<story><title>It All Changes When the Founder Drives a Porsche</title><url>http://learntoduck.com/startups/it-all-changes-when-the-founder-drives-a-porsche</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>flyosity</author><text>The title of the entry put me off to the overall premise, which, I think, even the author may have missed.&lt;p&gt;Basically, the article should&apos;ve been titled &quot;It All Changes When The Startup Is Making A Lot Of Cash&quot;. Supposedly Groupon is making nearly $2 billion a year in revenue. The decision to turn down an acquisition has more to do with &quot;we&apos;re a real company making a TON of cash and we don&apos;t need to sell&quot; than the founder thinking about their legacy.&lt;p&gt;What&apos;s the point of an exit? Mostly it&apos;s to get a gigantic payday. If your startup-turned-cash-machine is already making a ton of cash every month, the founders are already getting a payday... all the time.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;re already making FU money from the revenues of your business and someone offers you more of it, the benefit of the FU money is you can say FU to the offer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scootklein</author><text>I disagree - the title is spot on. Groupon&apos;s monthly revenue isn&apos;t directly related to the personal finances of the founders. The point of the post is to show that a founder&apos;s bank going from 5m to 500m doesn&apos;t have as much of an effect as it does from 10k to 5m (or 500m).&lt;p&gt;5m to 500m is actually so inconsequential that they willingly turned down a lucrative acquisition in order to go it alone and make their impact as they see fit.</text></comment>
<story><title>It All Changes When the Founder Drives a Porsche</title><url>http://learntoduck.com/startups/it-all-changes-when-the-founder-drives-a-porsche</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>flyosity</author><text>The title of the entry put me off to the overall premise, which, I think, even the author may have missed.&lt;p&gt;Basically, the article should&apos;ve been titled &quot;It All Changes When The Startup Is Making A Lot Of Cash&quot;. Supposedly Groupon is making nearly $2 billion a year in revenue. The decision to turn down an acquisition has more to do with &quot;we&apos;re a real company making a TON of cash and we don&apos;t need to sell&quot; than the founder thinking about their legacy.&lt;p&gt;What&apos;s the point of an exit? Mostly it&apos;s to get a gigantic payday. If your startup-turned-cash-machine is already making a ton of cash every month, the founders are already getting a payday... all the time.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;re already making FU money from the revenues of your business and someone offers you more of it, the benefit of the FU money is you can say FU to the offer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>One of my surprisingly life lessons from 2010: &quot;revenue makes money less attractive&quot; is true at numbers much, much smaller than 6 billion, too.</text></comment>