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

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

#111

Post by randomhack »

Sorry for your difficult situation.

1. Outsourcing may not be a good option particularly for work that can be done by 1-2 developers. Approach a local developer, try and negotiate a contract where you give equity but not salary.

2. The runaway developer has 35% equity still? That might be very problematic in the future.

3. I do not about Django particularly but learning Python is not tough. Python is a very easy language to pickup and you should devote some time to learning the language so that you can at least understand what your fellow dev is doing.

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

#112

Post by run4yourlives »

tptacek wrote: post #109
run4yourlives wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this example shows that the market has nothing to do with anything - it's people's perception that matters. It this particular case the dev won. I'll give you that most of the time it works the other way around. Clearly, the poster underestimated her position and overestimated the dev's ability and that's what got her in trouble. With more knowledge, she could easily see that a django dev isn't worth 80K + 35…

I think we're agreed in principal and opposed semantically --- if drinko's position was better, a dev quitting wouldn't matter to her. Strong disagree that a Django dev isn't worth 80k+35%. Sure, I wouldn't pay anything close to that, but I have a mature thriving company. But on day 1, without the capital to contract the project out, that could be a totally fair deal. Am I totally wrong about how much Django devs mak…

No, I think an 80K mark is good for a salary. What I disagree with is that a brand new startup should be hiring an 80K dev right out of the blocks like that.

This startup needs a technical partner, not an employee, imo. So, you'd be looking at upwards of a 50% share with nowhere near that salary requirement.

BTW - Billing rates rarely translate into salaries in any normal fashion. Two different markets, and the billing rate one tends to be much more inflationary.

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

#113

Post by tptacek »

pchristensen wrote: post #102

Holy crap - you're paying her $83K, plus gave her equity, in TULSA ?!?!? That's not exactly a high cost area. If you have $190K and you've paid close to $100K to her (14 months) just to get a proof of concept, I'd say you're in trouble. If she's drawing a handsome salary, won't put any of her own money in, and won't take a pay cut, she can't be that confident in the value of the equity. Sounds like you got milked. I…

"This Django girl"?

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

#114

Post by mbedwards »

drinko wrote: post #74
andreyf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... as the payoff for learning to hack will be a few months. It doesn't have to be that long. Do you have any programming experience? Do you have any friends that do? With a smart friend guiding you through, you can skip a lot of annoyances when you learn to program. This is also a prudent point - what have you been doing the last 12 months? That would have been more than enough to get the hang of Django...

I don't have any programming experience beyond BASIC as a 5th grader. Market research, ethnographic study, trying to raise more funding,(too early for VCs here, and there are not many risk taking angels here), running the ongoing alpha, liaising with patient groups, and health organisations, writing copy and designing interfaces. Learning about tech startups is a phase transition from the perspective of a nurse.

Your project sides interesting and in the same space as mine. Send me an email at mbedwards@gmail.com

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

#115

Post by thaumaturgy »

pistoriusp wrote: post #86

Does anyone else think that a salary of $6,900 is too much? I even think that $3,000 is too much... Of course my situation in South Africa might be a lot cheaper. I got away with $1,250 per month, and even then I was able to live pretty comfortably.

Absolutely -- that was a huge red flag for me. That much salary plus equity is a lot of money.

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

#116

Post by run4yourlives »

tptacek wrote: post #69
axod wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound particularly like she believed in the idea. I think in retrospect it would have been better to offer 50% and the same salary as you. Going forward though, I'd say definitely learn to hack. Also find people who might help not because of a salary, but because they think the idea is cool and want to be part of it.

Why is "learning to hack" the answer here? Doesn't that leave this person with a startup with no team?

It's not part of the solution here. It's just a good investment if you are running a tech start-up.

For example, if there was another partner here that knew how to hack, but wasn't a nurse, I'd say: Learn as much as possible about health care - it's your industry.

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

#117

Post by run4yourlives »

allenbrunson wrote: post #54
tptacek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, really, there are. =)

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.

They're called people from techcrunch.

:)

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

#118

Post by nostrademons »

run4yourlives wrote: post #99
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm speculating here, but I'm guessing that when she took the job, she thought "Sure, this'll be a cinch. I get a full salary, and if it works out, a nice bonus." Then it turned out the job was much harder than she expected, she saw the founder with 94% doing basically nothing, and said "Dude, if I'm going to slave away with this code for months, I should get founder-level shares. Otherwise, I could just do what you're doing and take the 94% you're getting" and tried to renegotiate for a stake that'd make the development pain worthwhile. The OP refused, so she walked.

Chalk it up to first-time founder mistakes on both sides. Almost everybody drastically underestimates the amount of effort required to get a startup off the ground. So what seems acceptable at first ("yeah, this won't be hard for me, I can whip it off for you") starts to feel like you're getting massively ripped off later.

And I totally agree with the comments on other subthreads that she's probably not a very good Django dev. I wouldn't be surprised if this is her first Django project. I remember that I expected my first PHP project to take 3 months; it ended up taking 3 years (I didn't charge for it; it was a volunteer project in college).

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