Comments on: Michael Birch, CEO Bebo.com

By: ben gabriel

ben gabriel — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:03:23 +0000

you the man

By: chika

chika — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:51:43 +0000

Does anyone remember what happened to Friendstar?

Enough said

By: Yanook

Yanook — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:26:54 +0000

Markus,

I must say I need to give you 2 thumbs up on the great job!

And you know what! Goes to show how much with alot of determination!

You can make it happend!

Congrats and don’t let the Angels Investors get to you!

Being happy with your vision is most important

Yanook

http://gallery1978.blogspot.com

By: Markus

Markus — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:35:12 +0000

What i ment is that everything that is done is geared towards “blowing up the company” and trying to sell it.

By: ZF

ZF — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:14:43 +0000

I can think of a lot of reasons not to take VC money, but signaling that you are “most likely going to sell the company in the next 3 years” isn’t one of them. Seriously, would a single one of your users give a damn either way whether this is the case?

If you need cash to expand then whether or not to take VC is a real (sometimes difficult) decision. If you don’t need cash to expand and you are not real confident about the business’ position you should probably sell now rather than later (see Mark Fletcher’s great account of his thinking about this, which led to the sale of Bloglines to Ask). If you are generating cash and are confident about the future I’d say hang on to autonomous control over your options. Too many people who take VC into a strong business discover that where it leads is a ‘no man’s land’ of misaligned incentives and randomized decision making. There are few more frustrating experiences on this earth.