When Should Entrepreneurs Talk About Money? - dylangs1030 http://onforb.es/xVNrS ====== codeonfire What is the incentive for businesses to share their financials? They are not required to, and that goes for small businesses too. Business owners don't have to report to the IRS every single penny of income until the business is large enough. Also, for any non-IRS related info there's never a problem with telling people. I'll call people or email people. I think it's more about the social aspect of small business. How much people can talk about their small business and it not be seen as an opportunity. I mean, a lot of people work for big business and they can't find enough to talk about. The reason they aren't in business is because they are not in the minority of people with the "I want to start a business" gene. ------ petercooper There's a big risk people on HN might want to know things about their users that users might not want known. ------ josefresco This is the type of conversation that should take place in the public, not a closed private setting. No offense to OnForb, but if you're looking for good ideas to share then go ahead and ask them directly. ------ glimcat This will likely fail miserably. The only thing that a forum has going for it is that it's semi-public. Otherwise, why bother? ~~~ mindcrime I personally find public forums to be a valuable tool for learning about all sorts of things. There's a lot of interesting info out there that's not difficult to find, and there's also a good amount of useful information that's not as easy to find. Forums and mailing lists are great for this. ------ saurabh While I understand the intention of the post, I do not see a problem with it asking. If the community wants the startups to open up and share, it would be wonderful. Why are you posting this as a comment, why not start a discussion on the topic? ------ seige It seems to me that all of you, who are commenting on how wrong/useless this ask is, must surely think they are more capable than anyone else? I doubt that many people that post startups here, would be successful even if they shared their financials. What you suggest as a counter argument is that not having this information, prevents you from knowing the startup that has it. ------ alain94040 I'm not sure you have the right people in mind when you talk about "entrepreneur community". A good chunk of us don't read HN but maybe we frequent other sites that actually care about revenue and revenues as metrics. For us, YC application form is like an essay question, a long answer that shows we really bothered trying to come up with an answer. ------ jasonlbaptiste If the author's objective is to gather info from startups on how to build decent webapps, he'd have better luck asking them via email/twitter. What this article seems to be suggesting: "hey, come to this place that asks for information on your financials, then we'll talk." Yeah, I don't think so. If that's your interest, ask them directly. ------ clyfe The question shouldn't be so simple, ask him what's bothering him and then ask him to explain it. ------ robryan Maybe it is asking the question at the wrong people in the wrong way? Some of these people are pretty private and will probably not get to be where they are without being pretty secretive about their finances and strategy. ------ vital101 A startup that is profitable/making money is not going to be disclosing that on Hacker News. At least, not right away. ------ maximem the problem is that a lot of startups do not talk about money, so you need to figure out a way to overcome the resistance. It is not very useful to try to convince someone to disclose this information who does not want to disclose it anyway. ------ eof They say "not now," right? All I see here is 1 person, saying "why don't I ask?" Maybe there are people who would actually be interested in that and perhaps some of them would say yes. That's how I would see it, what do I know? ------ suking Ask them via email or twitter. I don't see the benefit of a forum post. ------ gte910h So, _that_ is how to get rid of all the spam.