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My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

nathanmarz.com

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Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#31

Post by johnswamps »

rdl wrote: post #16

I personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing. An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher ris…

> and vastly less respect when he late goes to try to do his own startup.

Can you elaborate on this?

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#32

Post by rdl »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #27
dpritchett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it's not bad in and of itself, it's just an additional layer of homogeneity that a prospective teammate will consider before applying. The 90+ hour workweeks are already a big red flag to anyone with a spouse and/or children. It's hard to get along at work when everyone else is comfortable contributing in ways that you can't match directly. No one wants to be the odd man out in a high pressure work environm…

I have always worked in relatively diverse environments and I have enjoyed it and would look for the same in my next employer. My current company had no diversity until I joined (the founder and employee #1 even went to the same school), but it never struck me as being worth thinking about. I'm honestly curious, what benefits do you get from a company with ethnic diversity?

Racial and ethnic diversity really seem like non issues...they are pretty superficial differences within a work environment. Age, children, and sex are a little more relevant, and even those are pretty minor and only loosely correlated with traits relevant in a work environment.

Bringing a windows guy into a unix shop, or hiring a sales guy too early at a product development stage startup, or hiring a stupid or lazy person would be real diversity of a bad kind. Good diversity is bringing in people with domain expertise outside your core specialty, like having a font and calligraphy aficionado on your os team.

Superficial diversity is really overvalued.

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#33

Post by jacoblyles »

dpritchett wrote: post #15
theoneill wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it bad that they're white?

Obviously it's not bad in and of itself, it's just an additional layer of homogeneity that a prospective teammate will consider before applying. The 90+ hour workweeks are already a big red flag to anyone with a spouse and/or children. It's hard to get along at work when everyone else is comfortable contributing in ways that you can't match directly. No one wants to be the odd man out in a high pressure work environm…

In an 100 person office, racial and sexual homogeneity would be creepy.

In a 3 person office, who cares?

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#34

Post by mattrepl »

sofuture wrote: post #22
rdl wrote: post #16

I personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing. An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher ris…

That's probably true, but there's a lot more that goes into employment decisions beyond compensation. As an early startup employee, I'm working for (all things considered) less money than I was when I was working in the defense industry. But I also don't loathe my job or lay awake at night, stressed about the idiocy and bureaucracy that made my days hellish, Kafkaesque, comedic nightmares. That's worth more a LOT mor…

Financial compensation is only part of it. Most startups include longer hours and additional responsibilities that limit what else you can do with your life, such as have a relationship, spend time with friends, or work on a side project.

I'd guess you're at an established startup if you're only making ~$10k/year less than your last job in the defense industry. Pre-Series A startups are unlikely to pay even a third of what you'd make in that industry.

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#35

Post by rdl »

johnswamps wrote: post #31
rdl wrote: post #16

I personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing. An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher ris…

> and vastly less respect when he late goes to try to do his own startup. Can you elaborate on this?

If you are founding CEO of a startup which fails honorably, or exits, investors and future team members pretty much ascribe all the good accomplishments of the company to you personally, and think you have a good shot at doing it again. A non CEO founder gets a lesser share of the resulting glory, plus way less name recognition.

Only rarely and with big successes will vp eng, product designer, non founding cto, etc get much cred from a startup. If it fails, ceo can usually easily get a job (sometimes as eir or though investor portfolio companies)

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#36

Post by jdminhbg »

nathanmarz wrote: post #17
dpritchett wrote: post #8

Interesting read but the details are a bit scary from my comfy chair here in enterprise software land: - Six years at Stanford, two CS degrees - Works up to 90 hours a week from home, has burned out multiple times in only six months with the company - Founders work even more - All three appear to be single white 20something males - Job and tech (Clojure!) sound cool. Edit: All that said he seems like a nice guy and I…

I've had some weeks where I've pulled 90+ hours, but my normal week is more like 70 hours.

The sentence about working from 11:00 am until 2:00 am is probably the source of confusion there, if you don't read the part about taking breaks. 11-2 * 6/week = 90.

My work week could be described the same way, but my breaks are for 2 or 3 hours each, and with no commute (which most people don't count in their work week), it's pretty comparable. If you enjoy what you do, those two late hours working uninterrupted are great.

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#37

Post by rdl »

mattrepl wrote: post #34
sofuture wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably true, but there's a lot more that goes into employment decisions beyond compensation. As an early startup employee, I'm working for (all things considered) less money than I was when I was working in the defense industry. But I also don't loathe my job or lay awake at night, stressed about the idiocy and bureaucracy that made my days hellish, Kafkaesque, comedic nightmares. That's worth more a LOT mor…

Financial compensation is only part of it. Most startups include longer hours and additional responsibilities that limit what else you can do with your life, such as have a relationship, spend time with friends, or work on a side project. I'd guess you're at an established startup if you're only making ~$10k/year less than your last job in the defense industry. Pre-Series A startups are unlikely to pay even a third o…

A good eng in defense (at the level needed to be a startup founder) should be making 150 uncleared to 250 secret to 300 ts or project lead or more if deployable. Working 40 hour weeks (well, working 5 hour weeks with 35 hours of meetings, admin, paperwork, and overhead)

A pre series a eng is making 30 to 60 if lucky. At series a, maybe 80 to 100.

Defense is almost a perpetual job, whereas the half life of a pre series a startup is maybe 3 months, 1 yr for series a.

(apologies for formatting, on iPad)

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#38

Post by dnaquin »

nathanmarz wrote: post #17
dpritchett wrote: post #8

Interesting read but the details are a bit scary from my comfy chair here in enterprise software land: - Six years at Stanford, two CS degrees - Works up to 90 hours a week from home, has burned out multiple times in only six months with the company - Founders work even more - All three appear to be single white 20something males - Job and tech (Clojure!) sound cool. Edit: All that said he seems like a nice guy and I…

I've had some weeks where I've pulled 90+ hours, but my normal week is more like 70 hours.

this is similarly ridiculously high.

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#39

Post by pjhyett »

rdl wrote: post #16

I personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing. An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher ris…

When did 5% of 50M stop being a lot of money?

edit: I think something far more deceiving is employee #75 receiving 10k shares and the impression they're walking away with gobs of money after a big sale.

Re: My experience as the first employee of a Y Combinator startup

#40

Post by dnaquin »

pjhyett wrote: post #39
rdl wrote: post #16

I personally think the first one to five employees in a minimally funded startup with small m&a exit as the likely exit are getting a bad deal, vs. the founders or employees who join after financing. An early employee will get about a percent tops as an individual contributor...maybe up to five percent tops if he is more of a vp engineering. In exchange, a seriously below market salary, equally high if not higher ris…

When did 5% of 50M stop being a lot of money? edit: I think something far more deceiving is employee #75 receiving 10k shares and the impression they're walking away with gobs of money after a big sale.

5% is unrealistic. 1% is.

50 million * .01 * .65 (tax) / 4 years = 81,250

considering opportunity cost and time spent. likely not worth it.

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