<story><title>Paul Buchheit on Lessons Learned from Investing in 200 Startups</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/paul-buchheit-on-lessons-learned-from-investing-in-200-startups/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rabidrat</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, Facebook had an offer from Yahoo for a billion dollars, which everyone told Zuck to take. Fortunately, he said no. Had he said yes, it would have been another failed Yahoo acquisition and Facebook would not have nearly as much impact.&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the world would be overall a better place if FB had sold to Yahoo.  Yahoo would have screwed it up (like AOL with Myspace) and there would be more competition in the space all around.  Monopolies are good for the investors, not for the customers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mandeepj</author><text>Zuck dropped the offer because Yahoo lower the price to ~$700 million. He has famously said he would have sold FB if yahoo kept the $1 billion tag.&lt;p&gt;Buying companies for billions and billions of dollars is a skill in itself and requires a vision also which is not very common. I mean to say only people like Zuck can do it&lt;p&gt;Edit - Added some more meat</text></comment>
<story><title>Paul Buchheit on Lessons Learned from Investing in 200 Startups</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/paul-buchheit-on-lessons-learned-from-investing-in-200-startups/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rabidrat</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, Facebook had an offer from Yahoo for a billion dollars, which everyone told Zuck to take. Fortunately, he said no. Had he said yes, it would have been another failed Yahoo acquisition and Facebook would not have nearly as much impact.&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the world would be overall a better place if FB had sold to Yahoo.  Yahoo would have screwed it up (like AOL with Myspace) and there would be more competition in the space all around.  Monopolies are good for the investors, not for the customers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>imjk</author><text>When it comes to social networks, I believe the network affect generally leads to a winner takes all (or most).  Certainly tech and usability is a determining factor, but another company would have nailed those and dominated the market anyway.</text></comment>