You don't have to ask for that 20% time. You take it. Work out fantastic new solutions, products, or projects that save time and make money for the company. You'll get advancement and accolades. Sometimes the sheep will think you're a maverick - so ymmv.
I bought my netbook for the main use of giving presentations. I needed a model with vga output for the projector. I need the power of OO Impress, which runs great on my HP 110c (on UNR 9.10)... my prior lug-about that was retired this past fall (still works, but heavier)... HP laptop from 1999, Pentium 3 @ 550Mhz, 256MB ram, 6GB HDD that runs Xubuntu 8.04 and Open Office 2.4 just fine.
Statistics is a difficult field, 'to get right', and it does take years to master...
Since people do spend years at it, and have varying levels of understanding all along that path, there is a lot of room to argue minutia. Now mix that with years in a Manufacturing Quality function and you get into all kinds of fun stuff with all levels of people and all kinds of opinion.
In the end you have to have Functional Statistics to convince the regular herd of non-statisticians. That means simple comparisons.. "this feature will only kill 3% of the users". People understand that.
Confidence intervals, X-bar charts, sufficient sample sizes, and so on get non-specialists confused - if it's killing 2.5% or 3.5% of the users you've still got a basic problem with the features and someone better get it fixed fast.
So go with Functional Statistics and find a copy of the book 'how to lie with statistics' so you can understand who's slanting a news article one way or the other ("look, 97% of our users of this feature survive!").
I used two versions prior to 1.0; and OpenShot showed great promise.
Used it on a real project even (30 second client demo), had to run through Avidemux then to get a.avi that Windows users could watch on their default XP windows media program (all ok on linux without that though).
I'll be installing 1.0 to check it out.
Then you will find it easy. Social networks are hot and generating revenue there is important.
You correctly realize you need a professional manager/CEO to do it.
Don't give up on the IPO yet. If you have amazing revenue then contact Goldman Sachs in NY. Filing IPO costs around $500k, but there may be easy underwriters.
Do you have any links to forward to several candidates I know?
Best options for most companies using less than a hundred thin clients is to just get auctioned-off pc boxes and strip them down to basic thin clients (remove all drives). A few years ago I got a pallet of 7 year old pcs for $5 each.
Another option is to go to gumstix.com and grab their basic computer on a stick - $130-$160. Enough to run LTSP clients (with some Ram increase to 128MB). Probably better for larger deployments to get OEM large lot pricing.
Football has those marvelous Cheerleaders... and science has what, exactly?
Smart parents will teach probabilities to their kids. Play sports for the fun of it, not intent on getting to the NFL, and choose a vocation that most do ok with upside for luck, cleverness, and work to do something great. Like the next Ford, HP, Microsoft, Google, or Twitter.
And marry the Cheerleader that is going into Engineering, Medicine, or Law themselves.
Assuming you have seven year old Microsoft OS boxes, then switching over to a fewer number of latest Linux OS boxes would be an improvement. Many of the services you list can run in the same Linux box just as happily - without VMing them. Others you may want a dedicated box (email server with big HDD arrays). For a small facility having only 150 users you've got a small budget and insignificant system loads.
However, if you want to make a more significant dent in operations, equipment costs and IT maintenance, look into client-server setups using LTSP.org - transfer all fat-client based 150 users to thin clients (stripped down current machines or new thin clients the size of desk phones) running on a few back-room servers. Switch over the office phone system to something like Asterisk etc. Look into FreeNAS and m0n0wall/pfSense. Set up a Drupal or Wordpress system to publish internal documents and/or to the Web. Lot's to keep you busy and productive besides those few old workhorses.
What a mess. And a pile of work.
Install Ubuntu, set them up with individual accounts, tell them you upgraded the OS and all the software.
They are probably already using Firefox, Open Office, and so on.
If the PCMCIA doesn't PXE boot on its own (probably not) then go to http://rom-o-matic.net/ for a floppy disk to do it.
There is probably a VGA port out of the laptop so you can hook standard keyboard, mouse, and monitor to it and get a good client.
1- get a floppy network install disk of Debian
2- remove the HDD and put in another computer, install DSL, Puppy Linux (lately I like the MacPup 'Pupplet'),or Debian and then move the HDD back to this laptop.
3- look for 'tinyCore', Linux built by one of the DSL developers.
with a "kill-a-watt" meter or similar. If the server you have is Pentium 2 or newer it should have good power management already built into it. When idle I've had P2's (rated at 100 or 200W on the case, that's max output not continuous consumption!) sipping along at 15-20w. These were stock desktop machines running headless with no extra PCI cards sitting in there.
Alas, no 'regular' people in the US are encouraged into the sciences.
It's more cool to be a half-drunk celebrity reality show subject than a top Engineer. Rock Stars and Sports Athletes are where the media and society encouragement pushes kids (gotta get that football 'scholarship').
Movie cliches with technical people in taped-up glasses do not the professional merits.
Tons of shows about lawyers and physicians but where are the cool Engineer dramas? CSI/NCIS/etc may be helping, but too profitable for the studios to make the next follow-around-this-crazy-person reality show.
Most other countries place their Engineers and Scientists at the same level of respect held by doctors and lawyers.
Until that happens here only a few talented kids will find their calling and invent stuff.
Influential books that had an impact on me during the High School years, and would have been great in such a class.
You won't be able to cover very many books, but you should at least get these in there:
Foundation
Ring World
Lord Foul's Bane
Ender's Game
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hobbit (no, not LOTR)
The Sleeping Dragon
A lot of the others are covered in political or regular english courses (animal farm, 1984, F 451, etc),
or really were just entertaining reads (Princess of Mars, Conan, Hitchhikers Guide, Xanth, etc).
He probably thought he'd need it... 'gosh darn it! They're payin' a big load of cash for me to head over there, I better have a backup!'.. and then he gets over to the new shop and finds out one of two things..
1) Nobody at the new shop thinks the competitor is any good - 'don't need that worthless code' - those guys are at least three weeks behind us, probably more!
2) The code is actually behind where the new shop is running on the technology curve (more probable because the competitor isn't paying top dollar - so who'd stick around if they were any good?).
A different industry... but the companies I found that were the most protective of their stuff, were woefully behind the rest of their competition. The reason was they had the highest esteem for their own work and were the most inwardly focused. They didn't bother to look up and see that they were bringing a knife to that gun fight.
For a product to be successful it has to solve a big problem for someone, big enough to justify a price the consumer will pay. What problem has the Segway solved better or cheaper? Bikes and scooters solve the short distance mini transport problem quite well, cheaply, and durably.
The only other problem is more difficult - how to make it a fashion item with celebrity status. Like a high end purse or car or brand of coffee. Unleash a fleet of product designers at it to spiff it up with leather, chrome, and a strong V-8 rumble, place it in a few cool movies, get a few hot celebrities to take them to movie premiers "because look at how green they are", and soon a Segway will be an in thing.
If you tune your system, those old boxes can be quite low power... like energy star rated Pentium-II's from 1998+/-. These work great as file servers. Install something like FreeNAS or build a Debian server and set it up headless & remove all unnecessary cards (sound, video, etc). I've had them idle less than 20watts before.
those old pc's often didn't need auxiliary cpu fans (I have a P2-266Mhz box that's 'fanless'). Compared with newer P4's that all have blazing fans because they throw off so much heat - maybe you can dial them back...
You can check your system with a kill-a-watt meter. Don't go by the powersupply 'rated' number - that's at peak load not squeezed down energy sipping for infrequent backup server use.
Toyota had and has as many big SUVs as any of the other automakers. Go check out their lineup. They have those vehicles because that's what people buy (when gas prices are low). I remember the days when you could have nine kids all milling about in the back seat. Now you have to have an 11 passenger vehicle to transport the kids in safety seats. So SUVs are popular. Toyota's sales were down in similar digits to the US manufacturers - they didn't experience as much of a problem (bankruptcy) because they had a source of funds squirreled away. No poising - there are as many parts in a small car as a big SUV while the margin on the SUV is much more fulfilling. Also, good luck with that battery pack - you must not have any laptops, flashlights, or toys to know how frequently batteries fail and have to be replaced.
Actual battery replacement will be earlier than published projections.
These cars run on laptop batteries, a whole lot of them. Only takes a few bad ones to stop the vehicle. How long has the battery worked in your laptop?
A lot of technology to still get worked out.
Linux is a lot like Microsoft... in that there is a lot of tools/programs but they often don't fit together prettily. Linux does more than the job. but it's often not pretty or the UI is not entirely well thought out. When Microsoft tried to fix Win XP to compete with Mac and ended up creating Vista...
I've been 'ubuntu-specific linux since 2005... Kubuntu first and lately Xubuntu & Mint Fluxbox.
A simple example of things to work through: Ubuntu has upper and lower menu bars (why two?), and the main bar has 'applications' 'places' 'system' (why three?). Clean up that space. I pay too much for screen real estate to be used for 'frivolous' consumption. There is not a good design reason for those being there.
The other extreme is Apple. They use very good design personnel. Who understand Art and UI design. They make simple interface choices for a simple population - and then charges a huge pile for that simplicity and art. Their marketing department is to be admired for getting the simple population to wear the brand badge to be a bit elite ('I paid a bucket full for this contraption that only comes in white and it only does what the fancy designer told me I could do'). But I guess a lot of people continue to aspire to them.
So Linux must innovate. There must be a clear design path, a unified design path, for Linux to show prospective buyers. Is it fancy wobbly windows and raindrops? It's cool to show to non-users but everyday usage it gets turned off.
However User Testing is not the grail.. In the regular business world (automotive, consumer products) it's called 'market testing' and involves a room of 'average people' to review products. It rarely works to get a good design. People lie in these clinics: "should the car be a hybrid?" "Oh yes it should, and sprinkle water mist in your face to cool you down like a spring breeze"; but put those consumers on the dealer lot and they go for the gas guzzler "because it fits the kid's safety seats and I can haul the boat around twice a year, it's $10,000 cheaper than that silly hybrid over there, and gas will stay around $3 a gallon for the next few years, and it goes really fast. Did I say it went really fast?".
A focused designer and a company willing to take risks is needed. It's a mix between Robert Mondavi "Beauty" and Robert Lutz "Good Taste". People know good design when they see it (that nice house down the street) or use it (that nice tool on the workbench). It can be hard to design though (a lot of arm-chair designer-wanna-bes and executive oversight control in most organizations).
Shuttleworth is on the right path with Ubuntu, and Linux in general, that it needs to achieve "Style", "Beauty", "Grace", and "Good Taste". That will take a lot of innovation, which open source is best able to produce, and it will happen sooner than we all think.
I've used OOo since 2005, and I trade documents with Fortune 10 corporation front-line through executive employees for Engineering, Project Management, and Sales consulting work I do. Spreadsheets and live presentations all the time.
I even use a 10 year old laptop (Pentium 3 @ 500mhz and 256MB ram) that has Xubuntu on it to give those live presentations.
Keep in mind that Windows computer to Windows computer often has different fonts installed - so your carefully crafted MSOffice document may paginate differently from one display to another... just like OOo to MSO...
I've lived at Big Fortune-10-types, small mom-and-pop-places, and the medium companies in between. I've worked for myself, I've started companies, and I've closed companies down. Here is what you should consider.
Have you worked in a big corporation before? And for a few years where you're well past the 'new kid on the block, not a threat to anyone, we don't know if he's a maverick or a loyalist but we're worried he might be a slacker yet we don't know' time? Big corporations are populated by people who don't know what to do with mavericks.
Starting your own company is a very big act of non-conformism. You might do it again, they will fear. So you're time there will only be short or you'll be locked into a 'certain level' and promotions (aka bigger money) will be difficult. You'll yearn for the simple days in a small office.
So TAKE THE MONEY, agree to work to transition the new team to the project over 12 to 18 months, set up and train a traditional manager-leader and then gracefully exit. You'll want to get stock options that vest when you exit.
Your responsibility, assuming you did get the big cash, is to put a portion of that money toward starting someone else's startup - just a little seed money to get it going, not so much they get drunk on it, but also enough that you're going to stay interested in their success. Help them along. Teach them what you know.
The next portion of your cash you need to shoe-string your next venture. You should be thinking about what that needs to be while you're transitioning that big company in your old project. And it's old already. Big companies are slow, they think they are fast, but they are not. And if they think your idea is great enough to acquire then you've slipped away from the front of the wave already.
The last part of your cash should be put into a diversified portfolio outside of the companies and markets you work in. Seek a professional wealth manager on how to place those bets relative to your age and needs horizon. This is your safety net.
Then focus on that next idea and the next startup. You did what you did because you couldn't take the boredom of a typical large company. You shouldn't stay in one. I had an early mentor once tell me "When it's not fun anymore, get out of the business" if you've lost your passion you're done.
So negotiate a reasonable price, take the money, get them set up for a smooth transition, and get working hard on that next business startup.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't have to ask for that 20% time. You take it. Work out fantastic new solutions, products, or projects that save time and make money for the company. You'll get advancement and accolades. Sometimes the sheep will think you're a maverick - so ymmv.
I bought my netbook for the main use of giving presentations. I needed a model with vga output for the projector. I need the power of OO Impress, which runs great on my HP 110c (on UNR 9.10). .. my prior lug-about that was retired this past fall (still works, but heavier) ... HP laptop from 1999, Pentium 3 @ 550Mhz, 256MB ram, 6GB HDD that runs Xubuntu 8.04 and Open Office 2.4 just fine.
dim dim works well for desktop sharing and white board.
Skype works for conference calls and point to point video.
Statistics is a difficult field, 'to get right', and it does take years to master...
.. "this feature will only kill 3% of the users". People understand that.
Since people do spend years at it, and have varying levels of understanding all along that path, there is a lot of room to argue minutia. Now mix that with years in a Manufacturing Quality function and you get into all kinds of fun stuff with all levels of people and all kinds of opinion.
In the end you have to have Functional Statistics to convince the regular herd of non-statisticians. That means simple comparisons
Confidence intervals, X-bar charts, sufficient sample sizes, and so on get non-specialists confused - if it's killing 2.5% or 3.5% of the users you've still got a basic problem with the features and someone better get it fixed fast.
So go with Functional Statistics and find a copy of the book 'how to lie with statistics' so you can understand who's slanting a news article one way or the other ("look, 97% of our users of this feature survive!").
I used two versions prior to 1.0; and OpenShot showed great promise. Used it on a real project even (30 second client demo), had to run through Avidemux then to get a .avi that Windows users could watch on their default XP windows media program (all ok on linux without that though).
I'll be installing 1.0 to check it out.
The hardware is fine, just watch the sales.
.. it takes about 20 minutes to install Linux and you run faster and no bloatware.
If you're buying computers
Get your friends to install it and you won't need to be the family sys admin to clean it up or reinstall due to users mucking around with it.
google distrowatch and see all the choices.
Then you will find it easy. Social networks are hot and generating revenue there is important.
You correctly realize you need a professional manager/CEO to do it.
Don't give up on the IPO yet. If you have amazing revenue then contact Goldman Sachs in NY. Filing IPO costs around $500k, but there may be easy underwriters.
Do you have any links to forward to several candidates I know?
Best options for most companies using less than a hundred thin clients is to just get auctioned-off pc boxes and strip them down to basic thin clients (remove all drives). A few years ago I got a pallet of 7 year old pcs for $5 each. Another option is to go to gumstix.com and grab their basic computer on a stick - $130-$160. Enough to run LTSP clients (with some Ram increase to 128MB). Probably better for larger deployments to get OEM large lot pricing.
Football has those marvelous Cheerleaders ... and science has what, exactly?
Smart parents will teach probabilities to their kids. Play sports for the fun of it, not intent on getting to the NFL, and choose a vocation that most do ok with upside for luck, cleverness, and work to do something great. Like the next Ford, HP, Microsoft, Google, or Twitter.
And marry the Cheerleader that is going into Engineering, Medicine, or Law themselves.
Assuming you have seven year old Microsoft OS boxes, then switching over to a fewer number of latest Linux OS boxes would be an improvement. Many of the services you list can run in the same Linux box just as happily - without VMing them. Others you may want a dedicated box (email server with big HDD arrays). For a small facility having only 150 users you've got a small budget and insignificant system loads.
However, if you want to make a more significant dent in operations, equipment costs and IT maintenance, look into client-server setups using LTSP.org - transfer all fat-client based 150 users to thin clients (stripped down current machines or new thin clients the size of desk phones) running on a few back-room servers. Switch over the office phone system to something like Asterisk etc. Look into FreeNAS and m0n0wall/pfSense. Set up a Drupal or Wordpress system to publish internal documents and/or to the Web. Lot's to keep you busy and productive besides those few old workhorses.
What a mess. And a pile of work. Install Ubuntu, set them up with individual accounts, tell them you upgraded the OS and all the software. They are probably already using Firefox, Open Office, and so on.
If the PCMCIA doesn't PXE boot on its own (probably not) then go to http://rom-o-matic.net/ for a floppy disk to do it. There is probably a VGA port out of the laptop so you can hook standard keyboard, mouse, and monitor to it and get a good client.
Three options:
1- get a floppy network install disk of Debian
2- remove the HDD and put in another computer, install DSL, Puppy Linux (lately I like the MacPup 'Pupplet'),or Debian and then move the HDD back to this laptop.
3- look for 'tinyCore', Linux built by one of the DSL developers.
with a "kill-a-watt" meter or similar. If the server you have is Pentium 2 or newer it should have good power management already built into it. When idle I've had P2's (rated at 100 or 200W on the case, that's max output not continuous consumption!) sipping along at 15-20w. These were stock desktop machines running headless with no extra PCI cards sitting in there.
Alas, no 'regular' people in the US are encouraged into the sciences.
It's more cool to be a half-drunk celebrity reality show subject than a top Engineer. Rock Stars and Sports Athletes are where the media and society encouragement pushes kids (gotta get that football 'scholarship').
Movie cliches with technical people in taped-up glasses do not the professional merits.
Tons of shows about lawyers and physicians but where are the cool Engineer dramas? CSI/NCIS/etc may be helping, but too profitable for the studios to make the next follow-around-this-crazy-person reality show.
Most other countries place their Engineers and Scientists at the same level of respect held by doctors and lawyers.
Until that happens here only a few talented kids will find their calling and invent stuff.
Desktop Tower Defense
Sauerbraten
Regnum
Influential books that had an impact on me during the High School years, and would have been great in such a class. You won't be able to cover very many books, but you should at least get these in there:
Foundation
Ring World
Lord Foul's Bane
Ender's Game
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hobbit (no, not LOTR)
The Sleeping Dragon
A lot of the others are covered in political or regular english courses (animal farm, 1984, F 451, etc), or really were just entertaining reads (Princess of Mars, Conan, Hitchhikers Guide, Xanth, etc).
He probably thought he'd need it ... 'gosh darn it! They're payin' a big load of cash for me to head over there, I better have a backup!' .. and then he gets over to the new shop and finds out one of two things ..
1) Nobody at the new shop thinks the competitor is any good - 'don't need that worthless code' - those guys are at least three weeks behind us, probably more!
2) The code is actually behind where the new shop is running on the technology curve (more probable because the competitor isn't paying top dollar - so who'd stick around if they were any good?).
A different industry... but the companies I found that were the most protective of their stuff, were woefully behind the rest of their competition. The reason was they had the highest esteem for their own work and were the most inwardly focused. They didn't bother to look up and see that they were bringing a knife to that gun fight.
For a product to be successful it has to solve a big problem for someone, big enough to justify a price the consumer will pay. What problem has the Segway solved better or cheaper? Bikes and scooters solve the short distance mini transport problem quite well, cheaply, and durably.
The only other problem is more difficult - how to make it a fashion item with celebrity status. Like a high end purse or car or brand of coffee. Unleash a fleet of product designers at it to spiff it up with leather, chrome, and a strong V-8 rumble, place it in a few cool movies, get a few hot celebrities to take them to movie premiers "because look at how green they are", and soon a Segway will be an in thing.
If you tune your system, those old boxes can be quite low power... like energy star rated Pentium-II's from 1998+/-. These work great as file servers. Install something like FreeNAS or build a Debian server and set it up headless & remove all unnecessary cards (sound, video, etc). I've had them idle less than 20watts before.
those old pc's often didn't need auxiliary cpu fans (I have a P2-266Mhz box that's 'fanless'). Compared with newer P4's that all have blazing fans because they throw off so much heat - maybe you can dial them back...
You can check your system with a kill-a-watt meter. Don't go by the powersupply 'rated' number - that's at peak load not squeezed down energy sipping for infrequent backup server use.
Toyota had and has as many big SUVs as any of the other automakers. Go check out their lineup. They have those vehicles because that's what people buy (when gas prices are low). I remember the days when you could have nine kids all milling about in the back seat. Now you have to have an 11 passenger vehicle to transport the kids in safety seats. So SUVs are popular. Toyota's sales were down in similar digits to the US manufacturers - they didn't experience as much of a problem (bankruptcy) because they had a source of funds squirreled away. No poising - there are as many parts in a small car as a big SUV while the margin on the SUV is much more fulfilling. Also, good luck with that battery pack - you must not have any laptops, flashlights, or toys to know how frequently batteries fail and have to be replaced.
Actual battery replacement will be earlier than published projections. These cars run on laptop batteries, a whole lot of them. Only takes a few bad ones to stop the vehicle. How long has the battery worked in your laptop? A lot of technology to still get worked out.
Linux is a lot like Microsoft... in that there is a lot of tools/programs but they often don't fit together prettily. Linux does more than the job. but it's often not pretty or the UI is not entirely well thought out. When Microsoft tried to fix Win XP to compete with Mac and ended up creating Vista...
I've been 'ubuntu-specific linux since 2005... Kubuntu first and lately Xubuntu & Mint Fluxbox.
A simple example of things to work through: Ubuntu has upper and lower menu bars (why two?), and the main bar has 'applications' 'places' 'system' (why three?). Clean up that space. I pay too much for screen real estate to be used for 'frivolous' consumption. There is not a good design reason for those being there.
The other extreme is Apple. They use very good design personnel. Who understand Art and UI design. They make simple interface choices for a simple population - and then charges a huge pile for that simplicity and art. Their marketing department is to be admired for getting the simple population to wear the brand badge to be a bit elite ('I paid a bucket full for this contraption that only comes in white and it only does what the fancy designer told me I could do'). But I guess a lot of people continue to aspire to them.
So Linux must innovate. There must be a clear design path, a unified design path, for Linux to show prospective buyers. Is it fancy wobbly windows and raindrops? It's cool to show to non-users but everyday usage it gets turned off.
However User Testing is not the grail.. In the regular business world (automotive, consumer products) it's called 'market testing' and involves a room of 'average people' to review products. It rarely works to get a good design. People lie in these clinics: "should the car be a hybrid?" "Oh yes it should, and sprinkle water mist in your face to cool you down like a spring breeze"; but put those consumers on the dealer lot and they go for the gas guzzler "because it fits the kid's safety seats and I can haul the boat around twice a year, it's $10,000 cheaper than that silly hybrid over there, and gas will stay around $3 a gallon for the next few years, and it goes really fast. Did I say it went really fast?".
A focused designer and a company willing to take risks is needed. It's a mix between Robert Mondavi "Beauty" and Robert Lutz "Good Taste". People know good design when they see it (that nice house down the street) or use it (that nice tool on the workbench). It can be hard to design though (a lot of arm-chair designer-wanna-bes and executive oversight control in most organizations).
Shuttleworth is on the right path with Ubuntu, and Linux in general, that it needs to achieve "Style", "Beauty", "Grace", and "Good Taste". That will take a lot of innovation, which open source is best able to produce, and it will happen sooner than we all think.
I've used OOo since 2005, and I trade documents with Fortune 10 corporation front-line through executive employees for Engineering, Project Management, and Sales consulting work I do. Spreadsheets and live presentations all the time.
I even use a 10 year old laptop (Pentium 3 @ 500mhz and 256MB ram) that has Xubuntu on it to give those live presentations.
Keep in mind that Windows computer to Windows computer often has different fonts installed - so your carefully crafted MSOffice document may paginate differently from one display to another... just like OOo to MSO...
I've lived at Big Fortune-10-types, small mom-and-pop-places, and the medium companies in between. I've worked for myself, I've started companies, and I've closed companies down. Here is what you should consider.
Have you worked in a big corporation before? And for a few years where you're well past the 'new kid on the block, not a threat to anyone, we don't know if he's a maverick or a loyalist but we're worried he might be a slacker yet we don't know' time? Big corporations are populated by people who don't know what to do with mavericks.
Starting your own company is a very big act of non-conformism. You might do it again, they will fear. So you're time there will only be short or you'll be locked into a 'certain level' and promotions (aka bigger money) will be difficult. You'll yearn for the simple days in a small office.
So TAKE THE MONEY, agree to work to transition the new team to the project over 12 to 18 months, set up and train a traditional manager-leader and then gracefully exit. You'll want to get stock options that vest when you exit.
Your responsibility, assuming you did get the big cash, is to put a portion of that money toward starting someone else's startup - just a little seed money to get it going, not so much they get drunk on it, but also enough that you're going to stay interested in their success. Help them along. Teach them what you know.
The next portion of your cash you need to shoe-string your next venture. You should be thinking about what that needs to be while you're transitioning that big company in your old project. And it's old already. Big companies are slow, they think they are fast, but they are not. And if they think your idea is great enough to acquire then you've slipped away from the front of the wave already.
The last part of your cash should be put into a diversified portfolio outside of the companies and markets you work in. Seek a professional wealth manager on how to place those bets relative to your age and needs horizon. This is your safety net.
Then focus on that next idea and the next startup. You did what you did because you couldn't take the boredom of a typical large company. You shouldn't stay in one. I had an early mentor once tell me "When it's not fun anymore, get out of the business" if you've lost your passion you're done.
So negotiate a reasonable price, take the money, get them set up for a smooth transition, and get working hard on that next business startup.