61–70 of 180 posts
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The board has a fiduciary duty to act in the interest of shareholders. If the shareholders were not part of a vote, ie. the board voted, then the board is potentially liable for damages.
That is not true. It is a talking point that is repeated but has no bearing on reality.
For all the ire on this site about the likes of Google, Apple, etc. screwing over the small company with their 30% app store fee, why isn't there even more outrage over the founders and startups who screw over their even more deserving-of-help employees? You know, the employees who get subjected to unregulated dilution, tyrannical bosses, unreasonable hours and unclear compensation for trading off the prime years of…
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So in summary you are saying it makes no sense to be an employee at a startup. There's no upside except for "lottery winners".
I've seen a ton of this on HN for the past couple of years, "Go work for FAANG, startups are worthless." As someone who has started a company, gotten it funded, and would like to hire high quality engineers, this is deeply disheartening. I've tried to hire a few people, offering them market rate or close to it for base salary (_very_ rough ballpark 150-200K for 2-5y experience) and a decent chunk of equity (highly va…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in summary you are saying it makes no sense to be an employee at a startup. There's no upside except for "lottery winners".
I've seen a ton of this on HN for the past couple of years, "Go work for FAANG, startups are worthless." As someone who has started a company, gotten it funded, and would like to hire high quality engineers, this is deeply disheartening. I've tried to hire a few people, offering them market rate or close to it for base salary (_very_ rough ballpark 150-200K for 2-5y experience) and a decent chunk of equity (highly va…
Make the company attractive by providing other advantages, such as an interesting problem to work on, interesting technology, being part of a great team, the excellent experience the engineer will receive (not just closing bug tickets), a closable door office for each engineer etc.
If you are going to compete on salary / options alone, you are also going to get candidates for whom that is also the only criteria evaluating a job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in summary you are saying it makes no sense to be an employee at a startup. There's no upside except for "lottery winners".
I've seen a ton of this on HN for the past couple of years, "Go work for FAANG, startups are worthless." As someone who has started a company, gotten it funded, and would like to hire high quality engineers, this is deeply disheartening. I've tried to hire a few people, offering them market rate or close to it for base salary (_very_ rough ballpark 150-200K for 2-5y experience) and a decent chunk of equity (highly va…
This sounds a bit dodgy. I don't endorse paying someone with less than 5 years 250k/year but if you're looking at someone then the amount of options you give them should be worth at least the salary cut over the vesting period. So say you're looking at some VP potential that could get 400k per year working at Netflix or something and you're going to pay them $150k. Then you should offer them (imo) $750k in options vesting over 3 years. That's in now money, as in that should be whatever the investors in your last round paid for that same stock.
Not an exact art of course but if you do it that way, and you explain your logic in the offer, and they still don't agree, then they just don't want to work for you. If this calculation comes out to something that's untenable for you, then you're looking at too expensive engineers and imo you should move your company out of the valley.
For all the ire on this site about the likes of Google, Apple, etc. screwing over the small company with their 30% app store fee, why isn't there even more outrage over the founders and startups who screw over their even more deserving-of-help employees? You know, the employees who get subjected to unregulated dilution, tyrannical bosses, unreasonable hours and unclear compensation for trading off the prime years of…
Oh gonna need a throwaway for this one. I had an exit interview where the founder told me their endgame was to destroy the value of the company to buyback the equity they sold to investors. I've never been more insulted in my life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen a ton of this on HN for the past couple of years, "Go work for FAANG, startups are worthless." As someone who has started a company, gotten it funded, and would like to hire high quality engineers, this is deeply disheartening. I've tried to hire a few people, offering them market rate or close to it for base salary (_very_ rough ballpark 150-200K for 2-5y experience) and a decent chunk of equity (highly va…
> and that someday stock worth 10s or 100s of K will be worth 100s or 1Ms This sounds a bit dodgy. I don't endorse paying someone with less than 5 years 250k/year but if you're looking at someone then the amount of options you give them should be worth at least the salary cut over the vesting period. So say you're looking at some VP potential that could get 400k per year working at Netflix or something and you're goi…
In my experience, employees place much more emphasis on salary than options during negotiation. And that is find, it is the CEO's job to sell the vision of the business and acquire the resources necessary to execute. Just don't be disappointed if that means the company raises additional investment to pay your salary instead of granting more options.
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As shareholders they may have a right to certain acquisition information, even if they aren't still employed. At the very least, current employees cannot be stopped from sharing such information with shareholders.
They can, actually. Almost all employees are required to sign an NDA as a prerequisite to employment. Disclosing company confidential information would at least be grounds for termination, at worst could expose the employee to a suit for damages.
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Oh gonna need a throwaway for this one. I had an exit interview where the founder told me their endgame was to destroy the value of the company to buyback the equity they sold to investors. I've never been more insulted in my life.
This seems like it would be very valuable information to the investors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in summary you are saying it makes no sense to be an employee at a startup. There's no upside except for "lottery winners".
I've seen a ton of this on HN for the past couple of years, "Go work for FAANG, startups are worthless." As someone who has started a company, gotten it funded, and would like to hire high quality engineers, this is deeply disheartening. I've tried to hire a few people, offering them market rate or close to it for base salary (_very_ rough ballpark 150-200K for 2-5y experience) and a decent chunk of equity (highly va…
A 15% options pool is insulting as you’ve decided to split off 85% for yourself and non-employees while leaving a measly 15% for the people who will actually build the company.
2% is just way to low to be of interest to me. And the sad part is, that is much higher that most offers. I have no idea what that two percent will be after being diluted x number of times, so the one thing that is supposed to incentivize me is just a black box with a theoretical ceiling of 2% and a very real possibility of 0 or close to it.
Other things I would like to see: actual vacation time (not unlimited vacation) and accounting/books shared with employees (these are not PowerPoints).