Not really a big deal tbh. Instead of stock ask for as high of a salary as possible.
At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
101–110 of 195 posts
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#102I don’t feel that bad for the investors, or really even the employees. A lot of startup equity is worthless anyway. But screwing over your cofounder and COO—your partner who’s been on the frontlines with you effectively running the company for eight years—that’s incredibly scummy. That’s a real psychopath move. How can someone be so greedy?
> I don’t feel that bad for the investors, or really even the employees. [...] But screwing over your cofounder and COO—your partner who’s been on the frontlines with you effectively running the company for eight years—that’s incredibly scummy.
Are you identifying only as a co-founder, and you don't think that startup employees deserve to also benefit from success, such as they would by having equity in the company?
I think the idea -- of startup success being all about the founders, and employees are just commodities -- is not unusual, but I don't understand why.
Don't startups hire developers, for example, who have key insights, make technical decisions, and often put in above&beyond effort -- which has substantial effect on the startup's success?
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#103Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#104This 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.
Sorry about that! Should be fixed now.
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#105Well, 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 A hole, 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.
The content is fine. It's obviously spurred by experience or by an influx of offers.
The presentation is shite. Just have an autoresponder.
It reeks of Netflix' culture deck.
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#106Well, 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.
I worked at a startup company for a year in the Midwest that was in the exact same situation, growing 50% YOY with only a little pocket change for speed funding all owner by the founders.
The founders had the same exact idea, founders own 100%, employees own nothing, and they wanted to tell everyone how awesome they were because of it. Key difference was that apparently our city's chamber of commerce that had a lot of skin in the game trying to brand themselves and did some PR work for the founders before they ran their mouth on how wonderful their company was. The message was, after a few edits:
You were going to be paid well but we will never put you into the golden handcuffs our friends on the coast love. (Google "We don't coast" for context)
He sounds like an asshole but really being able to work for a privately owned fast growing company without shitty options being paid well is pretty great in the tech world.
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#107A lot of Sillicon Valley startup fundraising ends up resembling an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Most startups fail and it's likely that you might have to work with people a few times before you get it right. The [generally] dominant strategy for Iterated Prisoner's dilemma is tit for tat[0], and consequently you see a lot of people cooperating when when it might be more lucrative to defect is because they know that t…
> founders who know they have a big opportunity
Firstly, that kind of founder/opportunity is exceedingly rare. It may as well not exist for purpose of discussion.
Ideas are literally worthless. You become successful via execution and execution at scale (unicorn scale) requires many moving parts with many people. That means there's no sure bets at the early rounds. There's not a specific formula that "works" so it's all subjective and VC groupthink. VC "works" only because they take high risk with limited downside via all the things Toptal is complaining about. Without those onerous terms, there would be no VC (as we know it) and it would be an order of magnitude or 2 harder to get funded.
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#108Well, 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.
I worked at a startup company for a year in the Midwest that was in the exact same situation, growing 50% YOY with only a little pocket change for speed funding all owner by the founders. The founders had the same exact idea, founders own 100%, employees own nothing, and they wanted to tell everyone how awesome they were because of it. Key difference was that apparently our city's chamber of commerce that had a lot o…
>He sounds like an asshole but really being able to work for a privately owned fast growing company without shitty options being paid well is pretty great in the tech world.
But not as great as working for a privately owned fast growing company with good options and being paid well, no?
(And if not options, strictly speaking, how about profit sharing?)
Source: I run a bootstrapped software development company and everyone has profit sharing.
Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#109I'm I missing something? It seems to me that everyone involved knew what they where getting into specially the investors. You hear about the cases where founders get screwed all the time. This is a case where a founder gets to keep his company. Good for him. I for one think it's a bit greedy after all he did not build the company all by himself but silicon valley investment is all about greed. It's just another day.
Luring employees with promises of equity and then not delivering sounds like a bait and switch.
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Re: At Booming Toptal, No Stock for Employees or Investors
#110Well, 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.
I worked at a startup company for a year in the Midwest that was in the exact same situation, growing 50% YOY with only a little pocket change for speed funding all owner by the founders. The founders had the same exact idea, founders own 100%, employees own nothing, and they wanted to tell everyone how awesome they were because of it. Key difference was that apparently our city's chamber of commerce that had a lot o…
> We don't coast
https://www.omahachamber.org/wedontcoast/why/
A lot of defensive answers to obvious questions. The slogan may be completely positive in its inception, but I'd wager it's catching on for deeply negative sentiments.
Similar to Midwestern right-wingers referring to people from California as "Foreigners".