Hacker News Reader

Comment by CobaltFire | Hacker News Reader

This is accurate; no one outside the family would have been able to use the client base.

The usual approach is to effectively “apprentice” under the old owner as they increasingly hand over responsibility and retire.

No matter what you’ll lose clients, but lose a lot less than if Alice disappears one day and Bob magically appears the next with little handover.

Dunno if that could work in Japan.

It's a thing:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-r...

It's a thing everywhere, and doesn't require adoption (or making one of your child's spouses your successor.)

I know a printer right now where the owner has been working towards retiring and selling the business to his now-manager eventual-successor for a few years. The owner has reduced his work responsibilities to sales only at this point, and the goal has been to make his networks comfortable with his successor as he slips away (to live closer to his grandchildren, I bet.)

I don't know if it's still a thing, but in Japan some business owners with no heir used to adopt adults for them to take over the business. It's like you said, starting as an apprentice, and if the owner trust him enough he'll adopt him, the apprentice litterally taking the family name of the business owner.

So it's still the same family!

Roman emperors often worked the same way.

That doesn't sound likely in this case: the whole premise of the article is that his business is the only provider of a necessary service.

This is a bit like a lot of consumer websites. The value is in the loyal community of users.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com