I was employee ~150 at a company that essentially had it's exit event with a massive GE investment a couple years ago. DUring that investment, employees were required to sell their stock/options. To the credit of the VP who hired me, the result was exactly as he had told me: "when this company has it's event, you'll likely get enough off your options to put the kids through college or for a big down payment on a really nice house. But the only people who will sniff 7 figure paydays are the VP/C-suite and the only person getting rich(er) is the CTO/founder."
If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
61–70 of 278 posts
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#62Valid reasons to work for a startup: - You are a cofounder. - You have little experience and you are using this to break into the industry, and get experience on many different technologies ("wear many hats"). - They are working on a very specific problem or using a specific technology that you strongly desire to work on and it's difficult to do it anywhere else. - You want to work a certain way (remote, on the beach…
Frankly I'm getting tired of this drum HN keeps beating about startups not offering a good work/life balance. Some startups don't, true. Some FAANGs don't either, what's the difference? I know plenty of startups that have a sane working culture as a key point of differentiation in the job market.
Critical. I have been part of multiple startups that have fantastic work/life balance.
In one case I'd get meetings like "hey, I know you have a kid and all, but we're hitting a deadline soon. Just to let you know next week you're probably gonna have to put in extra hours. But I didn't want to sneak it on you. Let me know if there are any days you can't work extra so I can make sure the other days are covered by someone else." and other times not count my hrs if I work 7.5 hrs or 8.5 hrs in a day.
Startups can be kind. It just has to come from up top.
And I'm not even talking about my current startup which is significantly better.
So yeah. Don't think that startups are all shit. I interview the founders. Are these the people I want to work for, I want to make rich, I believe in.
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#63Valid reasons to work for a startup: - You are a cofounder. - You have little experience and you are using this to break into the industry, and get experience on many different technologies ("wear many hats"). - They are working on a very specific problem or using a specific technology that you strongly desire to work on and it's difficult to do it anywhere else. - You want to work a certain way (remote, on the beach…
Frankly I'm getting tired of this drum HN keeps beating about startups not offering a good work/life balance. Some startups don't, true. Some FAANGs don't either, what's the difference? I know plenty of startups that have a sane working culture as a key point of differentiation in the job market.
The difference is percentages. I am highly confident that if we looked at a large number of high-growth startups and then at the top ~10 paying tech companies and compared the work/life balance, the disparity would be abundantly clear. In other words, you are much more likely to have good work/life balance at a large tech company than at a high-growth startup. Individual examples to the contrary will obviously exist on both sides, but don't negate the reality of what the average employee is likely to see.
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#64Valid reasons to work for a startup: - You are a cofounder. - You have little experience and you are using this to break into the industry, and get experience on many different technologies ("wear many hats"). - They are working on a very specific problem or using a specific technology that you strongly desire to work on and it's difficult to do it anywhere else. - You want to work a certain way (remote, on the beach…
> - Making a lot of money in salary. Startups pay more in salary than non-tech non-finance companies do in total comp. Startups that are far enough along (pre-IPO Uber, Lyft, etc.) pay more than FAANG (the RSUs aren't liquid but you need to only wait a year or two).
Uber employees who joined in 2015 actually saw their RSUs decrease in value by the time the lockup ended in 2019. 4 years of working at a pre-IPO unicorn for negative growth.
Heard this from multiple people but here's an article: https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-uber-employees-failed-t...
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#65Valid reasons to work for a startup: - You are a cofounder. - You have little experience and you are using this to break into the industry, and get experience on many different technologies ("wear many hats"). - They are working on a very specific problem or using a specific technology that you strongly desire to work on and it's difficult to do it anywhere else. - You want to work a certain way (remote, on the beach…
Personally I like to work with startups because:
- they pay more than enough for my near-term financial goals
- the equity is ok
- they let me work on sidehustles
- I get to work on stuff that is truly make or break for the company, not some bullshit pet project a PM needs to get promoted
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#66Valid reasons to work for a startup: - You are a cofounder. - You have little experience and you are using this to break into the industry, and get experience on many different technologies ("wear many hats"). - They are working on a very specific problem or using a specific technology that you strongly desire to work on and it's difficult to do it anywhere else. - You want to work a certain way (remote, on the beach…
Main reason: it's more fun.
I could be a cog in a giant corporate machine, or I can have a measurable impact where I work.
I can stay in my lane and do my specific job tasks, or I can run around putting out fires and helping wherever help is needed.
I mindlessly build the specific design product handed me, or I can guide my own work in accordance to the needs of our customers and the business.
I can follow policy and fill out forms when making any decision, or I can just do what's right because who has time to write policies and look over approval forms?
tbf, tech is relatively good at a lot of these. As I understand it, Facebook gives a fair bit of latitude to engineers, and Google used to be famous for their 20% time. But the longer a company exists, and the bigger it gets, the more bureaucracy and controlling it'll get. Every big disaster means a new policy on how to prevent future disasters.
I think pg wrote an essay stating that the most valuable skill in an early startup employee is "helpfulness" (maybe not though -- cursory search didn't find it). You do what needs to be done.
This is roughly your "wear many hats" point, but more than just different technologies, and not just being new. If you just want to have a well-defined, steady, sane-every-day job, a startup is terrible. If you every want to say "that's my job", a start-up is terrible. If you're the sort of person people will come to for help with whatever comes up (and enjoy being that), start-ups can be great.
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was 0% chance of that occurring as the CEO was a total shark. You would be shocked at how much of the cap table he retained vs. all the crazy funding shenanigans that happened. Very astute player of the game, he did very well. I will invest in his future companies but never work for him again.
Why is it ok to fund that behavior if it’s victimizing people?
I was an employee not a cofounder. I agreed to the terms. He will do anything to succeed. I invest money in people who succeed. That is my opinion about where I will place investments in hyper-risky early stage startups. The biggest jerk in this whole thing is the USA tax code / IRS that made me pay taxes on paper gains.
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Making a lot of money in salary. Startups pay more in salary than non-tech non-finance companies do in total comp. Startups that are far enough along (pre-IPO Uber, Lyft, etc.) pay more than FAANG (the RSUs aren't liquid but you need to only wait a year or two).
Uber employees who joined in 2015 actually saw their RSUs decrease in value by the time the lockup ended in 2019. 4 years of working at a pre-IPO unicorn for negative growth. Heard this from multiple people but here's an article: https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-uber-employees-failed-t...
That depends totally on the RSU package they got when they joined. Negative growth if the package was 50% higher than their previous or FAANG comp is still a net gain.
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#69Always absent in these kinds of essays/posts is the reason why startups are able to get away with this. If it didn't work, obviously the options games would have stopped a long time ago. A lot of people don't want to admit that there's a small army of young, naive employees who are enamored with startups and are perfectly willing to sign up for below-market salary and extremely unfavorable options terms in exchange for "the startup experience". And importantly, this small army is constantly renewing itself. Repeatedly bringing up how much the game is rigged doesn't really do much to change anything.
Re: If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees
#70As an investor I don’t ever recall getting a paycheck from a company.