<story><title>My company sold for $100M and I got zilch – how can that be?</title><url>https://medium.com/help-me-heidi/my-company-sold-for-100-million-and-i-got-zilch-how-can-that-be-f7be0563f1f8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>This matters more now that the current crop of tech companies have taken &lt;i&gt;so much&lt;/i&gt; money.&lt;p&gt;In the old days, when software companies sold software rather than traditional services enhanced by software, it was common to get to profitability around the B round and then never take any more investment after that.  Google took $25-35M and then nothing until IPO, running the company from 2001-2004 off cashflow.  Microsoft took nothing except a small mezzanine round (to align incentives with the I-bankers) right before IPO.  Github took a $50M Series A on a valuation of $500M; VCs owned 10% of the company, and the 3 founders + employees split the remaining 90% of its $7.5B acquisition.  Indeed took a Series A and is profitable.  Atlassian took a $60M Series A 8 years after starting the company, when it was already profitable.  PlentyOfFish, HotOrNot, Reddit, Wufoo all raised either nothing or just angel money before being acquired.&lt;p&gt;When you&amp;#x27;re capital efficient, you get to keep the majority of any sale price.&lt;p&gt;The current crop of unicorns like Uber, Lyft, WeWork, Postmates, DoorDash, Instacart, AirBnB, and Stripe have all taken massive amounts of capital though, sometimes in the multi billions of dollars.  That has to be returned to the investors before the common shares (founders &amp;amp; employees) make &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;.  If they hit on hard times before a liquidity event, there&amp;#x27;s a good chance that the common will be wiped out, and investors effectively own the company.  Why shouldn&amp;#x27;t they, when they put up all the money that the company&amp;#x27;s been burning?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>enra</author><text>Just to note that it&amp;#x27;s not useful to group all of these companies together. While they all have massive valuations, and raised lot of funding, they don&amp;#x27;t have similar businesses at all, or capital efficiencies. The market is also different today than it was with Microsoft or Google. Companies are expected and also need to grow faster (or others will). It took Microsoft 10 years to break $100M in revenue. All companies on your list are about 10 years old but have revenues in several billions.&lt;p&gt;WeWork&amp;#x27;s problem was that while they valuation was $47B, they also had $47B committed in long term leases (essentially debt). Uber &amp;amp; Lyft, are in war and their scale hasn&amp;#x27;t helped the economics as much since neither can get a  monopoly on demand or the supply side of the market. Postmates, Doordash, Instacart, all likely operate with large gross volumes but low transaction sizes and low margins which can be challenging.&lt;p&gt;Airbnb has now more cash the bank than they have ever raised ($3.5B) and it&amp;#x27;s growing [1]. I suspect Stripe&amp;#x27;s financials are strong as well.&lt;p&gt;Free cash flow, and the ability to use or invest it well, eventually lead to a great business. Raising a lot of money doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily mean that you are burning a lot of it, and the economics of the business matters.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also likely Airbnb will do a direct listing since they don&amp;#x27;t actually need the cash. Which is also potentially better for employees than traditional IPOs.&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I used to work at Airbnb, but this is all public information or speculation on my part.&lt;p&gt;[1]:&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;KateClarkTweets&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1184933412231995392&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;KateClarkTweets&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;11849334122319953...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>My company sold for $100M and I got zilch – how can that be?</title><url>https://medium.com/help-me-heidi/my-company-sold-for-100-million-and-i-got-zilch-how-can-that-be-f7be0563f1f8</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>This matters more now that the current crop of tech companies have taken &lt;i&gt;so much&lt;/i&gt; money.&lt;p&gt;In the old days, when software companies sold software rather than traditional services enhanced by software, it was common to get to profitability around the B round and then never take any more investment after that.  Google took $25-35M and then nothing until IPO, running the company from 2001-2004 off cashflow.  Microsoft took nothing except a small mezzanine round (to align incentives with the I-bankers) right before IPO.  Github took a $50M Series A on a valuation of $500M; VCs owned 10% of the company, and the 3 founders + employees split the remaining 90% of its $7.5B acquisition.  Indeed took a Series A and is profitable.  Atlassian took a $60M Series A 8 years after starting the company, when it was already profitable.  PlentyOfFish, HotOrNot, Reddit, Wufoo all raised either nothing or just angel money before being acquired.&lt;p&gt;When you&amp;#x27;re capital efficient, you get to keep the majority of any sale price.&lt;p&gt;The current crop of unicorns like Uber, Lyft, WeWork, Postmates, DoorDash, Instacart, AirBnB, and Stripe have all taken massive amounts of capital though, sometimes in the multi billions of dollars.  That has to be returned to the investors before the common shares (founders &amp;amp; employees) make &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;.  If they hit on hard times before a liquidity event, there&amp;#x27;s a good chance that the common will be wiped out, and investors effectively own the company.  Why shouldn&amp;#x27;t they, when they put up all the money that the company&amp;#x27;s been burning?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bcrosby95</author><text>All the companies you&amp;#x27;re talking about have 1 thing in common: they&amp;#x27;re considered successes.  You&amp;#x27;re going back in time and cherry picking companies that made it out alive.  The early 00s&amp;#x2F;late 90s were full of companies that took Google levels of money that crashed and burned.  There were also tons of companies that took little-to-no outside funding that crashed and burned.</text></comment>