This comment strikes a nerve with me - perhaps because it's "saying the quiet part loud". I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference". How does selling to Visa accomplish those things? Isn't expressing sympathy with Plaid's staff for not getting a payout effectively saying "sorry that you might actually have to deliver on the lofty promises this time"?
It's also kind of indicative of how small startup ambitions have become. Acquisition has become a measure of success, not failure.
The rank-and-file employees that work for companies like this have other goals, like buying houses and saving for retirement, it's not a single dimension. Yes, they want to help the world but not at the expense of themselves and their own financial future.
>I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups
Hackers and startups are two very different groups with very different ideologies and goals and incentives. No idea why you group them together. Some startups have no technical founders even.
>"change the world" and "make a difference"
Startups are businesses and like all businesses in the end they wish to make money. VCs, for example, are very clearly investors and not philanthropists. They are high risk, high reward businesses which means they need to change things to get those returns but in the end they are a business.
>How does selling to Visa accomplish those things?
It gives Plaid financial stability and long term platform for its technology. If its technology makes the world a better place then its continual existence does make a difference.
Lots of people have tried to capture this distinction, I'm sure I'll do a worse job here briefly than you can find around, but for me the tell is how people spend their time, and an attitude.
Hackers in the sense that I mean it have an innate need to understand things deeply, and a tendency to value achieving this directly (e.g. do something, don't just read up about it). As a result most hackers with any real talent will have achieved an unusually high level of expertise/mastery in at least one, often a few, technical areas. This is a result of having really spent a lot of time with it, in ways that may look "obsessive" to others.
This is by no means restricted to software. Another common characteristic is a tendency to take things apart (physically or virtually) to see how they tick.
I associate hackers as a group that startups wants to hire not as having similar philosophies. To me this site is a very successful marketing/recruitment tool and not some indication that YC follows the hacker ethos.
The point is that this represents a coöption of the term hacker by the venture capitalist community -- it's always easier to convince someone to accept less value as recompense for what they produce by convincing them that they are engaged in a noble or even a personally virtuous (see e.g. "guru", "rockstar") pursuit.
Tech workers want to buy homes and go on vacations just like everyone else. That's a good thing. They had an opportunity to make a lot of money making banking services easier for everyone; that's awesome and should be encouraged.
A startup exit doesn't simply erase all its impact. Plaid made many banking services a lot easier & popular, and it demonstrated how valuable that can be. All that doesn't just disappear. An acquisition/merger can also strengthen a startup's founding ambitions with more resources at its disposal.
Can, but often enough, it doesn't. We end up with a cancelled product/service, or one maligned beyond recognition by the acquirer, with users having to untangle the service from their lives at last minute, while acquirer holds all the IP.
Also, I question the general usefulness of startups created to pursue an exit in the first place. Besides there being often no point in entangling yourself with a service that's meant to be transient, the goals will be different too - the company will try to force hypergrowth by underhanded, and ultimately user-hostile means, vs. letting a thing grow on the strength of its usefulness. Myself, I strongly avoid dealing with any startup that I can smell was built for an exit.
In only one of those cases, did I join the company expecting an imminent-ish liquidity event. One hit me out of nowhere. Regardless of what you're planning on, and even if the dollar amount isn't that great, it's a huge rush, a lot of thinking about the possibilities. It would suck, at the very least, on an emotional level, to have that fall apart.
I joined a company (my first full-time salaried job) a few days before their IPO. I got stock options (like, 500. I was 18. heh.) but they were awarded/priced/etc post-IPO and were never actually in the money after vesting, as I recall. So I remember some of the IPO excitement but I'm not sure it really qualifies as "going through an IPO" for the purposes of the "full thrill ride package".
Incidentally, that company was also taken private during the dot-com crash, and I did make money from that, because the ESPP I was buying for <$1 got converted to cash at something like 3.5x the valuation. It wasn't much, but, again, I was young, so it seemed like a lot.
Plaid has ~500 employees with normal lives and financial goals. There are start-ups out there with a real chance to change the world, but I think it gets over played as a form of recruiting and media strategy.
Honestly I sort of agree with your sentiment, but I have some sympathy because many people who join early startups do it at comp deficits, and believing you're actually going to make a significant return on your investment only to suddenly realize you're not is pretty shitty-feeling no matter what.
Visa was going to pay $5.3b dollars for Plaid. I don't really think you can say that that is "small startup ambitions."
Is YouTube a failure? Is Instagram a failure? How about Github or Linkedin? There are reasons to remain an independent company, but there are also reasons that it might be better to be acquired. Besides the premium that the acquirer will pay, large companies can actually accelerate your growth while also insulating you from a lot of the pesky overhead of being a public company.
To be fair, Visa would’ve had the partnerships with banks to really push for standard API access to various banks. Plaid works by giving them your username and password in most flows (although some banks like Chase finally have an authorization flow without MITM).
I don't mean to be glib, but it's just a job. Pretending you have some sort of higher aspirations when you sign up to work at a generic fintech or, heck, a vast majority of startups? Mrpmhph.
At least rappers have the honesty to say it's about that cash.
It is probably 99% true. You can occasionally find a company that is proud that they made their users happy. Notch with Minecraft might be an example of that.
If you listen to VCs talk it is 100% about exit price.
> I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference".
That sounds like the goal of a non-profit, not a startup. What a founder says at a TED talk (which I admit can often sound like the former) shouldn't be conflated with the nuts and bolt conversations they have with their closest lieutenants and investors. Assuming we mean venture funded by "startup" the definition has always been growth oriented, highly risky and innovative through disruption.
> It's also kind of indicative of how small startup ambitions have become. Acquisition has become a measure of success, not failure.
Really? I'm surprised you think that acquisition is either a measure of success or failure in a vacuum. Wouldn't the terms and the specific deal be important than how a company exits? After all, there's a world of difference between an acquihire and a strategic merger.
> I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference". How does selling to Visa accomplish those things?
If your aim is that everyone should have access to these tools then getting Visa to integrate them is a pretty good way to accomplish that - Visa is big enough that if they adopt something then pretty much every credit card will have to match it.
It reminds me of something my friend would often say. "I'm very passionate about your product and mission. Just that it comes at a price". Also, as the joker said it, if you are good at something don't do it for free.
It's absolutely perfect to be passionate about customers/product/whatever. However, if one is constantly distracted trying to making ends meet the cognitive bandwidth is going to be spent on it rather than chasing the passion.
It's also kind of indicative of how small startup ambitions have become. Acquisition has become a measure of success, not failure.