Snapchat Rorschach test: Box, Yelp, PayPal founders reflect on selling out
- Greg Baumann
- Editor in Chief- Silicon Valley Business Journal
- Email | Twitter | Google+
As if it’s possible for someone in their mid-twenties to blow it when the decision path in front of them is: A) Cashing out at that valuation; B) Waiting for a higher offer; or C) Going public.
To be fair, there is an option D. That is failing completely. But even if Snapchat were to follow the sad path of, say, Groupon (which turned down a $6 billion offer from Google, went public and has struggled to lift its share price to the level of its 2011 IPO), there will be little room to say they blew it.
All four paths imply the founders achieved success that put them among the 1 percent of achievement, if one is to include all the country’s citizens as peers. (I know — a rash assumption.)
The New York Times surveyed nine famous tech company founders to see how they reacted to Snapchat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy’s decision to reject Facebook’s billions. Silicon Valley's elite had great answers.
Aaron Levie, Box
In 2011, at age 26, Aaron Levie turned down hundreds of millions of dollars for his business data storage company.
That deal would have made him wealthy, but Levie says he didn’t turn down the deal to make even more money.
“You don’t say no to a life-changing amount of money so that you might get a larger life-changing amount of money,” the Times quoted Levie as saying. “You think more about the company and the mission than whether you should hang in there so you can someday afford two really big yachts, instead of one.”
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