<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/51e4632269bedd570e000011-1200-924/josh-williams-1.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="josh williams" width="480" /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kk/4472790942/sizes/o/in/photostream/">Flickr/kk+</a></div></div>In December 2011, the talent behind location-checkin app <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-gets-gowalla-founders-but-gowalla-itself-is-dead-2011-12">Gowalla was acquired by Facebook.</a> The app itself was wound down over the next few months.
Now, a year and a half after joining <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword>, <keyword id="257645" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Gowalla">Gowalla</keyword>'s founder and former CEO Josh Williams is leaving.
Williams joined Facebook as a product manager where he worked on Pages, Location and Events. Gowalla launched before Foursquare but only ever reached a few million downloads. Foursquare now has 30 million downloads and billions of check-ins, although it hasn't had a smooth ride either.
Williams, who moved from Austin, Texas to join Facebook in Palo Alto, says he'll remain in San Francisco to pursue a new project.
"No comment on my next steps at this point — beyond that I plan to stay in SF and work on something new," Williams told Business Insider. His last day is this Friday.
We reached out to Facebook about Williams' departure and are awaiting official comment.

Gowalla Founder Josh Williams Is Leaving Facebook, Plans To Pursue New Project In San Francisco

<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4baac8577f8b9a021b590e00-400-300/geosocial-smackdown-tbi.jpg" border="0" alt="foursquare gowalla poster" /></div><a href="&lt;a href="></a>"&gt;<a href="http://jess3.com/">Jess3</a></td></tr></table>As an entrepreneur, it can be hard to admit defeat. 
When <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> Product Manager Josh Williams started working on <keyword id="257645" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Gowalla">Gowalla</keyword>, a location-based social network, his ultimate vision was for "people to see the world through the eyes of their friends," <a href="https://medium.com/work-education/6152adc41de9">Williams recently wrote on Medium</a>.
Convinced that the idea was crazy, Williams set out to launch it in time for SXSW in 2009.
But it turned out that Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai were working on a very similar project called <keyword id="76575" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Foursquare">Foursquare</keyword>, which launched on the exact same day as Gowalla. 
At the time, Williams writes, Foursquare and Gowalla were "quite different in execution," but still shared similarities, with terms like "Check-ins," "Pins," and "Badges."
"We thought Foursquare was crap, and believed the design nerds flocking to Gowalla validated our attitude," Williams writes. "Gowalla also worked anywhere — We were the first to crowd-source a local database from scratch. Foursquare only worked in a dozen cities."
But Foursquare had a few things that Gowalla lacked: an entrepreneur with vast experience in location-based projects, a strong New York following from Crowley's previous social network product called Dodgeball, and a "more accessible and less fussy" product, Williams writes. 
Shortly after launching, Foursquare raised $1.35 million from a bunch of investors, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Union Square Ventures, Digg founder Kevin Rose, and SV Angel. 
At that point, Foursquare started publicizing the number of people checking in every day, which helped them set the bar for measuring success in the check-ins space, Williams writes. 
But that didn't stop Gowalla from moving forward with the launch of new social features, and support for Facebook Connect. The company started to see more growth, and started to catch up to Foursquare in regard to daily check-ins, Williams writes. 
That's when investors and a handful of companies wanting to acquire Gowalla started calling, Williams writes.
"With SXSW right around the corner again, all the discussion centered around the perceived brawl that would go down in Austin," Williams writes. "The “winner” would be measured by check-ins."
Even though Gowalla did well during SXSW, Foursquare still came out victorious. And a couple of months later, Foursquare raised an additional $20 million, which valued the company at more than $100 million. 
Gowalla tried to get its numbers up through marketing deals, and expanding to additional mobile platforms like Android and BlackBerry. But it didn't help, as Foursquare tended to be one step ahead of them in all of those efforts. 
"We were the younger, prettier, but less popular sister of Foursquare," Williams writes. "And even that had changed. In time, Foursquare had dramatically improved the design &amp; experience of it's (sic) service. This was no longer a defensible platform for us as a company."
Facebook eventually acquired Gowalla in December 2011, brought on board members of the Gowalla team, and shut down the platform.
But one could argue that Gowalla actually beat Foursquare, in light of a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/analyst-foursquare-will-fail-by-the-end-of-2013-2013-1">recent PrivCo report</a> saying that Foursquare will fail by the end of the year.

How Foursquare Crushed My Startup In The 'Check-In Wars'

Here are winning candidates from Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam elections 2021

These are the winning candidates in Assam assembly election 2021

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/547c73446da811c25914ab26-690-517/mark-williams-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Williams"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/findmarkwilliams/photos/pb.746463108778471.-2207520000.1417441446./746476852110430/?type=1&amp;theater">Facebook.com/findmarkwilliams</a>Mark Williams has been missing since November 29th</img></div></div></div>Josh Williams, a well known entrepreneur and former co-founder and CEO of location-based checkin service Gowalla's father has gone missing.
Williams sold Gowalla to Facebook in 2011. He worked at Facebook for two years, and is now doing a new company.
According to a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/findmarkwilliams">Facebook page</a> he set up about the search, Mark Williams unexpectedly left his home in Texarkana, Texas on Saturday evening and failed to return.
He is a cancer patient, on medication, and Williams worries he may be disoriented and unaware of his surroundings.
He was driving a 2010 White Toyota Tundra Crew Max truck, Texas license plate DDZ9707. And his phone was located at a truck stop at I-30 and Highway 108 near the Texarkana Airport. Security camera footage indicates that he could have been heading north across state lines.
He's about six feet tall with brown eyes.
Williams worries he could be anywhere in Texas, Arkansas or Louisiana and has desperately been tweeting about the disappearance since yesterday afternoon.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/547c73f7eab8ea945bcdea8e-1200-924/mark-williams-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark williams 2"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/findmarkwilliams/photos/pb.746463108778471.-2207520000.1417440798./746516048773177/?type=1&amp;theater">Facebook.com/findmarkwilliams</a>Josh Williams and his missing father, Mark Williams</img></div></div></div>
He has reached out to authorities who have put out a Silver Alert, a statewide public notification for missing senior citizens, and is also checking with hospitals across Texas. They have asked anyone with any information on Mark's whereabouts to call 682-235-8375. 
In the meantime, members of the tech community have been offering support to Williams on Twitter, trying to keep his spirit up.
Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, <a href="https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/539141842852253696">tweeted</a> that he was sorry to hear the news, and Adam Bain, Global President of Revenue and Partnerships at Twitter, created a free targeted <a href="https://twitter.com/adambain/status/539225302392905728">ad campaign</a> on Twitter to help get the word out.
Facebook also promoted Williams' Facebook post and has been <a href="https://twitter.com/facebookdesign/status/539180221766053890">tweeting</a> about the disappearance from their corporate Facebook design department handle. Williams worked as a product manager at Facebook from 2012 to mid-2013. 
"There's been a lot of angst in Silicon Valley about the tech community lately, but you all have been champs today. Thank you," Williams <a href="https://twitter.com/jw/status/539226651293278208">tweeted</a> last night.

Former Facebook Employee's Father Has Gone Missing

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d519d9e3e0b7b04765174f3-1171/screen shot 2019-08-08 at 25305 pm.png" border="0" alt="Foursquare president David Shim" data-mce-source="Foursquare" data-mce-caption="Foursquare president David Shim" />FoursquareFoursquare president David Shim</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>David Shim sold his location-based measurement firm, Placed, to Foursquare in May with the goal of becoming a one-stop shop for advertisers' location data.</li><li>Shim talked to Business Insider about building the eight-year-old firm and having it acquired twice: Prior to selling the firm to Foursquare, he sold it to Snap for $135 million in 2017.</li><li>Shim credits Placed's focus on measurement and a "conservative" approach to <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> in helping his company weather a tough market for ad-tech companies as regulation and privacy concerns grow.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary">Click here for more BI Prime stories</a>.</li></ul>David Shim didn't want to work in advertising when he founded his measurement startup, but the firm has been acquired by two companies that are betting big on location-based ads.In May, Foursquare acquired Placed, Shim's location-based measurement firm, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/foursquares-acquisition-of-placed-will-shake-up-location-based-advertising">as part of a $150 million round of funding</a> led by The Raine Group. Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-president-david-shim-explains-2019-pitch-deck-2019-8">We got the pitch deck Foursquare is using to sell advertisers location data - even as regulation and privacy concerns mount</a>The Foursquare acquisition is the second time Shim has sold his eight-year-old firm. In 2017, Snap acquired Placed for $135 million to help advertisers with attribution, a metric that tracks ad exposure with real-world purchases and foot traffic.In January, Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck approached Snap to see if it would be interested in selling Placed. Snap had acquired Placed when it didn't have a self-serve advertising platform or its own first-party location data. According to Shim, Snap wasn't looking to sell Placed but asked if Shim would be interested in meeting with Glueck."They were transparent and [said], 'someone reached out - do you want to have this conversation?'" Shim said. From there, Shim said it became clear that Foursquare could help Placed grow more and become part of Foursquare's tech stack for marketers. "That got me really excited to say, 'If Placed were a company that was only focused on location data, where would I go?" he said. "The answer was Foursquare."Snap facilitated further talks between Foursquare and Placed from January until the acquisition closed in June.Shim is now Foursquare's president and is working on pitching advertisers on the combined company and its goal of being a one-stop shop to power all of a marketer's location data.<h2>Shim stayed focused on solving measurement</h2>According to Shim, Placed's single focus on solving the complex metric of attribution helped Placed weather <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/location-based-ads-killed-by-confusing-tech-gdpr-shifting-consumers-2018-9">the tough market</a> of location tech firms that have struggled to stay profitable or pivoted their business into other areas."I want to build what web analytics did for the digital world for the physical world," Shim said.39-year-old Shim founded Placed in 2011 after working in product and operation roles at Quantcast. At the time, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-sales-by-year-2016-4">sales of iPhones were gaining</a> traction and he saw an opportunity to build a data business that used phones' built-in location features to understand consumer behavior.One of his biggest challenges early on was convincing investors that people would be willing to give their permission to have their location tracked. Plus, a number of check-in apps <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-gowalla-3-million-shares-2011-12">like Gowalla,</a> Foursquare, Google, and Facebook Places were already popular with consumers, and he didn't want to build another similar service.So he built an app called Checkin King that allowed consumers to check-in to all of the services at the same time to aggregate all of the data together."I dove into a space where I thought there was no incumbent, there was no market at all," Shim said. "My biggest problem back in 2011 when I was raising funding was people were like 'people will never give you location data on an opt-in basis.'"Shim then spent 18 months building out Placed's technology that used the data collected by the app to track the whereabouts of people who agreed to share their location without requiring consumers to check-in to locations.By 2013, the firm had started working with retailers to find foot-traffic patterns around <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/placed-location-based-targeting-2013-10">big shopping days</a> like Black Friday.But selling location data during slower shopping times of the year was tough. Shim said the sales cycle for location data ended up taking six to nine months and was typically based on specific campaigns that retailers were running as opposed to year-long deals."I was a little bit too ahead of the curve at the time because people didn't have use cases," Shim said. "I didn't want to go into advertising - I wanted to stay pure-play analytics."In fact, Placed didn't hire a salesperson for the first two years. After a little nudging from investors and interest from advertisers, Placed started working with publishers and ad networks like Pandora and Millennial Media to measure the impact of advertising campaigns."I thought I had this organic demand, but I should have probably put more fuel on the fire - we were more conservative," he said.<h2>Snap insulated Placed from ad-tech disruption</h2>Shim said he didn't consider selling the company until he received an offer from Snap in 2017. But as the ad-tech industry got more crowded, it got harder for firms to differentiate themselves, and Snap allowed Placed to be "incubated outside of the ad-tech ecosystem," Shim said.Placed raised $13.4 million before being acquired by Snap in 2017."If you look at the location space, there's been a lot of turbulence - you've seen a lot of people fall off," Shim said. "These companies are shrinking because the market doesn't want to fund some of these companies."When Foursquare's Glueck approached Snap to see if it would be interested in selling Placed in January, Shim knew Glueck from working in the industry as a competitor. The two had met up for lunch in 2016 to talk about a possible merger that didn't work out.Shim met with Glueck and Gary Little from The Raine Group (who is also a board member for Foursquare) to talk about the long-term plan for Foursquare and its $150 million round of funding.Shim also personally invested "seven figures" into Foursquare, though he declined to say the exact amount that he invested."It wasn't just Foursquare wanting to buy Placed for the name or customer list," he said. "[It was about] being the single platform for location." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cmos-how-brands-should-participate-in-social-political-issues-2019-8">Brands can no longer stay away from social and political issues. We asked some of the biggest names in the industry how to do it right.</a></h3> <div> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/Y5cUI1T6-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script> </div> </div>

A founder talks about selling his location-measurement startup to Snap then Foursquare, and how he survived the tough ad-tech climate

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6370255" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Scott-Belsky">Scott Belsky</keyword> is the chief product officer of <keyword id="99699" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Adobe">Adobe</keyword> and founder of Behance, Adobe's social media platform. He's an early investor and product advisor for top <keyword id="6362513" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="startups">startups</keyword> including Pinterest, Uber, Carta, and Airtable.</li><li>As 2020 comes to a close, Belsky predicts eight major trends to emerge in the <keyword id="6358815" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="tech">tech</keyword> industry in the near future.</li><li>He says talent will increasingly own their audiences through apps like YouTube, TikTok, and Patreon, and that systems and apps supporting creativity will be emphasized over productivity tools.</li><li>Belsky also says an era of "eduployment" will emerge, integrating the process of choosing a trade, getting an education, finding a job, or starting a company.</li></ul>As we pull ourselves out of the ditch that was 2020, there are a few major themes of the future I'm particularly excited about. I'm sharing them as a way to connect more dots, meet more founders, and solicit input to further develop these ideas.No surprise, some of the companies I mention within these trends I know personally, but I have challenged myself to share ideas still on the cusp of breakout rather than the obvious trends and winners. Here they are.<h2>1. The notion of "decentralized" is spreading to unexpected places. </h2>Yes, Bitcoin and blockchain-powered solutions are all the rage these days, and one side-effect is ideas for how other aspects of work and life can be decentralized. For example, Ben Rubin's <a href="https://slashtalk.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">/Talk</a> is developing ways to decentralize how teams work (it turns out the very notion of "meetings" may be an archaic and wasteful vestige of centralized workplaces).The team at <a href="https://www.usebraintrust.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Braintrust</a> is using both the principles and technology of blockchain to build a user-controlled talent network. Rather than take any fees or percentage of the participating talent's income, Braintrust gains value alongside other participants via tokens that become more valuable as the network grows.The team at <a href="https://www.getcashdrop.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CashDrop</a> has built a way for anyone (from a taco stand owner to an apparel designer) to build a storefront without relying on a traditional marketplace that charges commissions or fees. Taking a step back, the traditional model of central owners of community-powered utilities (marketplaces, app stores, etc.) taking a percent of everything (and central "bosses" for huge teams insisting on reviewing and approving everything) may finally be getting old.<h2>2. Behold the era of "eduployment:" The process of identifying a trade, getting an education, and getting a job (or starting a company) will become fully integrated.</h2>Take <a href="https://nanahome.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nana</a> for instance, a company that will train you in appliance repair (think unique brands of dishwashers, etc), and then set you up in a marketplace to start getting jobs in your local area fueled by leads from the manufacturers of these appliances. Or take <a href="https://www.getmainstreet.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Main Street</a>, who will train you as a painter, outfit you with everything you need, and set you up to be a successful business out of the gate within 30 days  -  essentially turning you into a franchise.Rather than enduring an expensive education only to assume the complete risk of your career, this new eduployment model, as I've come to call it, gives everyone skin in the game. The vertical integration of education and employment is upon us, and I think this trend will help address (at-scale) major systematic issues in our economy at scale while also minting a ton of new small businesses.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-disrupting-higher-education-college-grad-school-remote-learning-2020-12">No more student debt: 64 apps and startups aiming to replace the university experience</a><h2>3. A few seemingly quirky social apps will tune into the under 16 demographic's distinct approach to creation as a form of self-expression and tolerance for transparency by default.</h2>I'm seeing more entrepreneurs starting social apps now than in years past, and they're no longer building off of Facebook's graph or emulating existing products with slight iterations. Nope, these are (finally) wildly new and original ideas. One of my favorites, under the radar but experiencing rapid growth, is <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/itsme/id1289087191" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ItsMe</a>. Now approximately #24 in App Store under social networking, ItsMe connects you with others based on your mood, it make you create your own appearance, and allows you to communicate with text, voice, audio, or drawing among other forms. And there are a few other new social models brewing that I am quite excited about.What do these next gen social platforms share? They combine ephemeral sharing with lasting reputation building, they lean towards default transparency and with a more liberal interpretation of "privacy," and they have fewer creative constraints and are geared to reward those with the most creative self-expression.In the category of social, I am also quite excited about the rebirth of <a href="https://go.gowalla.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gowalla</a> as a wild social game still a bit under wraps that will take place in the real world, and <a href="http://public.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Public</a>, a social network for public market investing. Suffice to say, the future of social is exciting and, contrary to popular belief, will not be constrained to today's dominant social networks.<h2>4. Talent will increasingly own their audience, with the rise of "channels of one" and community-as-a-service.</h2>Gone are the days when super talented people needed to sign a contract with a TV network to break through. But the ad-supported and algorithmically-driven alternatives, like YouTube and TikTok, still have the upper hand with talent. The pursuit to "own your own audience" will be a macro trend over the coming years.Equivalents to Substack (where you build and monetize your own email list) will emerge in video, communities, and other ways to build, manage, and monetize your audience. Some early breakouts like OnlyFans and Patreon give us a sense of what is possible.I am especially enthusiastic about products like <a href="https://circle.so/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Circle</a> and <a href="https://www.genevachat.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Geneva</a> that power fully-fledged community functionality for brands and individuals. If you're a content creator of any kind, you can now spin up a community to gather your audience and spawn all sorts of offshoot services to delight (and monetize) your base.In such a world, the Instagram and YouTube type products simply serve as top-of-funnel marketing initiatives. The goal becomes simple converting everyone you reach on other platforms to your own privately owned and managed channel. We will see a massive acceleration of this trend in the years ahead.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apps-services-companies-loneliness-economy-spike-interest-2020-12">The loneliness economy: Companies and entrepreneurs see a spike in interest for rent-a-friend services, chatbots, and online communities that target feelings of isolation</a><h2>5. More and more niche functions of enterprise will become multi-player, powered by a next generation of highly specialized, AI-bolstered, enterprise companies with consumerized product experiences.</h2>From procurement and security to financial planning and design, functions of a company that were once siloed to particular teams are being transformed by SaaS tools that are collaborative-by default, easier to use, and inclusive of stakeholders across the company. Those of you who co-invest with me know my obsession with this space.From companies like <a href="https://www.globality.com/en-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Globality</a> for procurement, <a href="https://www.sora.co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sora</a> for HR interactions, <a href="https://www.meter.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Meter</a> for WiFi and IT, <a href="https://www.heywelcome.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Welcome</a> for hiring, closing, and onboarding new employees, there are many approaches and the list goes on. These types of products will fundamentally change how big companies operate across functions while transforming the quality of life for employees.To help fuel this transformation, <a href="https://workos.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WorkOS</a> is building enterprise-readiness as a service, enabling new companies to start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code, with the value proposition "Single Sign-On (SSO) to your app in minutes." And <a href="https://about.scarf.sh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Scarf</a> is building tools for open source developers to service and monetize enterprise customers. So, lots of energy in this space up and down the stack. One side consequence of all this: increasingly crowded and outdated customer acquisition channels for enterprise SaaS. This is also a problem/opportunity to solve.<h2>6. Creativity tools will be deployed across the enterprise, much like productivity tools were deployed in previous decades.</h2>Until the age of <keyword id="6355999" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ai">AI</keyword>, being more productive was the best way to stand out at work. But now, as bots and algorithms supplant mundane and repetitive labor in the workplace, the benefits of human labor will shift to the skills and capabilities that are uniquely human. Chief among them: creativity.Think compelling ways to visualize data, better ways to share a narrative with your coworkers, attractive graphics to spice up every presentation, and powerful prototypes that are worth a hundred meetings. These capabilities will drive outperformance at work (and in school, and on social) in the coming decades, and everyone must be outfitted to make it happen.Obviously, this is a major focus in my day job as chief product officer for my creative teams at Adobe. We see this massive broadening of the market divided into two types of personas: content-first creators and collaboration-first creators. The former wants to be start with something  -  an image, a video or a graphic  -  and remix or deconstruct. The latter starts by bringing together a group of people and leveraging a shared assets (<a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2020/10/20/your-creative-system-starts-with-creative-cloud.html#gs.o4igz9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">we've been gradually turning Creative Cloud into a "creative system" of sorts for this very purpose</a>). Of course, this need requires new types of tools on modern platforms like the web. Adobe, along with a whole ecosystem of new apps, are working to make this happen.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oura-ring-tech-execs-investors-changed-routines-track-sleep-better-2020-12">Sleep-tracking ring Oura is beloved by some of the biggest names in tech. We asked 7 investors and execs how it's helped them revamp their routines to sleep better and live healthier.</a><h2>7. New and disruptive interfaces will emerge that aggregate and connect the underlying services we use to live and work.</h2>This is certainly not a new trend, and I've been writing about the <a href="https://medium.com/positiveslope/the-interface-layer-when-design-commoditizes-tech-e7017872173a" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">"interface layers"</a> and the <a href="https://medium.com/positiveslope/disruptive-interfaces-the-emerging-battle-to-be-the-default-23a6485a6f29" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">"battle to be the default"</a> since 2014. But the explosion of SaaS offerings for everyday work (enterprise trend noted above) and life is setting the stage for a new problem and opportunity: How do we stitch it all together?Consider the digital spaces in which we spend our days  -  the "home" page of our favorite apps, the finder on our desktops, the home screens of our phones. We're creating different kinds of documents, files, folders, and teams all over the place. We have specialized apps for everything and must manage permissions in so many places. All of these various cloud documents and services have different schemas and don't interact with one another  -  it's a mess.Some companies are rising to the occasion, including <a href="https://getcommande.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Command E</a> (an easy keyboard shortcut to open any document, contact, file or record from the cloud) and another early stage stealth company I am excited about. No doubt, all of these underlying services and resources WILL be stitched together, and whoever does the stitching will control the interface where we actually live, work, and make decisions.<h2>8. Another round of the Roaring '20s is ahead of us, where the pent-up desires from the pandemic will be unleashed in the form of fashion, travel, and culture-bending creative self-expression.</h2>My family and I endured a good chunk of the pandemic with our neighbor and dear friend Jenn Hyman, cofounder and CEO of <a href="https://www.renttherunway.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RentTheRunway</a>, and her family. Needless to say, the stay-at-home world made for a very difficult year for Jenn's team. But now, with a light at the end of the tunnel, Jenn has a new energy. She believes that post-pandemic fashion will have more fun and edge than ever before.I agree, and imagine our vaccinated selves fervently jumping back into the world through travel, fashion, parties, concerts, and meeting new people. (After all, the last century's Roaring '20s also followed a pandemic, the 1918 Spanish Flu.) Our desire to fill the cultural void that has accumulated in us will result in a form of overcompensation that will make for an epic decade ahead (yes, I'm a relentless optimist).Like all of you, I am eager to move past the challenges of 2020. I'm hopeful that we emerge <a href="https://medium.com/positiveslope/the-great-refactoring-how-crisis-unlocks-productivity-94344082f0dd" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more productive from the "great refactoring"</a> we all endured, and that we can all reclaim the ~30% of cognitive load that has been consumed by politics, gaslighting, and a seemingly never-ending stream of things to worry about. With our newfound peace and capacity, may we all dream and build in equal parts!<a href="http://digest.scottbelsky.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sign up for his newsletter of insights.</a> Follow him <a href="http://twitter.com/scottbelsky" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter.</a>Scott Belsky is the founder of Behance, which was acquired by Adobe, where he now serves as Chief Product Officer and EVP for Creative Cloud. He is an early investor and product advisor for some of this decades top startups, including Pinterest, Uber, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and sweetgreen among others. Get his latest book  "<a href="http://www.themessymiddle.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Messy Middle"</a> or <a href="http://digest.scottbelsky.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sign up for his newsletter.</a> Follow him <a href="http://twitter.com/scottbelsky" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter.</a>

Adobe's chief product officer predicts the 8 biggest tech trends of 2021

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/50d38ae7eab8ea4914000013-688-516/restaurant-friends-cheers.jpg?maxX=400&amp;maxY=300" border="0" alt="restaurant friends cheers" width="400" height="300" /></div>Shutterstock</div><keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword>'s first attempt at a <keyword id="76575" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Foursquare">Foursquare</keyword> killer, Facebook Places, didn't make much of an impression.
But Facebook persisted with building location features into the social network, and is now <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-04/facebook-is-said-to-create-mobile-location-tracking-app.html">preparing a standalone friend-finding mobile app</a>, Bloomberg reports.
The team building the app has come from acquisitions of other location apps, like Glancee and Gowalla, as well as a hire from Google, Peter Deng, according to Bloomberg.
Unlike Foursquare, which requires users to announce their location by checking in at a venue in the app, Facebook's forthcoming app may share location with friends without requiring people to take action.
Apple's Find My Friends app and Google's Latitude app for Android smartphones work similarly, but are crippled by their requirement that users laboriously build their friend lists from scratch.
Highlight, a mobile app made by a startup, Math Camp, integrates with Facebook and has attracted a small following among Silicon Valley insiders. 
Facebook recently added features for finding local businesses to the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-nearby-2012-12">Nearby section of its mobile app</a>. Allowing users to locate friends would complete its location features.
Breaking out location functions into a separate app would also follow a pattern Facebook has set with Facebook Messenger, a messaging app which has proven very popular, and Facebook Camera, a less-popular photo-sharing and -viewing app which has been overshadowed by Facebook's Instagram acquisition.

Facebook Is Taking Another Run At Killing Off Foursquare

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/51e58d14ecad042f34000016-768-576/tim-van-damme-dropbox-facebook.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="tim van damme dropbox facebook" width="480" />Flickr via Luc Van BraekelTim Van Damme, lead Instagram designer, heads to <keyword id="285445" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Dropbox">Dropbox</keyword>.</div></div>Almost exactly one year after its May 2012 IPO, <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> is seeing some of its top talent depart.
It's something that happens to many companies once they reach an exit and employee retention plans fully vest. Unsurprisingly, the talent is heading to smaller, private companies, some which have big-time potential like Facebook did a few years ago.
Yesterday, Business Insider spoke to a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gowalla-founder-josh-williams-is-leaving-facebook-plans-to-pursue-new-project-in-san-francisco-2013-7">Facebook product manager who's on the way out, Josh Williams</a>. The acquired Gowalla founder didn't reveal much about what he'll do next, just that he'll likely be working on a new startup.
Instagram's lead designer, Tim Van Damme, is also leaving Facebook. He's <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130716/instagram-lead-designer-tim-van-damme-headed-to-dropbox/">heading for Dropbox</a>, AllThingsD reports. There he'll join former Facebook designers Soleio Cuervo and Rasmus Andersson.
Today, another Facebook executive also announced his departure. Tom Arrix, <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130716/facebooks-top-u-s-salesman-leaves/">Facebook's head of North American sales, is leaving</a> after seven years. He hasn't announced what he'll do next. There is still a lot of talent at Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg, for example, is still there, although she's been <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=FB+Insider+Transactions">unloading a lot of stock lately.</a>
Tumblr, another tech company with a recent large exit, is finding itself in a similar position. Just weeks after the $1.1 billion Yahoo acquisition Tumblr lost its media director, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblr-creative-director-mark-coatney-quits-2013-6">Mark Coatney and Creative Director Jacob Bijani left shortly before that.</a>

One Year After The IPO, Facebook Talent Is Fleeing To Find The Next Big Thing

<keyword id="1737805" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Social-Media-Insights">Social Media Insights</keyword> is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that collects and delivers the top <keyword id="6354632" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Social-media">social media</keyword> news first thing every morning. You can <a href="http://e.businessinsider.com/517ed0731e240a9c3f6f0929zlj2.2ms/TE8v3-u4vLlm-G7aBc9c4" target="_blank">sign up</a> to receive Social Media Insights <a href="http://e.businessinsider.com/517ed0731e240a9c3f6f0929zlj2.2ms/TE8v3-u4vLlm-G7aC94e9" target="_blank">here</a> or at the bottom of this post. 
<hr />
<a href="http://marketing.linkedin.com/blog/introducing-linkedin-sponsored-updates"><div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="LinkedIn" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51eefbc6ecad047a7c000000-960/bii-mb-blog-520.png"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51eefbc6ecad047a7c000000-520-178/bii-mb-blog-520.png?maxX=400" border="0" alt="BII MB blog 520" width="400" style="float: right;" /></a>LinkedIn</div></div>LinkedIn Launches Sponsored Updates For Brands To Target Any User</a> (<keyword id="28120" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Linkedin">LinkedIn</keyword>) <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> offers Sponsored Posts, Twitter offers Sponsored Tweets, and now LinkedIn will offer Sponsored Updates that will let businesses target any LinkedIn member. Sponsored Updates can be seen on desktop, smartphone, and tablet devices and will appear in the member's homepage feed along with the organic posts from their network and the companies they follow. In this, <a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/07/23/linkedin-continues-to-act-like-a-media-business-its-now-offering-sponsored-content/">LinkedIn is taking a cue from Twitter and Facebook</a>, which have figured out how to monetize their news feeds. <a href="http://marketing.linkedin.com/blog/introducing-linkedin-sponsored-updates">Read &gt;</a>
<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/location-vs-communication/">Is Location-Based Social Media Losing Steam?</a> (TechCrunch) In 2009, location-based social networks such as Gowalla and Foursquare were all the craze. By 2011, investors were pouring money into startups like Color, which raised $41 million, to drive the convergence of mobile and social media. Fast forward to earlier this year, when Google announced plans to retire its location-based service called Latitude in favor of adding a check-in feature on Google+. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram now allow users to tag a location with their posts. Are FourSquare's best days behind it? Will proximity-based social networking ever take-off, or will it simply be a feature on major social platforms? <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/location-vs-communication/">Read &gt;</a>
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-as-a-social-marketing-platform-2013-7">LinkedIn As A Social Marketing Platform: From Sponsored InMail To Sponsored Posts</a> (BI Intelligence) In a <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-linkedin-for-marketing-and-sales-2013-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=LI2&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">new report</a> from <a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-linkedin-for-marketing-and-sales-2013-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=LI2&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">BI Intelligence</a><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-state-of-social-commerce-2013-5?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=SC&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIMobile">,</a> we analyze how Linkedin could aid in sales efforts and expand your list of leads, telling you what you need to know about InMail. We also look at Sponsored InMail and a case study of its performance, and examine how you can use Linkedin as a marketing platform, breaking down the various ad products on the platform and the other techniques you can use as well. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-as-a-social-marketing-platform-2013-7">Read &gt;</a>
<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51eefaa9eab8eadc2b00000b-490-368/bii-linkedin-salespeople-1-1-1.png" border="0" alt="bii linkedin salespeople 1 1" width="400" />BI Intelligence</div></div>
<a href="http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5028">LinkedIn Signal Will No Longer Be Available</a> (LinkedIn) LinkedIn Signal, which allows users to search for updates and access saved searches, will be shut down on July 29. Although the product is being retired after two years, LinkedIn has incorporated some of its features into user feeds and search along the way. <a href="http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5028">Read &gt;</a>
<a href="http://theacsi.org/acsi-results/acsi-benchmarks-july">Americans Becoming Dissatisfied With Social Media Services</a> (ACSI) The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) rated how satisfied people are with major social media platforms. Overall, satisfaction declined slightly, driven largely by Google+'s 7-point decline from the previous year. <a href="http://theacsi.org/acsi-results/acsi-benchmarks-july">Read &gt;</a>
<a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130723/nyt-reporters-upcoming-twitter-book-hints-at-a-founding-tale-of-palace-intrigue/">Report: Twitter Will File IPO By End Of Year</a> (AllThingsD) AllThingsD reports that Twitter will likely file S-1 papers with the SEC for an IPO by the end of this year. <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130723/nyt-reporters-upcoming-twitter-book-hints-at-a-founding-tale-of-palace-intrigue/">Read &gt;</a>

LinkedIn Launches In-Feed Sponsored Ads, Aims To Compete With Facebook And Twitter

<div class="image-container" style="width:620px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51278b1a6bb3f73e05000018-668-334/google-chromebook-pixel-6.png?maxX=620" border="0" alt="google chromebook pixel" width="620" /></div><a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.html">Google</a></div>Uh oh.
One of the world's biggest <keyword id="6354427" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apple">Apple</keyword> fanboys sounds like he might be deserting the company for another.
There are lots of Apple-lovers on the Internet, but few of them are as ardent as MG Siegler, the former TechCrunch staffer who is now a full time VC and part-time columnist.
Siegler once wrote a post for TechCrunch titled: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/fanboy/">"You're Damn Right I'm A Fanboy."</a>
In the post, Siegler said that he was, at the moment, an Apple fanboy.
But he said that could change.
I’ve been an Apple fanboy, a <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> fanboy, a Twitter fanboy, a Facebook fanboy, a Foursquare fanboy, a Gowalla fanboy, and yes, even a Microsoft fanboy…As always, my only requirement for being a fanboy of a product is that it has to (in my mind) be the best. Right now, in some cases those are Apple products.
But that’s the funny thing about being a fanboy — you can be a fanboy of anything. You can switch your alliances at a moments notice. There is nothing tying you to the love of a certain product. As I’ve <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/09/the-case-against-apple-is-just-as-much-a-case-for-apple/">written numerous times</a> before, in the 1990s I would have been called a Microsoft fanboy — I loved Microsoft products and hated Apple ones. Today, I’m called an Apple fanboy. Times change. And they’ll change again.
Well, late last night (not so late on the West Coast, where MG is based), Siegler began to make noises on Twitter that indicate he might be about to change his allegiances.
His new love might be Google.
His inspiration: Google's new touchscreen laptop, The <keyword id="576817" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="PIXEL">Pixel</keyword>, which launched yesterday.
The Pixel, which runs Google's Chrome OS, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-pixel-vs-macbook-air-2013-2#">is a rival to Apple's MacBook Air. </a>
It costs ~$1300 and has the best, brightest screen of any laptop in the world. It doesn't run any Mac or PC apps, though. Just Web stuff. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chromebook-pixel-photos-2013-2">See big beautiful pictures of it here</a>.)
Here is what Siegler had to say about it in a series of tweets:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I mean, there's no way around it: price aside, the Chromebook Pixel is pretty amazing.
— MG Siegler (@parislemon) <a href="https://twitter.com/parislemon/status/304853263667310592">February 22, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Yeah, this thing is a winner. No real qualifiers needed. People will balk at the price but the screen is amazing. A couple body quibbles.
— MG Siegler (@parislemon) <a href="https://twitter.com/parislemon/status/304856745321316352">February 22, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script>
Siegler even responded to a challenging question from another gadget writer, Wirecutter's Brian Lam, who wrote:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
@<a href="https://twitter.com/parislemon">parislemon</a> are you sure you’re not thinking theoretical/future vs right now?
— brian lam (@blam) <a href="https://twitter.com/blam/status/304860229080858624">February 22, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
@<a href="https://twitter.com/blam">blam</a> I mean I'm 30 mins in but yeah, it's just a really solid laptop. fast as fuck for the web. great screen. touch fun but we'll see.
— MG Siegler (@parislemon) <a href="https://twitter.com/parislemon/status/304860852950020096">February 22, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script>
Siegler is very vocal about still loving all of his Apple products. He tweets about his iPad, iPhone, and Macbooks all the time.
But he's clearly impressed with Google right now. 
You have to wonder if he's a canary in the coal mine for Apple.
Google is one step away from becoming the world's most innovative, exciting company. It's working on Google Glass, self-driving cars, and now getting into hardware. 
The next step is wide consumer adoption of those technologies.
It's a big step. One that Apple has taken, obviously.
One of the Internet's other big Apple bloggers echoed this thought in his reaction to the Pixel.
<a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/02/21/chromebook-pixel">John Gruber said</a>: "$1299 for a laptop that only runs Chrome, with <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/21/4013932/chromebook-pixel-hands-on-video-and-impressions">janky touchscreen scrolling</a>. Great idea. I bet it outsells the Nexus Q."
The Nexus Q was Google's most recent attempt at selling a set-top box for TV. It was revealed with much fanfare last summer – but it was quickly discontinued after very few sales.

Apple Fanboy: I Love Google's Laptop

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/4e610614eab8ea637000002c-450-337/arringtonhuffingtonconway.jpg" border="0" alt="arrington huffington conway">Michael Arrington (left) actually made more money on his $30 million exit than Arianna Huffington (center) did on her $315 million exit.</img></div></div></div>
It sounds impressive when a founder sells a startup for tens of millions of dollars.
But it sounds really impressive when a company sells it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
As a founder, which option is better? For many, a smaller exit should be the desired outcome.
The short reason: lower-valued startups take less time to scale and less venture capital to fuel, which means founders will likely own higher percentages of their companies when they sell.
There are also fewer acquirers as the price of your company increases. And when an acquirer does come along, there's more due diligence which means sealing the deal can take much more time.
Unless you have a hot company like Instagram. Then you can forget all of that and close a billion-dollar acquisition in 48 hours. 
Let's look at some examples.
<ul>
<li>Bleacher Report sold to Turner for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/turner-is-close-to-buying-bleacher-report-for-200-million-2012-6">a little more than $200 million</a> five years after it was founded. But between four founders and more than $40 million raised, each was diluted to 5-10% stakes. That means <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bleacher-report-founder-im-starting-another-company-2013-3">each founder</a> walked away with about $10 million after the sale.</li>
<li>Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti also sold their startup, The Huffington Post, to AOL six years after it was founded. Their price was a lofty $315 million. Each owned different percentages, with Ken Lerer earning significantly more than Huffington. Huffington reportedly owned less than 14% of the company and took home an estimated $18 million.</li>
<li>But look! <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/its-official-aol-acquires-techcrunch-2010-9">Michael Arrington sold TechCrunch to AOL</a> for about $30 million five years after he founded it. He reportedly owned 80% of the company when he sold it because he never raised any venture capital. That means he took home about $24 million before taxes - more than Arianna Huffington.</li>
<li>For a non-media example, there's ThinkNear, a TechStars company founded by Eli Portnoy. It <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/techstars-biggest-exit-yet-thinknear-gets-acquired-for-225-million-2012-10">sold to Scout Advertising for $22.5 million</a> 18 months after its launch. It had raised $1.63 million. At the time of its acquisition, it had a Series A term sheet for $4 million. If ThinkNear had turned down the acquisition and taken the Series A investment, Portnoy says his share of the company would have been diluted an additional 25-30%.</li>
<li>Jeff Richards, who is now an investor at GGV Capital, tried both kinds of companies. Early in his entrepreneurial career, he founded a company that was valued at $250 million but Richards says he walked away with nothing. In 2003 he started another company, R4. Two years later he sold it to VeriSign for less than $20 million. That time, Richards says both the founders and investors were "thrilled" with the outcome. </li>
</ul>
So who would you rather be, a Portnoy and an Arrington? Or a Huffington? All made roughly the same amount of cash but for Portnoy and Richards, the smaller exits took significantly less time.
The decision to go big or stay small is one entrepreneurs shouldn't take lightly.
Arrington says he nearly accepted VC money for TechCrunch four times. He initially didn't raise money because it wasn't an option. In 2005 investors were less willing to write checks. 
"When I started my first company, Achex, we raised $18 million in venture capital in 2000 from DFJ," Arrington wrote to Business Insider in an email. "The company later sold for $32 million, but due to a 2x liquidity preference (common in those days), the founders essentially got nothing, just a few hundred thousand dollars to not block the deal."
Arrington says he raised so much then because it was nearly impossible to build that kind of business without a lot of capital. "These were the days when you had to buy Oracle database stuff, and there were no easy hosting options like Amazon and Google offer...Today, most startups don't have multi-million dollar infrastructure costs just to get the service launched. So there is less need for capital to get to market."
Raising a lot of money at a high valuation has its benefits. It can mean overtaking competitors, which are prevalent in early stages (GroupMe had to battle Fast Society before selling to Skype, Foursquare had to beat Gowalla, etc). It can also make a difference in hiring. 
It's easier to attract engineers and other talent when you have brand-name investors tied to your business and you can offer attractive salaries. Arrington recalls his difficulty luring his business partner, Heather Harde, away from News Corp where he says she was making $1 million. All he could offer was a $150,000 base and stock options. 
Arrington sometimes wonders how much further he could have taken TechCrunch had he taken funding. "I often wonder if we could have grown faster, expanded in other ways, if we had raised money and were less frugal," he wrote. 
For Portnoy, the pros of staying small and selling early outweighed the risk of raising a lot.
Portnoy had a family to support and no nest of cash to fall back on. An acquisition would make his financial situation much more comfortable. In addition, one of his board members had run a company that took a lot of funding and eventually went public. Even though that board member's company had an exit 30 times larger than Portnoy's, he ended up with about the same amount of cash.
Lastly, Portnoy knew most entrepreneurs only get one shot at a startup. If they fail, it's the end of the road. But if they're able to get an exit under their belts quickly, more opportunities present themselves later. Investors are eager to back founders who have successful track records. And obtaining personal wealth means a different, sometimes bigger mindset the next time around.
It's important to note that while smaller exits may benefit entrepreneurs, it doesn't always benefit investors.
"As a VC, I am now investing in companies shooting for outcomes &gt;$200M, but it's not the right model for every entrepreneur or every company," Richards says. 
Arrington, another entrepreneur turned investor, referred to a startup his firm CrunchFund backed that sold early against investors' wishes.
(Side note: When an investor's and entrepreneur's exit plans don't align, investors occasionally offer to let founders take money off the table. Then, even if they go for a big exit and the company fails, the founders have a financial cushion. Snapchat's founders just did that; <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchats-founders-pocket-10-million-in-addition-to-the-60-million-round-2013-6">each was given $10 million</a> in addition to the $60 million their startup raised.)
Although Arrington doesn't see himself founding another company, he says he'd always opt to raise as little money as possible. "In general I'd only raise venture capital if I absolutely had to. I'd raise it opportunistically based on market conditions to take as little dilution as possible. And I'd spend that VC money the same way I spend my own money in business - extremely frugally," he said. 
Jonah Peretti, who co-founded The Huffington Post and now runs another high-valued company BuzzFeed, offers different advice.
"My advice is you shouldn't do a startup for financial reasons," he wrote via email. "Most startups fail and there are easier ways to make money with less risk...And if a company is successful, which is very hard to achieve, the money comes whether you build a fat company or a lean one. Mike [Arrington] and Arianna [Huffington] both did great financially. So did Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom. How many yachts can you water ski behind?"

Why Selling A Startup For $20 Million Can Be Better Than Selling It For $200 Million

<div class="image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4e610614eab8ea637000002c-450-337/arringtonhuffingtonconway.jpg" border="0" alt="arrington huffington conway" /><keyword id="475179" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Michael-Arrington">Michael Arrington</keyword> (left) actually made more money on his $30 million exit than Arianna Huffington (center) did on her $315 million exit.</div></div></div>It sounds impressive when a founder sells a startup for tens of millions of dollars.
But it sounds really impressive when a company sells it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
As a founder, which option is better? For many, a smaller exit should be the desired outcome.
The short reason: lower-valued <keyword id="6362513" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Startups">startups</keyword> take less time to scale and less <keyword id="6357097" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="venture-capital">venture capital</keyword> to fuel which means founders will likely own higher percentages of their companies when they sell.
There are also fewer acquirers as the price of your company increases. And when an acquirer does come along, there's more due diligence which means sealing the deal can take much more time.
Unless you have a hot company like Instagram. Then you can forget all of that and close a billion-dollar <keyword id="30334" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="acquisition">acquisition</keyword> in 48 hours. 
Let's look at some examples.
<ul>
<li>Bleacher Report sold to Turner for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/turner-is-close-to-buying-bleacher-report-for-200-million-2012-6">a little more than $200 million</a> five years after it was founded. But between four founders and more than $40 million raised, each was diluted to 5-10% stakes. That means <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bleacher-report-founder-im-starting-another-company-2013-3">each founder</a> walked away with about $10 million after the sale.</li>
<li>Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti also sold their startup, The Huffington Post, to AOL six years after it was founded. Their price was a lofty $315 million. Each owned different percentages, with Ken Lerer earning significantly more than Huffington. Huffington reportedly owned less than 14% of the company and took home an estimated $18 million.</li>
<li>But look! <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/its-official-aol-acquires-techcrunch-2010-9">Michael Arrington sold TechCrunch to AOL</a> for about $30 million five years after he founded it. He reportedly owned 80% of the company when he sold it because he never raised any venture capital. That means he took home about $24 million before taxes – more than Arianna Huffington.</li>
<li>For a non-media example, there's ThinkNear, a TechStars company founded by Eli Portnoy. It <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/techstars-biggest-exit-yet-thinknear-gets-acquired-for-225-million-2012-10">sold to Scout Advertising for $22.5 million</a> 18 months after its launch. It had raised $1.63 million. At the time of its acquisition, it had a Series A term sheet for $4 million. If ThinkNear had turned down the acquisition and taken the Series A investment, Portnoy says his share of the company would have been diluted an additional 25-30%.</li>
<li>Jeff Richards, who is now an investor at GGV Capital, tried both kinds of companies. Early in his entrepreneurial career, he founded a company that was valued at $250 million but Richards says he walked away with nothing. In 2003 he started another company, R4. Two years later he sold it to VeriSign for less than $20 million. That time, Richards says both the founders and investors were "thrilled" with the outcome. </li>
</ul>
So who would you rather be, a Portnoy and an Arrington? Or a Huffington? All made roughly the same amount of cash but for Portnoy and Richards, the smaller exits took significantly less time.
The decision to go big or stay small is one entrepreneurs shouldn't take lightly.
Arrington says he nearly accepted VC money for TechCrunch four times. He initially didn't raise money because it wasn't an option. In 2005 investors were less willing to write checks. 
"When I started my first company, Achex, we raised $18 million in venture capital in 2000 from DFJ," Arrington wrote to Business Insider in an email. "The company later sold for $32 million, but due to a 2x liquidity preference (common in those days), the founders essentially got nothing, just a few hundred thousand dollars to not block the deal."
Arrington says he raised so much then because it was nearly impossible to build that kind of business without a lot of capital. "These were the days when you had to buy Oracle database stuff, and there were no easy hosting options like Amazon and Google offer...Today, most startups don't have multi-million dollar infrastructure costs just to get the service launched. So there is less need for capital to get to market."
Raising a lot of money at a high valuation has its benefits. It can mean overtaking competitors, which are prevalent in early stages (GroupMe had to battle Fast Society before selling to Skype, Foursquare had to beat Gowalla, etc). It can also make a difference in hiring. 
It's easier to attract engineers and other talent when you have brand-name investors tied to your business and you can offer attractive salaries. Arrington recalls his difficulty luring his business partner, Heather Harde, away from News Corp where he says she was making $1 million. All he could offer was a $150,000 base and stock options. 
Arrington sometimes wonders how much further he could have taken TechCrunch had he taken <keyword id="6357455" type="EVENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Funding">funding</keyword>. "I often wonder if we could have grown faster, expanded in other ways, if we had raised money and were less frugal," he wrote. 
For Portnoy, the pros of staying small and selling early outweighed the risk of raising a lot.
Portnoy had a family to support and no nest of cash to fall back on. An acquisition would make his financial situation much more comfortable. In addition, one of his board members had run a company that took a lot of funding and eventually went public. Even though that board member's company had an exit 30 times larger than Portnoy's, he ended up with about the same amount of cash.
Lastly, Portnoy knew most entrepreneurs only get one shot at a startup. If they fail, it's the end of the road. But if they're able to get an exit under their belts quickly, more opportunities present themselves later. Investors are eager to back founders who have successful track records. And obtaining personal wealth means a different, sometimes bigger mindset the next time around.
It's important to note that while smaller exits may benefit entrepreneurs, it doesn't always benefit investors.
"As a VC, I am now investing in companies shooting for outcomes &gt;$200M, but it’s not the right model for every entrepreneur or every company," Richards says. 
Arrington, another entrepreneur turned investor, referred to a startup his firm CrunchFund backed that sold early against investors' wishes.
(Side note: When an investor's and entrepreneur's exit plans don't align, investors occasionally offer to let founders take money off the table. Then, even if they go for a big exit and the company fails, the founders have a financial cushion. Snapchat's founders just did that; <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchats-founders-pocket-10-million-in-addition-to-the-60-million-round-2013-6">each was given $10 million</a> in addition to the $60 million their startup raised.)
Although Arrington doesn't see himself founding another company, he says he'd always opt to raise as little money as possible. "In general I'd only raise venture capital if I absolutely had to. I'd raise it opportunistically based on market conditions to take as little dilution as possible. And I'd spend that VC money the same way I spend my own money in business - extremely frugally," he said. 
Jonah Peretti, who co-founded The Huffington Post and now runs another high-valued company BuzzFeed, offers different advice.
"My advice is you shouldn't do a startup for financial reasons," he wrote via email. "Most startups fail and there are easier ways to make money with less risk...And if a company is successful, which is very hard to achieve, the money comes whether you build a fat company or a lean one. Mike [Arrington] and Arianna [Huffington] both did great financially. So did Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom. How many yachts can you water ski behind?"

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