third lot will have to sell out too, and leave their work and their money behind them. And that's where the real business man comes in: where I come in." -- George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House, 1916

This quote is so uncanny in its relevance to investors/entrepreneurs and the topic at hand. At first I couldn't believe it was not satire. The character continues:

"But I'm cleverer than some; I don't mind dropping a little money to start the process. I took your father's measure. I saw that he had a sound idea, and that he would work himself silly for it if he got the chance. I saw that he was a child in business, and was dead certain to outrun his expenses and be in too great a hurry to wait for his market. I knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some. I explained my idea to some friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take no risks in ideas, even when they're my own. Your father, and the friends that ventured their money with him were no more to me than a heap of squeezed lemons."

This quote is the mantra of the Unreasonable Group, an impact-oriented organization that helps startups solve “big f’ing problems”. They are awesome!

http://Unreasonable.is.

I don't know anything about this.

Is selling the company for 15M a win? Or a loss because of the 60m raised?

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