webwright

20 or so shops isn't mid-sized, is it?

I just moved to Orcas Island in the PNW after living in cities (Seattle, Anchorage) for most of my adult life. I'm near the one town on the island (which is REALLY quiet outside of the 4 warmest/touristy months). ~4,500 people year round population. Weather is perfect with near zero rain for 4-6 months but a bit gray / drizzly for the rest. It's rarely cold, but decent ski hills are 2h inland.

The population (like a lot of small towns) is pretty old, but I found the small group of newer folks (lots of tech expats) to be really welcoming.

I can walk to the small airport, which has regular $180-$200 flights to Seattle (show up 10min before departure, 45min flight). Ferries are more work but sometimes you want your vehicle on the mainland for a big group of houseguests or whatnot.

I'm 15min away from getting a paddlboard into two mountain lakes-- both are popular swimming destinations for locals. I have friends pulling crabs and prawns out of the water all summer. There are zillions of islands and inlets around-- it's a playground if you're a boater. 4-5 good hikes on the islands with breathtaking views. There's one (never crowded) gym in town with a racquetball court. There's a board game meetup. A few fancy restaurants, one killer cocktail bar, a good locals dive bar. I leave my door unlocked. There's a "village green" with frequent concerts and a Saturday farmer's market. The schools and kids on this island are amazing. Ferries and small planes can get you quickly to Victoria/Vancouver Island, Vancouver (the city), and assorted other cool small/medium towns.

I'm pretty new to this, but am LOVING it. There are downsides-- not a lot of food variety in town, tough to make new friends if you aren't the kind of person who makes the effort. The gray season is long and VERY quiet, so you definitely need to budget time/$ to travel. The schools are pretty understanding about missed days in the winter because of this.

Hit me up if you (or anyone) ever wants to check it out. I'll buy you a drink and talk your ear off about it.

news.ycombinator.com said "not found"?! :-)

Still, pretty darn cool.

This was (originally) exactly why we created RescueTime (YC08 - and still growing!). We'd sold a tiny/new startup that we'd created IN ALASKA to a large/overfunded startup (150ppl) in Seattle. We were convinced we were moving to the big leagues. Everyone would be so smart! We'd move 10x faster will the big league technology/processes!

The reality was pretty terrible-- I felt like the entire company spent all day writing emails, going to meetings, and updating wikis... Which seemed pretty scary for a company that hadn't figured out its own product yet. We wanted a big chart showing the allocation of time spend so we could show it the exec team and say, "Is this on purpose?"

The company ended up raising $50M and selling for less than $1M. The founder went on to create Fab.com, which raised $300M+ and sold for $15M.

One thing I've said to acquirers in the past is: "You're a big company that can afford to dedicate a person full-time to this deal for months with no impact to your company's focus and bottom line. We're not. I'm excited about this opportunity, can we brainstorm how to limit the cost of exploring this? And perhaps how we could share the cost a bit more equally?"

When we get into brainstorming mode, two things I navigate towards are: time-boxing the exercise (setting and sticking to an condensed schedule) and earnest money from them after some amount of diligence or discussion.

If a suitor can't commit to getting to a handshake/LOI after X weeks, I wouldn't pursue it.

Unrelated advice: try to hack your own brain and your team into believing that the default result of this is "no deal, time wasted". Many/most deals fall through, which can feel pretty brutal if you get optimistic about it.

This is a pretty ridiculous series of statements, especially if you count YC as a mid-stage startup when he joined (which it was).

If you add up all of the successful YC companies since he started leading YC, it's a pretty breathtaking number (the count, the valuations, and the value created). YC was having pretty serious scaling problems when he took the reins-- from my understanding, he resolved those pretty effectively. YC's growth since he's been leading it (in a lot of directions) has been impressive-- full-stop.

It's not a big deal as described in the article. The effort to apply to YC is nominal, not terribly distracting, and probably a good exercise even if you don't get accepted.

In Anchorage, Alaska there is a moose roadkill call list you can get on. The authorities will call you (day or night) when a moose is struck. If you're willing to come out and harvest it, it's yours. If not, they move down the list to the next person. My brother has gotten a moose or two that way.

Usually the impact point(s) is/are pretty wrecked, but the majority of the meat is good. And, of course, Anchorage is a natural refrigerator (or freezer) most times of the year.

The ultracheap way to do this is just have a 2min gameplay video where you describe how a turn works.

(source: I've twice left my own companies- both companies continued to grow and prosper after I left).

Personally, I'd suck it up and get the sale done, working hard to make the price as front-loaded as possible. Depending on the buyers appetite for you to keep working there you could:

A) Suggest that you're excited to stay with the business, but if they feel there'd be too many chefs in the kitchen and that you should phase out, you'd like to know about that now... i.e. open the door for them to express how critical you are to the deal.

B) If they DO really want you, push hard for a front-loaded deal (i.e. initial payout versus earn out) and then give notice 6 months after the deal closes. You'll leave some (maybe lots) of $ on the table, but who cares. Selling a company isn't indentured servitude. Someone else owning the company might relieve some stress. If it doesn't, punt.

Broadly-- I'm a believer that happiness is generally internal. If you can't find a way to be happy with this job, I suspect you'll have a hard time with a different one. Starting ASAP, I'd make some changes to see if it makes a difference. Get therapy. Try anti-depressants. Shut off your phone at 6pm and don't open your computer. The sky won't fall. Exercise. Meditate. Try psychedelic mushrooms (only half kidding-- there are some studies that one dose positively impacts depression and anxiety). Eat better. Go into work late AM twice a week so you can take a long walk with your wife. Schedule vacations. Go into the woods a lot (exposure to green space helps depression too). I just read that doing tai chi helps with depression. Schedule weekly lunches with friends.

This isn't true.

Google existed and grew (rapidly) for quite a while before they launched Adwords, which they introduced in 2000. Their growth in '99 was pretty meteoric (prompting a $25M investment from KP and Sequoia) before it rolled out PPC monetization. The Adwords model wasn't new at all-- Goto.com was the first search engine to bet on that model.

Google won because it was a massively better search engine... Not just 10% better-- it was "holy crap" better on a mess of fronts (notably: serving up what you were looking for).