A lister wants equity, B lister gets cash
I have been thinking about this for a while. I have two kinds of entrepreneurial friends in real life, the first type is dreamer, or I call them A-lister: they have an idea, or a killer technology, they work really hard and set the goal very high, they get the venture money, often from the best VC in the valley, however it’s not uncommon to not having a penny in income, or not profitable at all. But in the case of sale (being acquired by a larger company), they will get boat load of equity ready to cash out.
The 2nd type of entrepreneur is practical type, or B-lister, similar to the ex you broke up with, not romantic enough. Many of them have their own online ad agencies, some sort of ad networks, marketplaces, and are making CASH left and right, some even get acquired – notice they are in general not good candidates for acquisition due to lack of technology, low entry barrier. The success often comes with the relentless pursuit of founder. And it goes quickly with them as well. I saw many of them before.
Thinking of twitter app founders, I can’t help separating them into these two types. Although the scale may not be as big, trazzler and twazzup are more like the dreamers, while many players in the twitter ad network world, be it “contextual”, or “pay per tweet”, or “twitter account name parking”, are actually making cash, even though their future is questionable and they are not as glamorous.
What kind of entrepreneur are you?
