This reads like the pilot episode of a quirky netflix show.
I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
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Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#32This is a kind of writing I think of as Silicon Valley mythos - in it, a plucky entrepreneur, a lucky angel investor and a hacker get together, and fail their way into an IPO. At the end they tell the reader he just needs to believe in himself more, and the SV myth will come true for him. There’s a lot of hate in the comments here, but I am personally more equivocal - it is definitely true that absolutely no centimil…
Yeah, this is the bulls^H^H^H^H^Hstory that perpetuates that mythos, too.
> persist and get lucky with a good team and a good market angle at the right time - is a very potent moral.
What we should take away is that there is money to be wasted. A lot of money (which is not going into employees pockets). If someone was willing to give a billion dollars for a press of a bag of juice that could be squeezed by hand, a useless product, imagine what can be had if you have an actual product.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#33Discussed at the time (of the article):
How I Created a $350M Software Company Knowing Nothing About Software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802194 - Dec 2015 (108 comments)
On the recent acquisition by Zoom (thanks ksaxena for pointing this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27968224)
Zoom to Acquire Five9 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27878412 - July 2021 (24 comments)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-19/zoom-to-b...
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#34@dang, would be nice to add the year (2015?) to the title.
Added now. Thanks!
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#35(2015)
Added. Thanks!
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#36Someone always hits the lottery. The probability that it will be you is zero. Most people are much better served working for a company and punching the 9-to-5 clock--especially since startups nowadays rarely give contributors sufficient stock to make the risks worthwhile.
I spent nearly 8 years at a fintech startup in London, leaving late last year. It just recently had a liquidity event (private capital) which means that my options will net me a bank deposit worth several times my after-tax annual salary.
And yet, my current total comp at Google is worth more than my final salary + (pre-tax option value at liquidity event / 8). And I reckon I was the highest paid engineer in the company.
I did forgo the options from my most recent grant when I left, but even with them, it wouldn't have exceeded Google's TC, especially considering $GOOG's recent appreciation. Since you only make money on options if the value rises, you need quite a lot late in the day for it to add up. And the 10 year expiration for the initial options was starting to come into view.
I consider myself lucky to have come out of it so well, but in retrospect, I would have been better off joining Google earlier, though it would have been at a lower level.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#37> Knowing nothing about software. A few lines in: > I created a horse-racing simulation game in Applesoft BASIC in Manhattan Beach Middle School’s computer classroom and ran a small gambling operation. ... Ok.
I see nothing conflicting.
"Software" is much more than just ability to write a small BASIC program.
I have "been in software" for quarter of century and I am still constantly learning as if I was beginner.
Though having been able to write even a small BASIC program may have had an effect of you appreciating the work of a developer just a tiny little bit. And this is not given -- I have seen in the past many CEOs having no appreciation whatsoever and this leads typically to disrupting developer work and underutilizing their abilities. Then when everything starts to fall apart management blames problems on developers rather than try to understand what caused these developers to fail.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#38Someone always hits the lottery. The probability that it will be you is zero. Most people are much better served working for a company and punching the 9-to-5 clock--especially since startups nowadays rarely give contributors sufficient stock to make the risks worthwhile.
I spent nearly 8 years at a fintech startup in London, leaving late last year. It just recently had a liquidity event (private capital) which means that my options will net me a bank deposit worth several times my after-tax annual salary. And yet, my current total comp at Google is worth more than my final salary + (pre-tax option value at liquidity event / 8). And I reckon I was the highest paid engineer in the comp…
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Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#39This is a kind of writing I think of as Silicon Valley mythos - in it, a plucky entrepreneur, a lucky angel investor and a hacker get together, and fail their way into an IPO. At the end they tell the reader he just needs to believe in himself more, and the SV myth will come true for him. There’s a lot of hate in the comments here, but I am personally more equivocal - it is definitely true that absolutely no centimil…
Persistent people are much more likely to ignore their misses and focus on their hits. Someone that hits 10M in revenue may have pivoted multiple times when they were below 1k in revenue trying to get traction. They probably don't even see it as a pivot, they have forgotten about the sales pitches that totally fell flat, and remember the times that a customer said "Could you also do X, we really need that"
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#40This is a kind of writing I think of as Silicon Valley mythos - in it, a plucky entrepreneur, a lucky angel investor and a hacker get together, and fail their way into an IPO. At the end they tell the reader he just needs to believe in himself more, and the SV myth will come true for him. There’s a lot of hate in the comments here, but I am personally more equivocal - it is definitely true that absolutely no centimil…
Yeah, this is the bulls^H^H^H^H^Hstory that perpetuates that mythos, too. > persist and get lucky with a good team and a good market angle at the right time - is a very potent moral. What we should take away is that there is money to be wasted. A lot of money (which is not going into employees pockets). If someone was willing to give a billion dollars for a press of a bag of juice that could be squeezed by hand, a us…
A tangent but I think it is a useful behavior to never assume people are stupid or crazy (even if they obviously must be sometimes). The reason is that it’s at best uninformative and at worst just plain wrong.
Instead I would suggest imagining that people are perfectly rational within the limits of their information and ability to reason, and consider what beliefs they could have had that motivated their behavior.