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Poll: When is a startup successful?

1 points by mixmax ↗ HN
There are quite a few people here that have done and exited startups - some successful, some not.

But what is a successful exit? Some might think it is selling to google for no less than $20 mill. and some might think that selling to your uncle Jim for $1000 is a success.

IT would be nice to have some datapoints on what people think constitutes a successful exit.

So when would you call an exit a success?

7 comments

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aflag
Hm, I don't have much economy background, but my intuition says that it depends on how much money you invested in to begin with. How succesful is a sell depends on the interest rate you end up getting.

If you start a company with $1k and sell it for $10k in a month, it's certainly success. If you invest $10kk and sell it for $500k, it's a big failure.

mixmax
Yes you're right, and there are also a lot of other considerations. The idea here is simply to get a basic idea of what people think constitutes a success.
boucher
Nobody ever succeeded that didn't sell their company?
mixmax
Yes - Microsoft, Maersk, and lots of others.

But this poll is about exits. Primarily because I think it's a good hard measure that we can all relate to.

moog
$10.000 == $10,000?
pchristensen
mixmax, I'm sorry people are hammering your comments (not really deserved), but this just can't be answered on its own. If someone sells for $20 million but wanted to take over the world, it's disappointing. If dilution means the founder gets nothing out of a $5B exit, then it's a failure. It's just too subjective of a question.
mixmax
Yes, you're probably right. I just couldn't really think of a better measure of success, and I thought the question was interesting. As you rightly point out it quickly gets pretty complex. Guess it didn't fly, but it was worth a try.

And thanks for you support :-)