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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.

#141

Post by pchristensen »

tptacek wrote: post #132
pchristensen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was either that or "the developer that took a royal salary and equity, then extorted more equity, then quit leaving our hero high and dry, broke, with an incomplete alpha, after taking one year to not finish developing a proof of concept." I was trying to be nice.

Ok, start here: do you know the developer's age?

Age doesn't have much to do with gender. If she was male I would have called her "The Django Guy". There's not a great corresponding female version of guy - chick sounds chauvinist, lady sounds to formal (think of how "The Django Gentleman" would sound). "The Django Woman" doesn't work either. What would you have said?

More choices from Encarta Thesaurus: lass, miss, young woman, mademoiselle, daughter, lassie, mademoiselle, maiden, damsel, maid, young lady.

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

#142

Post by randallsquared »

tptacek wrote: post #132
pchristensen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was either that or "the developer that took a royal salary and equity, then extorted more equity, then quit leaving our hero high and dry, broke, with an incomplete alpha, after taking one year to not finish developing a proof of concept." I was trying to be nice.

Ok, start here: do you know the developer's age?

"Girl" doesn't imply age any more than "dude" does, but it does imply a bit of disrespect over, say, "this Django coder", in exactly the same way that "this Django dude" would.

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

#143

Post by kyro »

tptacek wrote: post #132
pchristensen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was either that or "the developer that took a royal salary and equity, then extorted more equity, then quit leaving our hero high and dry, broke, with an incomplete alpha, after taking one year to not finish developing a proof of concept." I was trying to be nice.

Ok, start here: do you know the developer's age?

Just to let you know, if you're wondering who is downvoting you, it's me. This comment and the one before were both stupid and unnecessary.

If you really gave half a shit about the original poster and the situation she's in, you wouldn't be going through picking on every damn comment and responding with idiocy, and starting branches of discussion that aren't relevant to the subject at hand and do nothing more than make finding useful information here more cumbersome.

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

#144

Post by pchristensen »

randallsquared wrote: post #142
tptacek wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, start here: do you know the developer's age?

"Girl" doesn't imply age any more than "dude" does, but it does imply a bit of disrespect over, say, "this Django coder", in exactly the same way that "this Django dude" would.

In the great tradition of Dear Abbey, I reserve the right to show a tiny bit of disrespect when told a tale of exploitation like the one the OP shared.

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

#145

Post by mixmax »

nostrademons wrote: post #129
mixmax wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, and I think that I'm probably one of the few people that have seen it from both sides - allow me to explain: The startup I talked about above was some years ago, and I had no idea how to program anything. It worked out because we were extremely persistent, and simply didn't take no for an answer. A year ago I thought that it might be a good idea to actually learn to hack, and so I set about learning…

For people that do try to outsource, the crucial question to ask yourself is "What do I bring to the table that a hacker might need?" I chose to partner with a non-technical friend (who ended up quitting, but at least he gave me full ownership of the startup), because this friend was adept at dealing with people and had connections to several possible angel investors. These are aspects of the startup experience that…

I think that what drino is bringign to the table (this is pure speculation based on the original post) is knowledge of the domain, and persistence. If she is good at selling the solution then I think she has a good chance of succeeding.

An overall note on your post: I think that when you break it all down there are basically only two things that matter in a startup: 1) having a product. 2) being able to sell it. Often the people that are good at making products are terrible at selling them and vice versa. So you certainly need good hackers, but you also need great salesmen. And both of them need to be pretty persistent, since they're facing tough jobs.

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

#146

Post by lux »

Hopefully you have something in writing that protects your IP rights as well, or she may be able to run off with the code. Conversely, if you've signed away ownership though, you may need to buy her shares out to retain 100% ownership.

Short of learning to code, which would be a good idea either way, you could try something like elance.com to find a qualified developer to get it to beta. That could even produce a partnership afterwards, although I agree with what PG said about partners being friends first, for the trust factor.

Good luck, hope you're able to pull through :)

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

#147

Post by mixmax »

ovi256 wrote: post #139
andreyf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More data points: I've had experiences with only two startups which outsourced their initial code - and both regretted it deeply (ended up in complete rewrites).

>ended up in complete rewrites I don't think you can blame outsourcing for that exclusively. Most startups rewrite their code multiple times, to track design changes. OTOH, if it was a rewrite motivated by code quality issues, I can see what you mean.

Good to see you back in the game ovi256

;-)

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

SwellJoe wrote: post #138

Not a lot of people are talking about the very serious problem of your developer now owning 35% stake in your business. Even if you manage to pull all of this stuff together by yourself, you're still screwed. You cannot raise more money as long as there's a "ghost" shareholder...if you do it without telling the investors about it you're liable to get sued, and if you tell them about it, they'll do the math and figure…

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by ovi256 »

mixmax wrote: post #147
ovi256 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ended up in complete rewrites I don't think you can blame outsourcing for that exclusively. Most startups rewrite their code multiple times, to track design changes. OTOH, if it was a rewrite motivated by code quality issues, I can see what you mean.

Good to see you back in the game ovi256 ;-)

Good to see people care. I'll get you all beers if we ever get together.
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