[dataker]

As a technical founder, I'd be very careful to start a company again.

I used to ignore finance and bureaucracy, but the industry has changed a lot. The popular quote 'just passionately build something' is nothing but a trap. Although something like YC doesn't fit this profile, one will eventually find himself in a hostile situation.

[beering]

Maybe don't take buckets of cash that you don't/shouldn't need? That $XXmm isn't free and is a good way to hand someone a leash tied around your neck.

It looks like Get Satisfaction raised $20mm. Why that much? Did all that money contribute towards success? Or was a good chunk of that money not utilized well? Why did the company tank? Were they not acquiring enough customers? Was their business model unsound? What forced the fire sale?

I don't think founders are supposed to get a big payout for a failure, but we need more info before agreeing with this sob story of founders who didn't get a dime.

[shenoyroopesh]

I don't think that's the issue.

The issue is that the founders were pushed out. Lane indicates that business tanked ever since they left, which is what presumably led to a fire sale.

It's one thing if the business tanks when founders are in-charge. You can blame them for failure and say it's fair that they din't get a dime. But why did the VCs take over the reigns? It's criminal to take over from founders and then run the business into the ground, like it seems to have happened here.

Of course, that Series B happened looooooong back. There was no Series C in the following year or two years after that, which might be why investors got jittery. The timing matters - did the founders get pushed out after a decent amount of time after the Series B? Or was it right after the investment? That would tell whether the VC had some reasonable cause to get desperate or they were just trying to "screw" the founders.

[arielm]

I think that's a pretty blind statement. Just because you're a technical founder doesn't mean you have to ignore the finance and other non-engineering activities. That's just a bad way to run any company.

Also, being a technical founder doesn't mean you don't have common sense. Yes, GS's founders got nothing, but really it's the employees that saw the largest loss... They signed up to see the company really take off, and it didn't.

But at the end, if your company doesn't make enough money and requires raising amount of money you just don't know how to waste you shouldn't expect a big payday. Being technical isn't an excuse.

[erichmond]

I think as more and more tech co-founders go through the meat grinder and deal with the realities of the business side of VC backed startups, we'll start to see technologists start very interesting companies with very different ideologies and goals then people seem to have today. Diversity in how we approach business is a great thing.

[eaurouge]

I'm not sure what you and the parent are alluding to but tech founders have been founding massively successful venture-backed companies since the dawn of Silicon Valley.