Sublime

When a big company makes an offer to acquire a successful startup, it almost always offers too much or too little: founders only sell when they have no more concrete visions for the company, in which case the acquirer probably overpaid; definite founders with robust plans don’t sell, which means the offer wasn’t high enough. When Yahoo! offered to

“activity trap”:

When we face a trade-off between our customers and a business goal, we align with the customer. When an objective seems out of line with our mantra, it gets extra scrutiny.

Having seen this example, Palantir partnered with a secondary fund to offer liquidity to its employees so that they would never trip the five-hundred-plus owner barrier.

tracked—and then revised or adapted as circumstances dictate.

The next thing you look for is: What are the key zones of expertise, networks, ways of thinking that add the most value into the company that you couldn’t hire for? Because if you can hire it, great, hire it. Add it into the genetics of the company. But there are a bunch of people like, for example, me or Peter Chernin—you can’t hire us into the co