> Huberty said that Apple's online services are underappreciated by investors because they accounted for less than 6 percent of the company's revenue over the last 12 months.
> This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users.
At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.
Hi, I'm an engineer on the team working on Tiles at Mozilla.
It may sounds strange, but this is really our honest goal. We want to change the ad industry.
The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change.
We know for a fact that many of the players in the business, the ones that matter, don't really care about intruding on people's privacy. For them, it is what they need to do to achieve their goals.
We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay.
That said, we think we can make a change... for the better. We can think about how to do this from first principles, to be the first customer of our tech.
Frankly, no one will be willing to play the new game with us if we can't prove that it works at least as good as the current way they are doing things: the old tech may be clunky, not that effective and there may be a lot of middlemen, but there are 2 decades of investment in the way its built.
Users are affected. Users care. We know we can make for a web with less annoying ads. They don't need to be nagging, vying for your attention the same way they are now. They don't need to be creepy.
And you know what? They may not even be ads as you know them today.
We thought about this a lot, and it's a very touchy topic, one which would cause controversy any way we'd broach it . Why do you think we're not being honest?
How about bringing back Power user features instead of bloating the browser with ads, chat and social networking features?
How about delivering again something for power users which does NOT require add-on installs aka toolbar customization or moving buttons where i want to have them? Or.. how about offering features for both user target groups like it was able until Firefox 22 before you started to remove features because of simple users? How about that?
But you do not care and you are not interested in this! Here is my answer.. Moving to Seamonkey as main browser and to Vivaldi. The later one may be closed source but that developers have at least a brain and know how to handle power users!
And i also quit donating for you month after month and make sure everyone i know is uninstalling your browser.
Btw. the big computer trader of my town is also not supporting Firefox because of your treatment of advanced users! He now only installs Firefox if there is some extra payment!
Congratulations, you anger both loyal users and technology advocates!
>The ad industry in its current state is built on foundations we think don't make sense. For instance, the whole idea of abusing cookies, a useful technology, to track where users go around the internet so that the data can be traded, so that others can make guesses about what ads to show... sounds a bit in need of a change.
> We have to face it, the internet wouldn't thrive without ad-tech. Not many people are willing or able to pay for content. The digital ad industry is important and is here to stay.
How are ads in the browser relevant to websites that depend on ads for their revenue?
It's not hard to imagine how this concept could expand to the web at large. Rather than deciding what ad to display by consulting a user profile built on cross-site history tracking, a site could simply ask the browser for advice on what to show, without the site having to learn anything in particular about the user.
Good for the site because they get better advice; good for the user because they get more privacy and control.
(I've nothing to do with the team behind this at Mozilla, and have no idea what their roadmap actually is. But it's pretty clear that this is just a first step in a broader version of re-inventing advertising on the web, not a stand-alone attempt to generate a bit more revenue).
Back in 2013, Mozilla Labs had been experimenting with a similar idea, a feature called "User Personalization" (UP). It was an API that get web content access to (user-controlled) user interest keywords, but AFAIK nothing came of the project.
EDIT: Looks like the "Firefox Interest Dashboard" add-on is a more recent exploration of this idea, letting you explore the categorization of your own local browsing history:
There's no such thing as a free lunch. The way to reduce ads on websites is to pay for websites. But, so far, that's proven less practical and acceptable to users than just putting up with the ads. But, ads are getting annoying and intrusive. So, if we're stuck with ads because folks won't pay, maybe it makes sense to try to make that situation better?
You are interpreting him too literally. What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising.
Mozilla cares about funding itself, yes. But digital advertising is also how most of the web is funded - and Mozilla cares about that, too, because it directly impacts everything else under the Mozilla mission.
As a user, you might prefer no ads when asked - but an enormous majority of people have endorsed the ad-supported free-of-charge model on the web through their daily actions. So, practically speaking, we have to find a way to deal with it and make it better.
>What he meant was simply that it is obvious that Mozilla cares about income from their ads, not about the state of digital advertising
Yes. I do not agree with this statement. Mozilla as an organization, as a collective of individuals and as a steward of interests of hundreds of millions of Mozilla products users has diverse and complex interests in the direction of evolution of digital advertising. These interests are not limited to the immediate profits.
What did they do with it? Have you looked at the insane amount of engineering they have done in the past 8 years? Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world. An insane amount of money has been pumped into hiring world-class experts to develop it. Not to mention the continuous improvements to their rendering engine, marketing and awareness projects, charity projects to get minorities like kids and women into web development, fighting legal battles against patent encumbered technologies like H264, etc. You are seriously underestimating the amount of money they need.
In 2012 they had a surplus of more than $100,000,000 though...
And still, $30,000,000 for administrative cost? $45,000,000 for marketing? (never saw any ads for firefox, did you? I have no idea what they spent so much money on)
It isn't hugely informative, but I would guess that the $9 million in office leases mentioned towards the end is categorized as an administrative cost.
Marketing is not just ads. They support a lot of projects like the Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon[1], the Gigabit Community Fund[2], the Hive NYC Learning Network[3], and many more, which probably are itemized as marketing.
This isn't about winning users. It's about not dying. Web browsers are one of the most complicated pieces of software in human history. Skilled developers cost money, lots of money.
I doubt it. I'm guessing this won't bring in significant money for a while at least, and it'll lose users in the short term. Monetizing search, as with the Google now Yahoo deal, is where the money for developers comes from. This only makes sense if the goal is to shake things up. What its chances of success there are, and how positive that outcome would be, is still an unknown in my head. But Mozilla only exists to have an impact on the Web, so it kind of makes sense.
(I work for Mozilla, but have no special insight into this initiative.)
Speaking about pizza, does anybody has the perfect recipe for the pie/whole pizza? I saw once here from a obsessed chef but can't remember the link. Thanks!
You forget that mandatory voting also mean that minorities and other "difficult" groups also don't have to make excuses as to why they are voting and also that everything is done to make them votes (since it's mandatory). An employer can't refuse a employee to go voting for example.
Minorities or 'difficult groups' (whatever they are) have a right to vote, so they can exercise it if they want to. No excuse needed! This is about being compelled to participate, not about wanting to go and needing an excuse. You never need an excuse, there is an election in progress and you exercise your rights.
Do you have examples of places where employers can interfere so easily with the right to vote?
Are polling stations in those places only open during business hours?
Are the rights of citizens in those places subject to the whims of employers?
That would make for an interesting situation.
I'm not aware of any place where a company could stop its employees from voting if it wanted to do so, but that's an interesting perspective. I don't really understand what voting being mandatory or optional has to do with that though.
>Do you have examples of places where employers can interfere so easily with the right to vote?
In the US.
It has not been too many years since minorities were harassed if/when seen going to the polls. On the other end of that stick there is the fact that minorities were paid/coerced into voting a certain way.
It is definitely not the case that an employer can prevent employees from voting specifically, but they can arrange the workday in such a way as to make it inconvenient for certain employees. Example: Salaried staff can be given time off to vote while hourly staff are told to work overtime; not to mention the fact that salaried workers tend to already have accumulated paid time-off, where hourly workers have none, or less.
You need to pay a lawyer to sue, and you need to pay a lot for a lawyer that will win. The US legal system is "pay for play", despite claims and general belief to the contrary.
@jacquesm: I suspect what the parent was saying is in the face of Jim Crow laws or even implicit or subliminal discouragement of minority voting (whatever the cause or reason).
So if there are such laws then they would contradict each other, in that case you have a completely different problem, putting your constituents in the position of having to comply with one law (for instance compulsory voting) or the other (for instance a law to take away the right to vote) but never able to be compliant with both laws at the same time.
Implicit or subliminal discouragement of minority voting would not stop with a compulsory voting law, it would just make those influenced now subject to breaking the law and subject to fines beyond merely (I use that word lightly) being dis-enfranchised.
Such discouragement should be dealt with through the criminal justice system, rather than by forcing everybody to vote.
As you probably realize (or maybe not) I am categorically against nation states forcing their subjects to perform certain acts, be it military service, compulsory voting and many others beside because I think in the aggregate nothing good can come of it.
In the case of compulsory voting, fortunately most countries have seen the light for this lowest-of-all-barriers protest against the way a particular slice of society is run, and 'voter turnout' is a good bell-weather for how well a country is actually representing the interests of its constituents.
An incredible journey is:
One company buying another and closing its services down. This is a
purchase of the second company’s staff, rather than their product. An
acquihire.
If you look through the archives this is what all the incredible
journeys have in common. A company gets bought, its staff are excited
(publicly, anyway) about their new home, but sorry that the service
which brought them to the attention of their new bosses will have to be
closed. “But thanks for joining us on our incredible journey!”
This is what is galling. A company that can afford to pay millions for
some new staff but not for what those staff built. The people who used
the service, and invested their belief and time in uploading photos, or
forming friendships, or logging data, are left to find new virtual homes
while their former hosts enjoy a nice (if possibly delayed) payday.
This repeated pattern only encourages more people to create flashy
services that have no hope of being sustainable businesses in their own
right, but may survive long enough, with VC funding, to attract the
attention of a large company eager for new ideas and staff.
It’s one thing for companies to go bust, or to close their service
after failing to make it work. This is business. It’s capitalism. But
starting services only to close them a couple of years later when payday
arrives is a vicious way to treat people.
Have you ever seen e.g. a pizza joint, bowling alley, etc shut down? You could write the letter that gets posted in the window with a Markov chain. It is practically identical to the widely satirized language used by startups.
"After 43 years in business, Joe's Pizza will be shutting down after July 10th. Thanks for your patronage over the years. We'll miss you."
Modulo individual stylistic choices, this is the appropriate level of social niceties between a business and a customer. Joe's Pizza is not obligated to say that their bookkeeper embezzled $300k, they misjudged the pizza market, or Joe's heart just isn't in pizza anymore. You paid, you got your pie, and you and Joe are even.
Yes, but most of these companies are selling services, not products. If I was buying a downloadable software product from them, the you-got-your-pie analogy would be more apt; sure, the company went out of business, but I still have the product I bought and can continue to use it. Services don't work like that; when the company goes away, the product goes "poof" and disappears. Even if you paid in advance for long term use of it! Which makes people confused and/or resentful.
This is the downside of the Everything-As-A-Service model: services are a commitment. Customers aren't buying a product, really, so much as they're buying a relationship with you and your team. The only way you can sell a relationship is by convincing people that you're serious about it -- that you're in it for the long haul. So if the next week you announce that you really weren't...
In selling actual services to businesses -- the kind they pay tens of thousands for -- they'd often prefer to have a relationship with you. And you do have a relationship. It is a professional relationship and governed by contracts. They owe you what is written in the invoice, you owe them what is written in the SOW, and after acceptance you're square.
This actually comes up in negotiations. "We'll need a follow-up engagement in six months." "I might be available for a follow-up engagement in six months." "Can you guarantee it?" "I am amenable to selling you a guarantee." "Selling a guarantee? We don't want to pay extra. We just want to schedule an engagement six months from now, if we need one." "In that case, you can wait five months and ask to schedule an engagement. I'll generally try to slot you in, subject to my then-prevailing rates and availability."
I think you think that using a SaaS gives you a free option on service next month. This is... an unusual understanding of how business services work.
If you absolutely need continuity of service that is something you can buy. Many HNers do not understand that it is really freaking expensive. If you are paying $29 a month and don't remember signing custom language guaranteeing it you probably have not bought it.
I think you think that using a SaaS gives you a free option on service next month. This is... an unusual understanding of how business services work.
That might be true technically, but it's certainly a common expectation among organisations that use SaaS offerings.
Moreover, it is a necessary expectation for many of those services to be commercially viable. Frequently the time and resources invested in integrating someone else's service will take a significant period to generate a net positive return and outsourcing will incur a significant degree of risk. If decision makers didn't have a good faith belief that a service they were planning to integrate would remain available for a useful period of time, approximately no-one would ever sign up in the first place.
Obviously many businesses do offer services that, according to their fine print, do not provide any such guarantee. They rely on their potential customers either not noticing or not caring enough to prevent them from buying.
(If you disagree, then if you'll forgive me for using a personal example for a moment, I invite you A/B test Appointment Reminder's current home page against a factually accurate version that does not make any claim that is undermined by the fine print in your Terms of Service. For example, instead of "Clients get a reminder call or text message prior to their appointment" in your main graphic, you could write "Clients might get a reminder call or text message prior to their appointment, or they might get it late or not at all.")
IMHO, current trends like launching MVPs and exiting via acquihires are therefore poisoning the well. Potential customers of future services will, quite rightly, be suspicious of those services' reliability and longevity, and otherwise viable businesses may fail purely because of trust issues.
In the interests of fair disclosure: My own businesses depend on very few such services, and without any exception I can immediately think of, either those services are conveniences rather than critical to business operations or their providers have given legally actionable guarantees about their intentions/exit scenarios.
I wasn't going to mention it, but since you asked, my answer when somebody asks this for AR on the publicly available plans is: "I have been in business since 2006. AR has been my main product focus since 2010. I don't have any current plans of exiting the business any time soon. At the same time, I'm a one-man operation. If you were to say you feel less sure that I'm going to be around than $COMPETITOR, I'd say you're probably right. I'd also say that you can always get me to answer your email and their CEO wouldn't even know much less care that you exist. Your call." ($COMPETITOR is a well-known company in the space with eight figures in revenue whose minimum buy-in is close to the maximum I've ever charged a client.)
If you were on one of the non-publicly-available plans, you'd get language similar to "Vendor agrees to provide services as per the attached Statement of Work for the Contract Term as specified in the attached Statement of Work." That means exactly what it and related contractual terms say. It isn't like continuity of service is something that e.g. hospital systems suddenly realized they needed in 2004. They quite literally have similar contractual guarantees written in their contract for garbage disposal.
You rather deftly sidestepped my main point there. :-)
Again, I don't really want to focus on Appointment Reminder specifically because obviously it's not as if you're running the only service in the world that does this, but it does make a good example here. Objectively, almost every major claim on the Appointment Reminder home page -- meaning the things that really matter to a prospective customer, including literally the entire benefit someone would get from signing up to use the service -- is undermined by the wording in the Terms of Service.
It may be true that if someone asks explicitly then you give them an honest answer about your situation. I've certainly no reason to doubt you do. On the other hand, does an average small business outside the start-up world actually ask? I can't imagine anyone working the reception desk at my dentist or optician is going to be sufficiently aware of the legal and business environment to consider that a service advertised as Appointment Reminder is might not actually promise to do anything of value at all.
At this point, AR is becoming a bad example, simply because by its nature it falls into the category I described as being convenient but not critical. (No slight is intended by this comment, but I imagine any business that has so many missed appointments that it would be in serious trouble without AR has bigger problems than anything we're discussing here.) However, if we were talking about a service that hosted the professional's calendar of appointments, or their CRM database, or their payment system, and these services were known to be at significant risk of disappearing overnight, how many other small businesses would really sign up to use them?
I'm attempting to avoid engaging in your main point, because it would require taking notice of the accusation of fraud.
On the other hand, does an average small business outside the start-up world actually ask?
No. They don't ask for AR's continuity plan, for the same reason they don't ask for their accountant's continuity plan, or their lawyer's continuity plan, etc. Would the good doctor prefer to deal with the same accountant every year, to avoid having to re-explain every decision made in 6 years to a new accountant? Certainly. Are there accounting firms who they could purchase ongoing services with contractually guaranteed continuity from? Yes. Dr. Carter's Dental Office is welcome to call up the Big Five any time Dr. Carter gets worried about his good buddy Ralph closing up shop before tax season next year. He doesn't, partly because he prefers Ralph to the Big Five, and partly because the Big Five is way the heck out of his price range. Dr. Carter and his team of professionals are, in fact, actually in business, and they're fully capable of making decisions like this. If you're of the opinion that Appointment Reminder is the first time Dr. Carter got into a services relationship you're wildly mistaken.
(n.b. I spend about as much on accounting as a small dental practice, and have a great working relationship with my accountant. I also read my contract with him prior to signing. It has specific contractual language about termination which is effectively identical to AR's.)
A reference point from providing critical (revenue generating) business services: it's typical for a customer to go through our financial accounts and collect references pre-signing to get an idea whether we're likely to be around for the duration of the contract and beyond.
I'm attempting to avoid engaging in your main point, because it would require taking notice of the accusation of fraud.
Fair enough. I hope I've been clear that my purpose here is not to single out AR or direct any criticism at you personally for how you run your business. AR is hardly the only place on the Internet, or indeed in bricks 'n' mortar stores, that says one thing in big letters in its marketing and something rather different in little letters on its terms page. I'm just giving an existence proof that this happens, to counter the position that customers of SaaS businesses should have no expectation of continuity from month to month just because someone's terms of service say there are no guarantees; I consider that argument unrealistic, and therefore a weak counter to the suggestion that customers might reasonably be upset when a service they invested in integrating and may have come to depend on in practical ways was bought out and shut down because of something like an acquihire.
There is an interesting discussion to be had about the best way to deal with the inevitable conflict between giving a fair but inevitably brief and informal description in marketing and having full and legally appropriate terms for actual contracts. This is something I've talked about several times with lawyers, and we generally have a somewhat different strategy to many US companies in this respect, but then we're not in the US and the legal climate here in the UK is somewhat different as well. I do understand that as someone posting with a well-known identity you might not consider this a suitable venue for such a discussion, interesting as it might otherwise be for all concerned.
They don't ask for AR's continuity plan, for the same reason they don't ask for their accountant's continuity plan, or their lawyer's continuity plan, etc.
Sorry, but I think that is not a fair comparison. I don't know the specifics in your jurisdiction, but it is common for professional standards bodies to require basic business continuity arrangements for accountants and lawyers of any level and dealing with clients of any level, and in most places in the first world these are regulated industries where it is literally unlawful to practise without holding the relevant qualifications and complying with the relevant professional standards.
So, if Dr. Carter's favourite accountant is taken ill and unable to continue working, it should be straightforward to transfer the necessary information to another accountant and have them take over with minimal disruption. The ability to file the doctor's accounts isn't just going to disappear overnight because the principal at the accounting firm got hired in a senior position at Deloitte.
There would normally be no need for Dr. Carter to spend crazy money on a Big Four/Five accountancy firm to ensure this basic level of protection. (This is rather fortunate for everyone else in the accountancy business.) Of course larger organisations with more demanding requirements involving many hours of work from whole teams of people on both sides might want stronger guarantees from the larger services organisations they deal with, and those will usually be available from the larger services organsations, and there will usually be additional fees involved. But approximately no-one who's using the kind of SaaS offerings we often discuss on HN is operating on that scale and at significant risk of the entire company providing the service they rely on being subject to an acquihire.
There's a difference between putting a brave face on failure, and telling people who depended on you how excited you are that you won't be serving them anymore.
Except an Incredible Journey is not a normal shut down, it's the shutdown of a company, because the buyer took the thing it was interested in and then ran away.
So in your case, it should rather read:
"After 43 years in business, Joe's Pizza will be shutting down after July 10th because of its acquisition by Pizza Hut, which will tore down the place and puts its own pizzeria here. Be happy we got rich!"
People gets emotional with place they go to or things they use, you can think it's irrational, but it's just a fact of life.
"
After 43 years in business, Joe's Pizza will be shutting down after July 10th because of its acquisition by Pizza Hut, which will tore down the place and leave nothing in here, zip, zero, nada.
Be happy we got rich!
I'm always confused by this mentality people have that teams aren't entitled to disband, or at least they're not entitled to do it for money. Who at this point can claim not to know how startups work? Who's getting the rug pulled out from under them?
It's a job. It's not a moral crusade.
Are you worried that some service you use and adore might get snatched up by Dropbox? Here's a good rule of thumb: if they're blowing the doors off the market, they're probably not going anywhere. If not: they're eventually going to get picked off by a bigger team that can make more money from the talent.
It's not that they're not entitled to disband, it's that they make it seem like the community should be happy for them. Outside of companies with cult-like status, it's the product people care about, not the team. Why would anyone be happy that a service they need/love is getting shut down?
Why would you like people who just happen to run a website you find convenient? It's not like you shake their hands each time you click through or something.
And after they decide it's more convenient for them to shut down that website, it's kind of bizarre to think their ex-customers would want to have a personal relationship with them.
I buy and support a number of services and products where I would jump at the chance to shake the founder's hand and be their best friend! Sometimes it's about the people more than just the product. I'd buy a product site-unseen from certain people.
It's generic positive spin. Honestly, what would you expect to see?
In other news, the guy who speaks to you on the way out of the superstore probably doesn't care whether you have a nice day or not. Also, when the CEO of that big company steps down, he may not actually be planning to spend more time with his family.
> The people who used the service, and invested their belief and time in uploading photos, or forming friendships, or logging data, are left to find new virtual homes while their former hosts enjoy a nice (if possibly delayed) payday.
In a startup acquisition that would garner the approval of the author of the blog (and many others), the founders would, at the very least, find a way to slowly unwind the service. It wouldn't be an abrupt shutdown, leaving customers in the lurch. IT would be carefully planned.
At the very least, the founders should care enough about their users to make sure the service runs for a reasonable amount of time.
At the very least, the founders should care enough about their users to make sure the service runs for a reasonable amount of time.
A business using a B2B service who wishes to have the service around N months from now has an option to achieve this. It is called "a contract." You can call up your local sales team and ask for prices. It is absolutely a thing you can buy.
If you do not get contracts which guarantee that a vendor will provide you with the services you require, anticipate that business will frequently work out in a fairly rough fashion for you.
I'm less familiar with US law than that of commonwealth countries, but in Australia/UK/NZ at least a contract is automatically formed when there's been an offer, acceptance and payment for a service in advance. ie. If you've paid for a year's service and that service goes away after a month you're entitled to compensation for the rest.
If you pre-pay $29 * 11 for a SaaS app in the US, and the service closes a month later, you've got a claim against the merchant for ~$290. You almost certainly don't have a breach of contract remedy, because they are not failing to perform under your contractual relationship, and your contractual relationship almost certainly limits damages to the amount you've paid.
You can also probably get your bank to do a chargeback, and they might give you all $319, because it isn't worth their time to do math.
I think you miss the thrust of the original argument. No one, especially not the author of the blog, argued that there was a legal requirement. The point here is that the founders arguably got to their position because people entrusted them with services. To defend the blatant disregard for users is to attack the very thing that enabled the exit in the first place.
SaaS taken VC funding? Do not touch them if you will rely on their service because they might suddenly disappear in an acquihire and you should have expected it, ingrate. [1]
it is Sound advice, although if everyone took it to heart none of these start-ups would succeed in the first place because no one would use them because of the expectation they will be gone shortly. [1]
Poisoning the well of goodwill for future start-ups.
[1] Unless you can get a contract for X months / years of service as detailed by patio above... I cannot remember this as an option by any of the SaaSs that feature on YC. They try to be low friction "Just put your credit card details in, pay monthly and ignore the elephant." They RELY on people ignoring the above.
You sound shocked, shocked to have thought of the most common sales objection in the history of startups. Sell any product to a real business and see how long it takes that concern to come up. Memetically, it predates "acquihires" by more than 15 years.
There exist companies funded by YC which have enterprise pricing available. All of them will guarantee services being available for the entire contractual term, subject to the usual. (Contracts, paying shedloads of money, etc.)
Or they were subsidizing the service with their talent that could have been more productively used elsewhere. People who don't understand this just don't understand business.
Even great HN heroes like Elon Musk (who sold paypal to ebay) aren't doing stuff for charity, they are doing it for profit. Sometimes a personal crusade makes straight monetary profit less important, but most of the time it doesn't.
Yeah, but if I get aquihired, I just got PAID. And all altruism aside, that's why I own a company. If I wanted a simple life, I'd get a job. I want to shoot for the moon, even if I miss it.
Let's say my company is doing $1M/year in revenue. My burn is $60k/m for salaries and servers and whatnot, and look, we're decently profitable, as far as jobs go. According to startup valuations, my company is worth $3-5m, minimum. If I get an aquihire offer for $5m, I'm taking it. I'm a millionaire now! My family won't want for anything, and the constant risk I assume is gone. I can pretty much start ANYTHING new now, because I've had a successful exit, and the world is my oyster.
I DO care about you, my customer, but I care about me and my family's future more. So let's stop being butt-hurt when someone makes some coin for working hard. It's the exit we wish we had.
If you want that 3-5x multiplier your growth rate better be at least 70% YoY and stable. If, however, on the way to $1M/year in revenue your growth rates the last 4 years were 250%, 100%, 70%, and 55%, a realistic multiplier is more like 2-3x.
Because for all the tech progression in the last 20 years, a javascript heavy page is still really slow to load and use if you have more than a few tabs open.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/05/28/apples-app-store-r...