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Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

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Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#81

Post by patio11 »

sskates wrote: post #44
nthngtshr wrote: post #33

Tell us about your first enterprise sale. How far along were you? How did you find the customer? How long was the process? Also, congrats!

Our first sale was to an ex-Zynga founder of a casino gaming company (hey Bret!). We walked in, introduced ourselves, and went through the demo (note to past Spenser: spend a little time up front asking about their problems first!). We got to the end of it and he asked "how much does it cost?" I was shocked as I had never been asked that question before. I had in my head some number like $50/month, but I remembered p…

Thanks, that made my day!

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#83

Post by Hermitian909 »

caseyf7 wrote: post #65
sskates wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to try to answer the question without divulging how anyone individually did. I took a look at the initial 4 year option grants for the first 10 engineers (this doesn't count refreshers or other follow on grants). The average value at $50/share (yesterday's opening price) is just over $10M. The group varied in experience from just out of school to a few years working when they joined. I feel we were a good d…

While joining a FAANG in the past was most likely the richest path, that may not be true today.

For the actual top tier of compensation in tech (out of FAANG only Netflix is a part of that band) I think it still is. This year I've seen multiple engineers get ~500k offers for 4-6 yoe with no particular specialty, just general competence.

High end of Staff appears bumping into the million dollar range once bonuses come around at some of these places.

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#84

Post by HatchedLake721 »

sskates wrote: post #55
christophergs wrote: post #17

Thanks for doing the AMA! How did you discover your repeatable distribution channel, and what did it end up being?

The key thing to understand is it is a sales-led motion. As much as a lot of HN is not a fan of sales people, it is necessary for any buying process where there are multiple stakeholders involved. As much as I'd like for individual product managers to decide to adopt Amplitude, the reality is it needs the signoff of a full team to implement and adopt. What I have found is that product-led sales people are much more s…

What do you mean by product-led sales people?

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#86

Post by system2 »

jedberg wrote: post #78
callmeed wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Adobe IPO'd in 1986, long before SaaS was a thing. I wouldn't say they quite fit the bill of "built by selling large enterprise software contracts".

I would. Back in 1986, enterprises paid for Adobe software (paid a lot ) and everyone else pirated it. Piracy was the free tier -- you'd pirate it as a student or small business, then pay as you either got a job at a big company or turned into a big company.

I agree. Even at the small agency I worked as an intern, all Photoshop's were pirated. Not cracked but same serial with no online checking. Licensing for small companies wasn't a thing until online verifications became a thing.

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#87

Post by nojvek »

I’m an ex-Mixpanel employee. Congrats Spencer + Amplitude team. Competing with Amplitude raised the bar for the industry. Seeing that Amplitude was a SPA app that was very snappy, it was a core goal our team to make Mixpanel even faster and more flexible. Thank you for pushing us.

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#88

Post by gregdoesit »

If I am not mistaken, Amplitude was the very first SV startup coming up with the idea of the 10-year post-termination exercise window, talked to lawyers who said it cannot be done, persisted and did it anyway late 2015, then open-sourced the approach for others to follow [1].

Triplebyte made a splash by adopting a very similar policy months later in early 2016 (also discussed heavily on HN [2]) and all YC companies were recommended to adopt this approach off the back of Triplebyte starting from the W16 batch [3]. The rest, as they say, is history.

Many companies on this extensive list of ones with 10-year post-terminiation exercie windows [4] might not have this policy if it was not for this know-how benefitting employees put out in the open - between Amplitude, Triplebyte and it spreading to YC, making this approach table stakes a few years later.

Sir, I salute your for doing this not just for doing this for Amplitude employees (who no longer had a "golden handcuff pressure" after vesting their original grant - which is most companies actually see as a benefit, and a way to "leak" less equity thanks to leavers often not being able to exercise), but for a part in moving the tech industry forward.

Legend!

[1] https://amplitude.com/blog/employee-equity-is-broken-heres-o...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11198991

[3] https://triplebyte.com/blog/fixing-the-inequity-of-startup-e...

[4] https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#89

Post by swyx »

caseyf7 wrote: post #65
sskates wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to try to answer the question without divulging how anyone individually did. I took a look at the initial 4 year option grants for the first 10 engineers (this doesn't count refreshers or other follow on grants). The average value at $50/share (yesterday's opening price) is just over $10M. The group varied in experience from just out of school to a few years working when they joined. I feel we were a good d…

While joining a FAANG in the past was most likely the richest path, that may not be true today.

Here's the classic post on the FAANG vs startups debate, for the uninitiated https://startupljackson.com/post/135800367395/how-to-get-ric...

>If you want to get rich, your best bet on a risk-adjusted basis is to join a profitable and growing public company. Google for short. Make $200-500k all-in a year, work hard and move up a level every 3-5 years, sell options as they vest (in case you joined Enron), and retire at 60, rich. This plan works every time.

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#90

Post by actually_a_dog »

vladf wrote: post #77
sskates wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was doing high frequency trading before starting Amplitude. It was a great job: incredibly smart people, rewarding problems, great money and career progression. The only thing I didn't like was the ethos of secrecy in the industry. It was clear the long term potential of positive impact on the world was way greater through building a company than anything else. And if you didn't quit you were very likely to get the…

Surely the hiring issue is a market inefficiency, then, no? There's got to be plenty of engineers out there, but maybe not for typical startup cash/equity structures.

When it comes to startups in particular, it might be a case of actual shortage. Not everyone wants to work at a startup, particularly in the earlier stages, even if comp is similar to what one could get in a public company. Couple that with the relative rarity of actually good engineers among the population of qualified software engineers, the fact that you don't want to hire juniors or new grads at very early stages, and the general difficulty of hiring SWEs, and, although I'd like to see data before making a definitive statement, I can see how it could be many times more difficult to hire at a small startup than a larger and more established company.

Does anybody happen to know whether data on this actually exists or not?

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