DailyPost 1900
WHY STARTUPS ARE SOLD?
Why are startups sold? This would be one question which would be intriguing in everybody’s mind. While most of them burn out for a variety of reasons, of the few which survive the bloodshed, the vast majority end up selling their companies, for a hefty sum of money. That hefty sum of money is only from that standpoint in time. If Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and many others were to be sold in that manner, the world would have been a poorer place to live in, in every single way. What happens to the passion, the ideas for which one was ready to sell his life, the great pronouncements made to the investors, the fire in their belly to make the world a little better place. Steve Jobs believed that whatever products he makes would be earth shattering.
He lived by that thought, delivered by it and died by it. The fire was on till his last days. The difference between a startup and new business is very distinct, clear and well known. That is why there is this hype about this movement. Silicon Valley has been its genesis. Unlike normal businesses growing in an incremental manner, here the game is exponential. The idea propelled by technology; product or service would hit the roof is the thought process. It is for this reason funds also follow such ideas after the initial proof of concept and some customer acquisition. When the thought process is different, the impact, the trajectory and the business model are different, then why are they sold?
Might be then the founders did not have an entrepreneur’s mindset, they had the trader in them, which forced them to sell as soon as they got a chance to make money and scoot. How can you sell something which you have groomed and bloomed with your own blood, perspiration and toil, through sleepless nights and wide eyed dreams? When the prospects of it becoming a hundred billion dollar company is there, why do they leave it mid way? Are they not sure of their own dreams, of the stories they build around that enterprise? They were ready to take on the world with the fullest risk, when they had nothing but with good initial success in their kitty, did they lose their risk appetite. It might also be a case that they don’t find the future of the company in the long run and thus make hay while the sun shines.
Does the valuations match the reality? Can it sustain? At the end of the day, an enterprise has to make profits and get on the road of bringing in monumental change and make money simultaneously. Money comes first or the passion and well-being of the company, is a catch 22 situation in which our entrepreneurs get lost for sometime and finally go in favor of the former. Three sixty degrees responsibility is not in our DNA and that too endlessly, till the startup becomes an IT Behemoth. When fullest responsibility is not your second skin, you will certainly opt for the easier way out. It is like selling your baby. We need startups who not only start up but also grow up and follow the footsteps of great tech entrepreneur’s who have changed the world.
SELLING THE STARTUP ITSELF, CANNOT BE A STARTUP IDEA.
Sanjay Sahay