111–120 of 194 posts
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How many Silicon Valley startup founders have faced felony charges for making financial misrepresentations in recent years?
If you're choosing between "should I commit a felony or not" should it matter how often other are charged with it? What happens if law enforcement suddenly becomes more interested?
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How many Silicon Valley startup founders have faced felony charges for making financial misrepresentations in recent years?
If you're choosing between "should I commit a felony or not" should it matter how often other are charged with it? What happens if law enforcement suddenly becomes more interested?
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I think you might be misapprehending Sam's posts. Demo Day just finished and he's advising startups by warning them about pitfalls. YC has a tradition of making these kinds of posts public—pg used to publish his advice to YC startups in the form of essays for anyone. I always thought that was great. (Off topic: I've been inspired by it to (slowly) write some advice for YC startups about what counts as good content fo…
Thanks for acknowledging/replying. Regarding your specific complaints: (2)Assuming conclusion and using that to open up discussion is a fairly standard rhetorical practice. Are you saying that that paragraph doesn't move the discussion forward? Why is it unfair? It's an assumption/leading for sure, but it's as fair as anything else. 3) Ok. So here's the thing: when you put things out on the internet, other people rea…
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I'm loving the downvotes. And to what end am I being downvoted? It's a clever joke and a relevant and pertinent point.
This site's moderation system is crap.
Also, if your role is an incubator investor, isn't it your job to educate the inexperienced founders about things like this?
fwiw I don't understand how anyone could confuse LOI with executed contract. I mean, really the only way that the concept of a LOI can arise is when you ask "can we get a contract in place?" and the answer is "not at this time" so you counter with "how about an LOI?". Hard to get confused about that..
Interesting idea: VCs should have in-house finance folks specifically meant to work with portfolio companies who spent a few days a month for year 1 after investment, or until the company gets it own finance team. Most VCs do less than 10-15 deals a year, so this seems tolerable and a relatively low cost way of to really know what's going on with the portfolio. (I know some VCs already kind of do this (Vantage Point)…
> Interesting idea: VCs should have in-house finance folks specifically meant to work with portfolio companies who spent a few days a month for year 1 after investment, or until the company gets it own finance team. Doesn't a16z already do this, not just for finance, but also for PR, hiring, etc.?
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What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people? Or at least contract with an expert? Is it a difficulty in judging their abilities when it's not your area? Is it something where only at a certain size would it be worth the reduced financial risk to have someone on it? Learning from scratch has to be the slowest, highest risk way of doing it -- which is the exact opposite of what a startup should be opti…
"What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people?" I think the reason is that you are in stage where the CEO personally empties the rubbish bins in the office, that's why.
Here's the biggest offenders I see when talking to founders: revenue vs GMV (if you give GMV, give me your cut/margin) contract vs LOI burn vs expenses users vs customers (customers pay) signups vs users vs active users (you should give active with time interval and measurement of active. eg. logged in last 30 days) profitable vs cash flow positive Others people should know: diff between retention rate vs churn rate…
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"What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people?" I think the reason is that you are in stage where the CEO personally empties the rubbish bins in the office, that's why.
Um. I've emptied the trash cans at my company, but we still had an accountant (external). And lawyers.
Personally, I love the fella who empties our trash. He's become a close friend of ours, with his heavily accented "Hello friend!" message he greets us all with and everything!
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This site's moderation system is crap.
Dissent is not tolerated, despite that the criticism comes attached to clear evidence of poor moderation? Keep the downvotes coming - it only goes to prove how arbitrary and non-information bearing they are.