Ask HN: Oops, I just sold my startup to a piano company. Now what?
So the last time I relied on you for advice was 1394 days ago, according to this: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=134685
Since then, I worked at a few startups, dropped out of school, started a successful Mac app business, and ended up spinning off a music publishing platform for the iPad that was doing very well until I ran into a legal issue.
So I exited earlier than I would have liked:
http://steinway.com/news/press-releases/steinway-sons-debuts-etude-20-ipad-app-for-learning-and-playing-piano/
The heart of the matter was that I signed a bad contract with someone who was supposed to get music deals for me. With the contract in place, it limited my options for continuing to bootstrap, taking funding, or getting acquired by a few of the companies I was talking with. Except for Steinway, which found a way to work with me.
So I moved from SF to New York, I brought in a team, we transitioned the app over, built one of the first sheet music stores for the iPad, and released a new version of the app I'm really happy with.
If you're curious, you can try it for free at: http://etudeapp.com
With the app transitioned and my legal matter finally settled, we've set a date for me to leave the company. I'm excited, but a little terrified.
Since the time I sold, I have many times the resources/runway I had before, and I'm a good deal more mature and in much better shape. The odds are waaay better, so I ought to just hang out and see what I come up with, right?
But for whatever reason, after spending about 2-3 years pursuing a single idea so passionately, I'm pretty burned out, and I'm not quite ready to start something new yet. I'm not excited about any of my other ideas to the degree I was with Etude, and I'm having trouble seeing what to do now. I feel like I've reached a local maximum, and I need to go work with other people and see what kind of ideas they're into.
I'd really like to do an incubator like YC, since having decent advisors would have prevented me from running into the trouble I did before. But it's not the right time, and I'm (so far) a single founder.
So I went and interviewed at a bunch of places in New York (since I'm stuck for at least a little while). People seemed to like what I'd done and I got a few offers from some good companies, traditional and startup.
I don't really need a gig, but I figured I'd see what I could get. But the thing that bugs me about this is that nobody seems to think that I'm anything more than a code monkey. They don't realize that, in addition to engineering, I actually started something new, managed the product, a whole team, did a fair bit of design, promotion/press, successfully exited, all sorts of stuff that doesn't really fall under "Objective-C developer." Not exactly covered in the Stanford course. I'm not usually so arrogant, but it's frustrating.
For some reason, the logic on the east coast, and even in a lot of SV is, "If you can code, then you can only code. Forever."
I'm returning to San Francisco for a week just to meet up with some old friends and escape the cold later this month. Hoping that will help me.
But what should a person who wants to take a break and get some broader experience but is tainted with an engineering background do? Is the only option for me to just suck it up, gather the courage, and commit to striking it on my own with another idea? Have any of you ever been at a similar crossroads after exiting something?
In this 2012 acquisition retrospective, @dangrover reflects on the journey of bootstrapping and successfully selling their business.
Hacker News peers debated transaction structures (cash vs earnout), founder tax strategies, and life after liquidating a long-term indie asset.
A digital sheet music app/store is something I dreamed of creating even before the iPad was revealed (along with many other geek musicians, I'm sure). Congrats on succeeding with the idea. Since there's not much value left in keeping an already-executed idea to myself:
``` May 13, 2008
I want to make a piano music stand that integrates a 19" or 24" widescreen LCD with built-in sheet music display software. This would allow a pianist to access a large library of music without having to store it all or risk damage to fragile printed music. This display could also be linked to a MIDI or other playback and recording system to evaluate the correctness of a performance, quickly transform a performance into printed music, or control the parameters of a synthesized piano. The stand would be designed to accommodate printed music in front of the LCD display. A reflective display from Pixel Qi would be the coolest, with more of a paper look. It would be really cool to work with Bosendorfer to have the system integrated into their player pianos.
The display could serve as a useful educational tool by grading performance as mentioned previously, by masking out parts of a piece to aid memorization, and by presenting video/animated/automated lessons to a student. It could also include teleconferencing software/hardware to allow remote education. If the piano includes a clutch to detach the keys from the hammers, it might be able to be used as a software synthesizer.
The system could also be used to provide prerecorded or automatically generated accompaniment for a solo pianist.
``` But what should a person who wants to take a break and get some broader experience but is tainted with an engineering background do? Is the only option for me to just suck it up, gather the courage, and commit to striking it on my own with another idea? Have any of you ever been at a similar crossroads after exiting something?
Now... I almost never indulge in unprompted self promotion, but tongue-in-cheek and at the risk of sounding like an overconfident idiot (heck, I know this will make me sound like an idiot), you should work with me on my "big idea": http://www.nitrogenlogic.com/.
If you don't mind me saying, it sounds to me like you've come into more money and success than you've ever had and now you're feeling guilty about it. You SEE yourself as a guy who works and creates stuff, not a capitalist on a yacht; but, when you glance at your accounts, your mind is telling you that you are, in fact, a fat capitalist on a yacht telling everyone down below to row.
This is creating guilt and cognitive dissonance.
But that isn't you. The amount of zeroes on a bank statement does not a man make. The reason you went out looking for jobs even though you didn't need them is not because you were bored. It's because you wanted to convince others (yourself, really) that you haven't let success go to your head.
Well, I can tell by your post that you haven't let it go to your head. And you know what, it probably won't. Those people who get rich and then turn into complete douche-nozzles... guess what? They were douche-nozzles to begin with! Money tends to amplify one's personality, not alter it.
So relax!
Give yourself permission to:
- Buy that car or boat or whatever you've always wanted. Just keep the Tercel ;-)
- Travel, explore, learn, teach, whatever. If money is no object, the first thing I'd love to do is drive trucks for 6 months or so. The next thing would be to get my PhD. Do what you've always wanted to do if you didn't have to work... because you don't.
- Create! Use your coding skills for yourself. If you don't have the urge to write code, don't. But if you do, don't worry if it doesn't have a market or an exit strategy, just write it and feel good. Share it. You'll enjoy it again.
Bottom line: you have worked hard, developed a great product, saw it through to a nice exit, and are in a position to enjoy the fruits of your success. We at HN hereby give you permission to do so ;-)
I went through something sort-of-kind-of similar almost ten years ago. I got a good full-time job as a programmer/sysadmin before I was even out of high school, moved across the country and got another job with a large corporation where I became one of their lead techs while working on a few other projects for them. I made more money than I knew what to do with and I should have been happy.
But, I kept getting more and more unhappy instead, and finally decided that I needed to do something really different. I decided that I'd had it too easy, so I was going to set out to make life really hard for a while. (I had no idea what I was getting myself into. All the same, I'd do it all over again even if I knew.)
Anyway, I left the computer industry entirely, moved back across country, tried to become a forest service ranger and ended up becoming a climbing instructor after having a few other odd jobs. I was broke, but happy. I returned to the tech industry several years later and now I'm much more comfortable with it and well-balanced.
You have resources and you sound like you're a lot smarter than I was, so you could probably do something similar without the kind of hardships I experienced. If you're not sure of what you want to do next, then go out and experience the world in a completely different way until you find the next thing you want to do. Go and do things you've never done before, then come back and start another company.
The main thing with this advice is just to make sure that you don't do nothing -- make sure you keep pushing yourself to do something every day. But I doubt that you'll really have that problem from the sounds of it.
A friend hit a rut a little while back. He had a few apps in the app store, but wasn't advancing at his day job and couldn't quite get a team together for a startup (I'm partly to blame there...). So, he moved.
To Nicaragua.
Now, he's gotten a group of friends and a couple of local college kids together and he's developing an app to promote tourism in the area. Because of the differences in standard of living, he's got a nicer place than before, goes out for dinner with friends regularly, and is still managing to save a bit. From our conversations, it seems like he's really enjoying the change of pace and the different culture.
So, my recommendation would be to move. Far, far away. There has probably never been a better time to be a programmer in a developing market. Brazil, Argentina, Chille all seem to have rapidly growing developer communities. India is still struggling to break out of being labeled "that place to outsource stuff", and Russia, while significantly hampered by corruption, is still managing to spawn a handful of tech startups. There is eastern Europe/former Soviet republics, where I know a number of western Europe startups are looking to expand to.
Finally, if none of the rest of that tickles your fancy, try Ushahidi: http://ushahidi.com/ . If you have enough money that you don't need to worry about a specific salary, or if you are even wealthy enough to work for free, these guys seems like they might just be able to change the world (or at least Africa). Could be fun...
Sounds to me like you already answered your own question. It also sounds like you might be second guessing yourself and need some reassurance. That's alright, we're only human.
If I were you, I'd take a good long break. Regroup for a third of it and relax. Then do some solo tinkering and see if anything gets you excited. Maybe you'll want to go another round with a new business at that point, maybe not.
Join another team only if you think you can handle not being the top dog. Make sure that whatever position you get, you're happy with the amount of control you have while still keeping in mind that this is someone else's baby you're caring for now. If all that's a good fit and agreeable then continue on that path. If not, do your own thing.
As for being type-cast as Engineer-Only, well, it's tricky... maybe you should leave out the part where you know how to code. You don't have to tell people you're a programmer right away. Get into the area of the business you'd like most before mentioning your other skills. Definitely mention your other skills, just not right off the bat.
Other than that I'd say congratulations, you seem like you're doing very well and have luxuries that a lot of us (me too) are striving for. It's awesome to see people like you who want to keep going round after round in entrepreneurship. Its people like you who prove that when you something out of love, not money, you truly succeed. Hopefully I helped. Good luck to you!