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At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

theinformation.com

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Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#81

Post by jameslk »

kirubakaran wrote: post #79
jameslk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends but it's been between 30-50%. They add that on top of the rate I request.

Thanks. It sounds really high for basically minimal risk and not even actively sourcing the clients, but I guess that's how these businesses work.

They do two things that make it worth it: if you set your status as available, you will actively be sold to potential clients, so you don't have to do any sales and they do all the payment collections, ensuring usually net 20 payment. This is especially helpful for the larger clients that usually take their time to pay.

For me, Toptal has been a good safety net, not necessarily where I go first to find new work. And the vetting process adds some credibility to my name.

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#82

Post by staticautomatic »

diekhead wrote: post #77
staticautomatic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they weren't lured with the promise of equity. The promise was that they'd get equity if there was a subsequent funding round . The investors, especially, have zero right to complain.

that is not true. my options have NOTHING to do with additional funding, but with converting the corporate structure of the company - which Taso, CEO, said he would do, multiple times, back then - he's not changing his tune.

Thanks for chiming in. It sounds like the article may have conflated the investor and employee deals. To be fair, the conversion to a corporation usually happens at the same time as raising the next round.

So, it sounds like the deal with the employees was simply that you'd get the equity if and when the LLC converted to a corporation. Notwithstanding whatever other representations were made, was there anything in the equity offer that would trigger/force the conversion to happen? In other words, was there any kind of guarantee that the conversion would definitely happen?

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#83

Post by tedmiston »

bdcravens wrote: post #3

Meta: this site seems to be paywalled from the first article. How does this get upvoted to the front page? Is this some great site that I'm missing out on that people are subscribed to, or are people just smashing the upvote without reading the article?

The Information's content is top notch but access is $400+ per year [1]. The quality of the stories they write is great but the number is very small and most stories are niche. They also break stories before the mainstream tech press.

I get the feeling most of their customers justify it as a business expense vs a personal one. All of the quotes in their subscription signup flow are from well known founders or execs that subscribe (unclear if they get it for free for the endorsement).

[1]: https://www.theinformation.com/subscribe/one

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#84

Post by dang »

This was posted yesterday, but the article was hard-paywalled. We asked The Information if they would unlock it for HN readers, as they have been doing recently (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20630974, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20423483). They agreed, so now that HN readers can actually read the article, we rolled the clock back on this discussion.

Edit: sorry, I pasted in the wrong link so it didn't work right away. It should work now, meaning everyone who clicks on the title above should get to read the article.

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#85

Post by the_watcher »

zawerf wrote: post #44
bnt wrote: post #8

I think the article misses the point: are we now in an era where you actually expect to get stock when you join a company? As a former Toptal employee: IMHO the co-founder in question was widely regarded as a horrible manager, often pushing people to burnout and generally imposing a culture of secrecy and mistrust. The VPs they ousted were nothing better. I personally went through several burnouts while there, but al…

I don't know if it's still true, but Netflix supposedly offers a really high base salary with no equity. I think the logic is that you can just buy the stock yourself with the higher salary if you believed in the company enough to want equity.

Netflix still does this - they pay top of the market in cash, no stock, and encourage employees to bring them competing offers so that they have even more hard data on what the top of the market is for a Netflix employee. They also have an ESOP, so you do still have some privileged access to the stock.

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#86

Post by lbatx »

Well, if you want any further insight into the CEO, check out Toptal's investment page: https://www.toptal.com/investors.

He minces no words and comes off quite aggressively. Very much a "my way or the highway" tone to that page.

They seem sort of like StackOverflow or Basecamp from a bootstrap perspective, without the warm fuzzy feeling you get from interacting with either of those companies.

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#87

Post by nemetroid »

dang wrote: post #84

This was posted yesterday, but the article was hard-paywalled. We asked The Information if they would unlock it for HN readers, as they have been doing recently (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20630974 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20423483 ). They agreed, so now that HN readers can actually read the article, we rolled the clock back on this discussion. Edit: sorry, I pasted in the wrong link so i…

What does "hard-paywalled" mean? It's still paywalled to me, even though the link has utm_source=hackernews and the browser sent a Referer header.

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#88

Post by spitfire »

lbatx wrote: post #86

Well, if you want any further insight into the CEO, check out Toptal's investment page: https://www.toptal.com/investors . He minces no words and comes off quite aggressively. Very much a "my way or the highway" tone to that page. They seem sort of like StackOverflow or Basecamp from a bootstrap perspective, without the warm fuzzy feeling you get from interacting with either of those companies.

The guy may be a class A Ahole, but I really like that message. Like, really like it. He's essentially saying "yes, I know the shenanigans you play, and I'm not going there."

Though, I doubt it's a business that will "scale to tens of thousands of employees around the world". That seems like a reach.

Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors

#89

Post by jedberg »

dang wrote: post #84

This was posted yesterday, but the article was hard-paywalled. We asked The Information if they would unlock it for HN readers, as they have been doing recently (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20630974 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20423483 ). They agreed, so now that HN readers can actually read the article, we rolled the clock back on this discussion. Edit: sorry, I pasted in the wrong link so i…

It's still paywalled, FYI.
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