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Comment by paxys

4 years ago

I have lost count of the number of startup founders I come across who have an unsuccessful product and are looking for an exit and go "we have all this amazing code. It has to be worth at least $X". No, all of your code is worth exactly $0 to any company looking to acquire you. They either want your product (read: users) as a whole or just the talent behind it. In 99% of such acquisitions your entire codebase will be thrown out.

I was at a startup that ran for two years and wrote a lot of code.

At the liquidation, the entire body of code from the two years was auctioned for $1372 to one of the founders. Chances are, if he had not bid, it would have been abandoned entirely. I doubt he looked at it, after.