[RickS]

It sounds like you missed the point of the article.

You can't take the ink out of the water, once it's in. When you sell your autonomy over a product whose properties give your life meaning, you pour the ink. Even more painful if that product then turns around and comes to represent values opposite yours.

Short of a buyback, which in this case is off the table, there's no sum that rectifies the regret of lost opportunity and the turning of the thing you built against you.

It's a hair callous DHH to be so direct about it, but as an observation, it seems sound – Acton appears to be a distraught billionaire when he might have been a sound-sleeping millionaire.

Perhaps that's not a trade worth making.

[swingline-747]

On the plus-side, that money has bought him the choice to build whatever, whenever, almost never having to beg for financing ever again and the choice to not sell.

DHH often talks like bootstrapping and not selling is The One True Way™ but, financing trades equity for time: accelerating traction or traction-ability that can beat someone else to market (T2M). It's a slower path, but it's not rushed either. Pluses and minuses to both, and it depend on the category and circumstances