Comment by chapz

8 days ago

It's sad to see that ex-GitHub CEO didn't make enough money to just kick-start his company, but needs external money which will later on dictate how the company works or will sell users and the product for the next exit..

So.. yea. Ignore and move on.

Why burn his own money when he can get VC money instead?

  • If he believes in the product he could have kept 100% of his company.

    • He kept 80%. The other 20% is owned by 8 different VCs. Seems like he's still in control. There's value in using other people's money instead of your own because it might make him less emotionally risk-averse in how he manages it.

    • Most of the time it's not about the money VCs send into it but the credibility that this brings. It looks a lot more mature when your idea is backed by a distribution of wealthy people.

  • The point is more - it's primary goal is not to enable developers to do more and better, it's primary goal is to _maximize shareholder value_. Important thing to keep in mind.

You know even Google looked for external investors for Waymo, right?

Yeah, Google. That company with more than $100B in cash. Even they know that it's better to burn someone else's money.