[declan]

Well put. Also as <abalone> suggested nearby, the author of the linked article, Max Christian, fumbled the exchange and instead of a million-dollar exit ended up with... what?

Instead of the claim of "I can easily get to twice £X million" -- in revenue? profit? valuation? -- it looks like the author's RoomScan app is near-moribund. RoomScan Pro, which sells for $4.99, hasn't been updated in over half a year and is listed as "optimized for iPhone 5." It's been mentioned in only two articles indexed by Google News in the last eight months. The Roomscan Twitter account hasn't been updated since November. The free version of the app has been updated more recently, but free in this context isn't exactly going to pay the bills.

These are not the signs of an app that is getting to "twice £X million" anytime soon.

I do think it's an innovative idea and a good implementation, but as we see on HN all too frequently, not all innovative ideas and good implementations amount to a "twice £X million" valuation. Any company (or product) is only worth what the market will pay.

As for Google, I don't know how their corpdev team works, but my rule of thumb after working at some very large companies is: don't attribute to malice what can be explained by bureaucracy. It's not unusual for different teams not to know what the other is doing, even when they should. I don't see anything that justifies speculating about nonexistent employees named Maxine, and that kind of bizarre speculation likely poisoned the discussion.

Whoops.

[nostrademons]

The right answer would've been to respond to the original message with "If you're serious, make an offer. Otherwise, I intend to continue building this business independently."

Once you get sucked into the conversation you've lost. This is business, not social chit-chat. Know what you're hoping to get out of the conversation and direct it toward getting that; if they won't oblige, end the conversation and don't waste time on it.

[MicroBerto]

/thread

[kohanz]

Moving across the ocean with a wife and young child to work for a company under golden handcuffs hardly sounds like an appealing "exit". The OP already mentioned he is not desperate for $ after his first successful startup.

[afro88]

> Instead of the claim of "I can easily get to twice £X million" -- in revenue? profit? valuation? -- it looks like the author's RoomScan app is near-moribund. RoomScan Pro, which sells for $4.99, hasn't been updated in over half a year and is listed as "optimized for iPhone 5." It's been mentioned in only two articles indexed by Google News in the last eight months. The Roomscan Twitter account hasn't been updated since November. The free version of the app has been updated more recently, but free in this context isn't exactly going to pay the bills.

> These are not the signs of an app that is getting to "twice £X million" anytime soon.

Easy to say nearly 10 months on from when this happened. From the article: "By this time, the app is topping both the free and paid charts in its category in many countries, and into the overall top 10 in some." Sounds quite healthy to me. Remember only a short time prior the guy had only 30 sales per day. There may be other metrics that would indicate that this app wasn't going to be a screaming success like his previous one, but his sales and media coverage at the time Google / recruiters got in touch aren't it.

> As for Google, I don't know how their corpdev team works, but my rule of thumb after working at some very large companies is: don't attribute to malice what can be explained by bureaucracy. It's not unusual for different teams not to know what the other is doing, even when they should. I don't see anything that justifies speculating about nonexistent employees named Maxine, and that kind of bizarre speculation likely poisoned the discussion.

For sure. I found it hard to follow his logic here.