Honestly I don't get it. While the story is cool, it really just seems like you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name.
I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But you're aiming to be head of your own company, you need to make wise business decisions. This doesn't look like one, and just shows (me) that you're willing to make large gambles for a chance at winning the lottery. Where do you draw the line?
...you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name.
Considering the context I have to vehemently disagree.
Steve's really well known in the UK tech scene. He's a regular attendee & speaker at the Hacker News London meet-ups. Acceptance into the YC program would have vindicated his ambitions.
YC is seen as almost mythical in this part of the world as it's a huge ask to move to the opposite side of the world to go through a program to gain funding when there are an insane number of VC's & angel investors in the UK. YC is essentially 'Tech Hollywood' as far as most UK hackers are concerned. You can make yourself a household name as an Actor based in the UK but most Actors would jump at the chance to make it in Hollywood. The appeal of YC is a microcosm of that analogy.
EDIT: I appreciate CaveTech is referring to the zap.com situation but the entire trip was a guy doing everything humanly possible to make his dream a reality. I stand by my point.
To what do you vehemently disagree? That it is a slim chance of securing the domain name? If so, why does the rest of your comment discuss how important YC is to UK programmers?
I disagree with CaveTech's summation that the process was all about securing a domain. It was about the author doing everything he could to bring his intentions for his product to fruition and the original article was about the significant effort the author made to get accepted into YC only to blow it on a single question. I believe a lot of folk aren't quite grasping how or why one guy would go to such extremes with such ridiculously low odds of succeeding.
I'm not persuaded that the interview flub was the problem.
Your hypothesis seems to be that if only you had answered the one question right, then PG would have seen the beauty in your plan and let you in. But you followed up immediately with the answer. And then you sent them a link to an implemented feature, which they didn't bother to click on. Why would they ignore both followups if that was the one thing that kept out someone they otherwise saw as a promising candidate?
It would seem to me that the more plausible hypothesis is that PG still believes exactly what he told you: you haven't figured enough of the idea yet. And therefore, that it really wasn't about that particular question. I suspect you're fixating on that because it was the problem that you could see, and because it was a strong emotional experience.
When I've rejected job-seekers after interviews, it was never about them failing a particular question. It was about a pattern in the interview, generally a Dunning-Kruger failure in some key area. I think it speaks well of people when they follow up with, "Oh, I totally blanked on X, here's the correct answer." But that never makes a difference, because never blanking out for a moment is not one of the characteristics I'm hiring for, and the conscientiousness displayed in the followup was also visible in the interview.
Inspired, I hacked out the feature that was the answer to the flunked question and used it on the partners.
If it was such an easy feature to add and so important that you had several strong answers to the issue that required the feature, why wasn't it already part of your product?
edit: If the feature was already present in your product, it would have been almost impossible to have gone blank.
...when there are an insane number of VC's & angel investors in the UK.
The constant gripe of U.K. based talent is that nothing ever gets funded there.
At least not at the rate or the fluidity with which it does in the valley.
Besides this maverick ex-con of an angel, Xavier Niel, who claims to have invested in some 700 startups to the tune of almost $150,000 a pop, who are these angels and VCs you talk about?
It's certainly harder to get funding but by no means impossible. The likes of Stefan Glaeznar in London is a good example of someone with the capital, experience and willingness to invest in early stage start-ups.
Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about.
I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people aren't willing to try (EDIT - thanks).
EDIT: Outlandish stunts are the best way to improve your hustling abilities. If you have the time and money to try it, you win either way.
As someone who deals in this space both as owning "really good domain names" and helping people buy "really good domain names" for many many years there was nothing smart about what he did and how he spent the money from a quick read of the story.
One thing I can tell you is that we frequently get approached by people who have some kind of an idea that someone is going to let go of an asset because somebody really wants it and tells a good story. That approach is actually quite common. And anyone who owns even 1 good domain has almost for sure been approached by someone with a story about why they need the domain but don't have any money to spend.
Even though the owner of this domain isn't in the domain business they still have some idea of the value. They aren't just going to let the domain go because some guy shows up from London. In fact, how do they even know that's the truth? That he flew in from overseas just to do this transaction? And not for some other reason? This is not "Bud Fox" in "Wall Street".
I'm currently working on a deal trying to purchase a domain for someone which is owned by a non-profit Fortune 500 company. They don't need the money even though the amount the person is willing to pay ($50,000) is a good number for this domain.
The approach that I will try after being turned down by the usual suspects at the company is to simply work my way up to the board of directors at some point and perhaps make a case that as a non-profit the $50,000 can do some good and the domain isn't being used bla bla bla.
Find an angle that matters. (Note same angle probably wouldn't work with a for profit but it's worth a try with a non-profit ..)
This sounds like something you only see in movies: Billionaire hedge fund manager signs over really valuable asset to persistent little whipper-snapper then utters some cliché phrase like "You've got spunk, kid!". Hedge fund managers didn't get rich by giving things away to the first person who asked nicely, and they still have business partners to answer to.
I'm surprised that calculating risk before investing large amounts of time and money now qualifies as 'conservative'. If that's a common attitude in SV these days, the bubble may be worse than I thought...
"I'm surprised that calculating risk before investing large amounts of time and money"
The OP made a point of saying how he thought he had a good story to tell YC. The fact is something like this could backfire and show how naive you are and be easily viewed as stupid.
> A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about.
From what I read, it was the hedge fund not the billionaire that had the domain.
if that's the case, then the problem is that the fund is carrying the domain on their books for some value, say $100,000.
If they give it away for "free/cheap" then they report a loss of $100,000 to not only their investors but also themselves, presumably they are invested in their own fund:)
no one is going to let someone else at the fund just give away $100,000 of gains.
He's already been investigated (or prosecuted, I forget) for expensing personal stuff at the fund. But really, it would be easy to consider it an investment, or buy the asset personally and then invest it personally. Whether or not a small asset like that is his personally or the fund's doesn't affect his decision making.
But the more valuable it is the more unlikely it is that it will be given away. Is spending time and money on the extremely small chance of getting hold of zap.com smarter than using those efforts to get hold of zap.co or zap.me? How much more is zap.com worth to your business over other alternatives?
If a few days and a few thousand pounds isn't worth much to him then I understand but if resources are scarce, using them on long shots that might not even pay that much over the alternatives is not good business.
For a startup, time and energy are always scarce. Payments are a hard space to break into. Putting even 1 second into a particular name is a mistake if that isn't the highest priority.
And given that Paul Graham turned Stevie Graham down for not having thought things through, rather than for lack of a good domain name, then I'd say the time and money was wasted. With those resources he could have conducted 20 user tests against prototypes. If PG was wrong about his concern about the business model, Stevie Graham would have had real evidence from real users. And, if as is more likely, PG was right, then Stevie Graham would have discovered the problem before he was pitching somebody so important to the future of his company.
As someone pointed out earlier, Zap.com is a publicly traded company, with a 5.5m market cap. The odds of this being given away for anything less than 5.5m is about as close to 0% as you can get.
The real history is a lot more colorful than that. In the first dot-com boom, Zapata was a natural gas and fish meal company that tried to take over Excite (a major portal at that time) by rebranding itself with the name Zap.com [1].
They got widespread mockery and bad press coverage for that, and no longer use the domain.
It's not so much the quest for the domain name, it's the energy spent at this stage on it.
A domain name won't make or break your business. But all that time and energy spent on this problem could probably have been spent better on something else.
Spot on. Seem to have forgotten to address the 'to your advantage' bit in the question. It's a bit rash jumping on the first plane out before even sending out a speculative email to find out if they'll disclose a price tag for it, which can be budgeted for at a later date.
Obviously send an email to /dev/null, er I mean the proxy email address on the whois, but is me adding that worthy of your time? Also the post states I tried contacting people via LinkedIn and telephone before jumping on a bird. Did you read it?
Quite a lot of people seem fixated with the money aspect. Not that I feel the need to defend myself and how I spend my own money, but I used the trip as a holiday too. After reading some of these comments I wish I went to the beach instead!
I think the issue that people are picking up on is that if that is how you spend your own money, it is likely that you will spend company money in the same way making you a riskier investment.
I know my comments haven't been full of praise but I enjoyed your post and it seems you have the personality that is needed for success.
I recently read through a cliche list of attributes of successful people, one of them was 'don't have a backup plan'. I think while this is cliche, it is also true in a lot of ways. To me this sounds like your backup plan became having an awesome story to share, and your persistence transitioned from trying to obtain zap.com to trying to amplify the entertainment value of the story.
I'm with you on this. Marc Andreessen was the closing speaker at the Lean Startup conference yesterday. One of his key points was that the pendulum of SV culture has swung too far in favor of failure for failure's sake.
His quote, via Gigaom: "We joke around the office that the worst is the fetish for failure. You want to preserve the good of the idea when it comes to pivoting, but you don’t want people to be intentionally encouraged to fail. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma."
Just because he was not successful (yet) does not mean it was a foolish effort. It's attitudes like yours that make hustling work, simply because so few people are willing to even send an email to somebody because they think it's unlikely they'll get an affirmative response. Getting rejected is like ketchup on french fries.
He flew from London to NY and showed up at their office uninvited only to find out the CEO was in Aspen. After spending countless hours stalking the guy and hundreds (or thousands) on a plane ticket, he missed by 2,000 miles...
If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".
If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".
I wouldn't. I think it shows exactly what he is trying to show: a tremendous amount of "hustle", indomitable fortitude, drive and passion... sometimes if you really want to make something happen, you have to take some chances and go a little over the top. And more importantly, it shows that this is a guy who doesn't just sit around and wait for things to come to him; he takes action and makes (or at least attempts to make) things happen.
Most people would agree you with you. But that doesn't make you, or them, correct. You should learn to embrace failure as a completely normal and natural part of success, instead of fearing it. This story, and the fact that he is proud of it, is evidence that he gets that.
I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish.
Successful people have certainly failed, but spectacular failure isn't a particularly good sign of future success. You should only embrace failure if you are learning things. Successful people treat failures as the price of learning.
I admire this guy's persistence, but not his incredible arrogance ("swaggadocio", "sound my huge balls made as I sauntered"), his poor risk/reward assessment, or his lack of lateral thinking skills.
His behavior only makes sense if having name "zap" is the riskiest thing in his current business plan. If everything hinges on him having a specific fancy domain name, then I doubt he'll be delivering sufficient customer value to his users to build a real business. And if that wasn't the riskiest thing, then he's just wasted a lot of time and money in a poorly planned exercise to get something that was a shiny distraction.
That sort of behavior is a great example of why solo founders are dangerous. Startups are endlessly distracting, and a good partner can keep you from taking off like a missile at something that, in the end, isn't core to what you're up to.
Failure as part of the hustle is not a learning process in the same way as a failed startup is. Sure, you can learn something, but if you aren't getting rejected often in sales, you're simply not trying hard enough.
That view isn't totally unreasonable in the context of an established product with proven product-market fit. But it is incredibly dangerous when what you're selling may have no value at all. This guy is definitely too early in the process to be testing the hypothesis, "Hey, maybe I'm just not enough of a dramatic stalker." And if he did want to test that he shouldn't start by doing it with such a high-value target.
I would not. Not all failure is created equal. Failing is fine. Even failing big is fine. But the risk has to be worth the reward. His reward was a name. That's it - not the success or failure of the project he wanted to start, but just the name. Sure, names are important, but spending this much effort on the name and not the project itself does not, to me, indicate good judgement on where one's efforts are best spent.
"Learning to embrace failure" is not an excuse to avoid basic cost analysis.
"I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish."
I would think a more impressive effort at hustling would be to find a (more readily) available domain name, then focus on building such a great product that it works anyway.
IMO the story shows great hustle but poor prioritization. Domains don't matter that much. One of YC's most successful graduates is airbnb after all. That domain is basically nonsense, but the product is so good, now it's their own special nonsense.
> "PG knew exactly what I wanted to do, it was the quickest anyone has grokked my idea. I could almost see this divide conquer algorithm working in his brain as he traversed the idea space, it was spectacular to behold."
...PG hit me with a particular question about acquiring a particular type of user, one I should have been able to answer, one I’d practiced dozens of times over the past few days, one I had several strong answers to. I don’t understand why, but my mind simply went blank. The interview ended a minute or two after.
Sounds like an incredibly minor detail to base the decision on considering everything else appeared to go well. I've no doubt PG and the team are all about small details but that doesn't quite add up for me.
Either way Steve, you did great to get as far as you did and a YC rejection is only a minor hurdle along the way so best of luck bud.
Fwiw, I had a very similar YC experience as a solo founder in front of PG, Trevor, Robert and Jessica (S12). After the rejection email I had an acquisition offer from a market leader (term sheet). Decided to turn it down and raise a round. Going after the market. Currently closing with top-tier investors and launching product.
First, thank you very much for detailing your Y Combinator experience with the rest of us; you will no doubt help out many other startups planning to apply to Y Combinator.
During the entire interview, I imagine PG and his partners were likely analyzing and processing your idea, your capacity to execute your idea, and your potential to succeed compared with the potential for other top-tiered candidates to succeed. Also, they were likely looking for signs, any sign (based on prior failures), that were predictor of failure.
In my opinion, you were likely turned down because either they weren't convinced that you (along with your idea) have the potential to succeed more than the candidates they were considering, or your case showed signs of potential failure. Note that the signs of potential failure is not necessarily reflective of you or your idea, it is simply based on actual factors that Y Combinators have seen in startups that had eventually failed. I have read about this from PG himself right here on HN.
If Y Combinator turned down a potentially primed-to-succeed applicant because the applicant did not convincingly answer one question (while being very convincing on all the other questions), then I am definitely mistaken about all I have read about PG and Y Combinator. These chaps are well-reasoned and thoroughly experienced investors, I don't think they will turn down a potential DropBox for missing one question—well, I hope not.
Do these "how I blew it" articles make anyone else uncomfortable? They always seem so self-deprecating, presumptuous, and often very seriously glorify YC and/or PG. Reflecting on an experience, especially one that you were hopeful about, but didn't go the way you wanted is good. But being so attached......
Further to the money fixation. Has no one considered that I might have actually tried to raise money from Falcone? When I get him in a room, you can bet that I'll be trying to get the domain and some capital from him before I'll try to buy it off of him with my own cash. What do you think is more likely to be successful, a billionaire throwing down a relatively small amount of coin to invest or him hearing out an offer to acquire the domain for 5-6 figures without laughing me out of the room. We might have different values but to me 2-3 grand for a holiday and a roll of that dice is chump change.
Falcone is a punch line in Real Life. This whole story is ridiculous on many levels. If Robert Altman were alive he would remake "The Player" set in HackerNews, err, Silicon Valley.
I'm rooting for you. Great story, the only thing missing is a happy end. Keep it going - almost sad to see that the pessimists and skeptics have taken over in this discussion.
"but when I finished I filled the BCC with as many permutations of what his email address could be and then hit send."
I've figured out a great way around this. Install rapportive in gmail, compose a new message and start guessing emails. If the email is correct, rapportive will pull up all the information for that person. Bingo! There's the correct address!
Rapportive only has info on people who use their service and those who have their info available on their sources (eg social networks). It's a great tool but isn't comprehensive.
After the story of you flying over to doorstep a hedge fund manager, navigating the many layers to get there and ultimately solving the problem, I don't see YC saying no to be a problem.
Learning experiences and such, grind it out and keep going.
Yes, though the problem they likely saw was he virtually has no product, business plan, nor seems interested in selling it as much as himself. Its a trope you see here in the post mortem after every YC season selection.
"I hacked the process and all I got was this stinking blog post."
Edit: This front-paging HN will more than likely land him a job somewhere, for better of for worse, and was likely his real goal in writing it.
He did say that he had a product ready to demo but they didn't want to see it.
Selling yourself is almost as important as the idea, if you have the best idea in the world but you seem a bit wishy washy then no one is going to be interested, but if you can sell yourself and get them to believe almost anything is possible in your hands then you're in with a better chance.
I have seen PG and others on numerous occasions say they're interested in the smartest of people, some of whom may just have a bad idea and need mentoring in that regard.
It's a lot easier to point a smart/hard working person in the right direction
I don't know, I feel like there's more to success than simply having unrestrained ferociousness. While i'm gone, my dog will spend hours gnawing a bone to get every last bit of marrow he can out of it. Imagine if he put that same kind of undetermined effort into figuring out how to get on my kitchen table where there's a limitless supply of snacks he would love.
Giving up completely may mean accepting failure, but strategically choosing how to invest your resources is not giving up. Spending thousands of dollars & days simply to obtain a domain name... in an effort that ultimately still failed seems like a series of poor decisions.
I sent him an email with a similar thought. The fact that he left and didn't try other venues could make some people question his true grit. I liked his story and wanted to meet him just to hear the story in person.
I also went through the single founder interview experience and blew it, but for different reasons.
I had the domain knowledge and experience, but PG said my demo was too simple (which it admittedly was - it was a MVP to test some assumptions I had about the market).
It was an intense, yet very fun 10 minutes of my life...
The fact that I read it through is proof to how compelling your post is. Your story on trying to get the domain name by all (reasonable) means really resonated with me. Are you based in London?
From Reuters: Zap.Com Corporation, incorporated in 1999, is a shell company. The Company was established for the purpose of creating and operating a global network of independently owned Web sites. Harbinger Group Inc., the Company's principal stockholder owns approximately 98% of its outstanding common stock. As of December 31, 2011, the Company has no business operations. During the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company had no revenue.
"So you're telling me there's a chance." - Lloyd
Zap is a great name. But there's no harm in starting with PayWithZap.com, like you're currently doing, then acquiring zap.com down the road when you have real capital or revenue. Owning zap.com now is a premature optimization, a nice-to-have.
If your business is good, answering a single question incorrectly should not cause a good investor not to invest in it. If your business is bad, answering a single question correctly should not lead to an investment.
A single answer should not be the difference between getting an investment and not getting one. Can you imagine Warren Buffett passing over a stock he was prepared to buy just because the CEO couldn't answer a particular question instantly?
Firstly great story and very entertaining :-) Certainly i would have used it on the application as it makes you stand out and gives the interviewers something interesting to ask about, thats what application forms are for after all.
When it comes to jumping on a plane to try and blag the domain name I think its actually a pretty smart move, on the open market that name would have gone for 6 or 7 figures certainly far more than you could have afforded on seed funding, in which case its worth dropping a grand or so as a gamble that you might get it for much less, I'm guessing you were hoping they'd say they weren't using it and just sign it over to you?
Hey you took a chance and gambled 1000 bucks in the hope of it paying off many times over, it didn't but thats life.
I don't know if recs are weighted based on that particular recommender's history, but they are definitely weighted based on how well the recommender knows the applicant, and how strong the recommendation is.
I still recommend that applicants seek out YC alumni when applying, but this is because they will give you good feedback on your application and advice on the interview process, not because their recommendation of someone they met once over coffee will move the needle.
I love the story. The title of this story sounded like it was a note venting out frustration and telling everyone that though dejected, I will make it without YC. But unlike the title, you are so full of positive energy and I hope others at YC could have seen that. I am sure you will make you dream come true. Keep hustling and wishing you the very best of luck.
Sort of off-topic but I thought that the use of "take a punt" was interesting. Before I realized he was European, I thought it a strange phrase. Obviously in (soccer) football, taking a punt (a kick to try to score) would be a good thing, but it first registered to me as an (American) football reference of punting (rather than going for a touchdown).
If there's one thing that administering, taking part in, or hearing about interviews over the past few decades has taught me, it's that you never did as adjective as you think you did. In fact, you're usually pretty far off the mark.
Spent lots of time and money stalking a big time hedge fund manager in an attempt to acquire Zap.com domain. Failed to acquire domain, but still considers this a "life hack" because the manager downloaded his business plan.
Later, messed up one question in YC interview and got rejected.
How do we know the guy downloaded his plan? It could have been anybody - a deputy, underling, hell, even the secretary that absolutely refused him access. It doesn't matter that the CEO was running a hedge fund, I guarantee you he knows how to type in "how much is my domain worth" into google to get a rough figure for it.
In my earlier and somewhat more flush years, I used to have a saying "just throw money at the problem until it goes away". And you know what.. it worked. Well .. until I ran out of cash that is. This is what this sounds like to me. Flying London to New York on the off chance to meet this guy? One would have been better off finding out what gym he's a member of, which bars he drinks at, where he shops etc one was that desperate. mini-rant over.
tl;dr: guy wanted domain zap.com, owned by a hedge fund. he tried emailing and calling people there with no luck. he decided to spend many thousands of dollars flying from london to NYC to meet with CEO. got shot down again, ended up getting email to CEO by blindly bccing different formats, CEO asked for business plan. domain is still owned by hedge fund.
I recall it from his comments to ' YC Rejection Emails Are Out "
'A lot of people do that, and unsurprisingly some people (maybe all) working at YC do not appreciate it. Personally I would advise against it and think of a different way to get to the partners, n.b. Instacart, rather than show up to YC when everyone is extremely busy and putting YC staff in difficult positions." Now just think what he did with hedge fund manager ?.
That probably explains why there is little interest in selling you the domain. It would probably be a huge PITA for them, even if they wanted to do it.
1. Spent lots of time and money(thousands of pounds) trying to meet with CEO of hedge fund just to get one of the domains in their portfolio.
2. Failed.
3. Explained that he is co-founder of twillio europe.
4. Used above story as some kind of self proof of ability
5. Decided that he failed YC interview because of a silly mistake
6. Drew lots of lessons and conclusions.
I said I was international employee #1. The "co-founder" thing was a joke in reference to the camaraderie James and I shared. Are you really insinuating that I passed myself off as anything other than that?
I'm kind-of amazed at how much this person was willing to spend at the drop of a hat. I see someone carelessly jumping on planes, spending thousands of dollars without blinking, and I start to wonder if the person may be bipolar and experiencing a manic episode.
It's an entirely reasonable question, and I'm sad that people are downvoting you. That somebody is a respected X doesn't mean they are in perfect health or couldn't use help.
There is a relationship between bipolar disorder and creativity; Jameson's Touched with Fire is a good exploration of that. Steve Blank of Lean Startup fame suggests that many founders come from dysfunctional families, because a chaotic home environment makes people comfortable operating in chaos later on:
Living in San Francisco and having just spent the weekend mentoring 100 would-be founders at Lean Startup Machine, it's my firm opinion that entrepreneurs are universally odd ducks. They are my people and I love them, but if they were particularly normal they would have found a lower-risk way of making a living. I think it's especially useful for entrepreneurial types to pay attention to mental health; some kinds of crazy are useful and to be honored, but some are just slowing you down.
>"I start to wonder if the person may be bipolar and experiencing a manic episode."
...I would think that depends on how many thousands of dollars you have in the bank. It would be nuts to do this if you had no money to your name and were struggling to make ends meet, sure. But if you're got a high disposable income, or you know you can make it up with work, why not?
I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Stevie, and I know nothing about his financial situation. I suspect neither do you. Regardless, you could easily cover the cost of a last-minute LHR-NYC flight with three, four days of contracting (I should know, I used to freelance iOS in London). Doesn't seem quite so crazy when you frame it like that.
What I probably wouldn't do is throw around the idea that simply because somebody buys a ticket on a whim that makes them a manic depressive.
To me it wasn't just the cost, it was jumping on a plane instantly when there was no particular advantage to it.
Salespeople who are too aggressive frighten prospects, and his target is a billionaire who hears from all sorts of people who want something from him. If he were sincerely after the Zap name, I think he would have been much better off pursuing it consistently over 6 months, rather than in a dramatic, unprepared rush. Especially since this particular name is a nice-to-have.
I wouldn't say it to his face, but that doesn't mean it doesn't influence my actions in regards to him.
I'm also concerned about the message this sends to others -- that since Stevie suddenly spent massively to try and coerce his way to meeting someone who could release the domain his company probably doesn't really need, that this is acceptable behavior we should all try.
Just because a person is highly accomplished and respected doesn't mean that person can't be mentally ill. John Nash Jr was.
I don't know why you were downvoted. It's obviously wrong to play pop psychologist from an internet article, but that could be an explanation - I know firsthand, several family members are bipolar and have done similarly money-disregarding stuff during a manic episode.
I know a variety of people, from family members to family friends to friends' family members, who exhibit strong signs of impulsive behavior like this. Some of them are diagnosed, some aren't.
I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But you're aiming to be head of your own company, you need to make wise business decisions. This doesn't look like one, and just shows (me) that you're willing to make large gambles for a chance at winning the lottery. Where do you draw the line?