Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 241 posts

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#91

Post by tptacek »

aston wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Commitment to DrinkoCorp" is not actually a virtue, just so we're clear.

I disagree, at least in the general case. I believe everyone has a basic responsibility for the well-being of others (insofar as you can reasonably help), and so even if the negotiated agreement is bad I think it's more virtuous to end on good terms. Threatening to quit just because you have a ton of leverage isn't illegal or immoral, but I'd look down on somebody who did it as prizing money over relationships, which…

If relationships are paramount, everyone should have the same equity stake. What's the formula that gets you from 50% to 6% for $6000/mo? Just a thought.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#92

Post by tptacek »

awt wrote: post #38
bapbap wrote: post #12

I was in the process of writing a long post but here it is in a few points: Ditch her. You don't need her and her screwy demands. That's pretty decent pay, I wouldn't have given her any equity. Do what you can to part ways as soon as you can. Find another developer, on a contract no equity basis, if you can afford it somehow. If you can't you'll need to offer equity. Learning Python from scratch is an option but not…

I worked as a rails developer for less equity and less pay in Silicon Valley for almost a year -- I thought it was a pretty fair deal too.

Are you any good? Are you still looking? I'll beat that number.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#93

Post by tptacek »

run4yourlives wrote: post #73
tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If her work makes or breaks the company, and she's worth more than 80k on the open market, and she isn't "65% stake confident" in the founder, it's not a "sweetheart deal". It's a sucker's bet. Again, it seems like you're talking as if there were "rules" about equity participation. You would have to have an absolutely awesome idea to make, for instance, a security researcher participate in a startup for no salary. Ev…

It is a marketplace. A marketplace where I know that good people exist that will not draw a standard salary and demand equity at the same time. (at least not in the levels we're using here) And I don't care what you're doing, if it takes 12 months to get a prototype in django, you aren't worth 80K.

You're totally right about that. Sounds like there's a consensus that this project needed milestones.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#94

Post by drinko »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #84

Now is the time to be honest with yourself. You need to find out why she left. People usually complain about money/equity issues when they think the situation is so crappy that only money/equity can keep them in the situation. Was there a lot of scope creep? Let me pose this hypothetical situation. You contract with this developer to create your web app before you have fully spec'd it out. But that's okay because you…

She left because we ran out of money.

Scope creep was limited.

The company owns the IP - we did sign paperwork on that.

In case it isn't clear, at the time I did agree to giving her the 35% in equity. I currently own 45%.

She has agreed to documenting and transitioning the app.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#96

Post by tptacek »

One thing I heard here is that drinko may be epsilon away from a credible demo --- the pieces are there, it's just not presentable.

A next step may not be "outsource to India", but rather to hire someone for a few days to document and report what's there and what's working and estimate how many hours it will take to get it to a demo.

That's a small project ($2k-$3k at the going daily rate for indie Python devs) and at the end of it drinko gets enough info to make a sane decision.

Drinko may be screwed --- her dev's demands aren't crazy, but as run4yourlife points out, her accomplishments over 12 months (!) probably don't justify them. This may be a case where someone should have been fired after weeks, not years. In that case, she may be starting from scratch.

But if both parties were acting in good faith, Drinko may be a short contract away --- maybe even a pure "skinning" HTML+CSS UI project away --- from a demo that will generate customer interest, help her get more funding, and attract a better quality of developer.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#97

Post by calvin »

tptacek wrote: post #55
allenbrunson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i assume you made this comment because somebody downmodded you for no real reason? that seems to be happening a lot in the last few days. i'm seeing lots of comments at zero points that didn't deserve it, so i bump them back up to one. i think we've got a silent karma troll.

Sorry, I just thought it was amusing. I don't really care. To make this thread slightly more productive, I will recommend one such consultancy: Blue Flavor.

I met one of the Blue Flavor crew at a recent event in Seattle and have only seen and heard good things about them.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#98

Post by Kaizyn »

huhtenberg wrote: post #48

So what exactly do you do on a daily basis that effectively prevents you from "getting a real job" ? To put it bluntly - I can't really think of what a non-tech person can be doing full-time for 12 months while waiting for the beta to be done.

Well, from what we have been told so far, this is a medical startup. Which means that there's a good deal of regulations and rules that someone has to learn how the company should handle. Since they took investment money, that means that there are investors to cope with. Also, there's that inconvenient issue of working with potential users to learn what they need. Again, because this is related to the medical field, user relations will be more involved than it would be for a twitter or a reddit. The unfortunate thing about this case is that drinko could have forgone hiring a developer and spent an additional 2+ years to learn how to program and build the site with the investment funding.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#99

Post by run4yourlives »

tptacek wrote: post #22
redorb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because she agreed to 6% and $6,900/mo (a lot more than the founder) ... I think loyalty means something, be loyal to what you agree to; or quit... but don't hold the whole company hostage being selfish. I still stick with the "better off without her" mantra here.

How did she hold the company hostage? She did quit.

I don't think anyone is saying that she (the dev) didn't use her leverage to her advantage. We all recognize that it was the OP's fault to give her that leverage in the first place.

However in business, relationships and "karma" - for lack of a better term - are really what things are about. There are times when you should be looking at maximizing your position, and there are other times when you should be looking to cooperate in order to maximize a collective position.

Many of the people here (myself included) are simply stating that the dev displayed poor business acumen by being too aggressive in taking advantage of another's weaker position. The key being who that other person is - her supposed partner.

Partnerships need to have a level of loyalty beyond any particular transaction or they simply won't work.

Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

#100

Post by aonic »

tptacek wrote: post #87
alex_c wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what the nurse was doing OR how much the developer was getting paid. The developer agreed to the terms upfront (and I'm hoping there was some kind of contract involved). Renegotiating or asking for a raise is one thing, but this sounds a bit too much like blackmail to me. Of course, there are two sides to every story.

Blackmail?! She didn't take the company hostage. She quit it. You can always quit. I can always fire you. If you make a mistake when you negotiate a position, you are not ethically required to "ride it out" to some foreordained date.

I'm going to link you to your own thread ;) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183584
Post reply on HN