Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 154 posts

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

#101

Post by sskates »

gregdoesit wrote: post #88

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 w…

That is so cool! I had no idea it had gotten adopted so widely within YC. Wow!!! Be the change you want to see. I'm so glad the startup ecosystem is now adopting it as a standard.

I'm so glad we did it- so many ex-employees are able to participate and celebrate with us this week because they didn't have to worry about giving up their options after leaving. The arguments for the old method of a 90 day window were so stupid. 1) I don't want to keep someone in indentured servitude if they don't want to be here 2) top talent is very savvy and more attracted to places that don't screw them over.

I hope we can see the same for other innovations like more companies doing direct listings in the future. If you're a YC company figuring out how to go public, please choose a direct listing!

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

#102

Post by oakfr »

Follow-up question on your comment "my #1 recommendation is to get engineers regularly talking to people who could be your customers".

Do you maintain this direct connection between customers and engineers today, and if so, how?

How does the interplay with product/growth teams work?

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

#104

Post by sskates »

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.

I believe a few things are happening:

1) The number of software engineers is growing quickly, but the market for software is growing even more quickly. So engineers are becoming more scarce relatively speaking and that pushes prices up. I don't know that I'd call that an inefficiency so much as markets working properly! OTOH, that's also why you see the explosion of coding bootcamps and alternative paths into the industry. Both my brother and sister in law did a coding bootcamp and 2x'd their salaries in 6 months! I don't think there's any sort of career investment you can make that comes close. So yeah- we haven't reached an equilibrium yet, there needs to be a lot more software engineers, and everyone is struggling to hire.

2) The market is not efficient at pricing top engineering talent in particular. It's hard for most companies to tell who the top engineers are (pg has written extensively about this). As a result, top engineers are underpaid by and large across the industry and companies that figure that out can get an edge. I've always said I'm for paying 10x engineering talent 2x above the average as you're getting 5x the value! You see a lot of FAANG taking this approach as well which is why salaries for the top end for engineers is growing at an outsized rate relative to engineers as a whole.

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

#105

Post by sskates »

oakfr wrote: post #102

Follow-up question on your comment "my #1 recommendation is to get engineers regularly talking to people who could be your customers". Do you maintain this direct connection between customers and engineers today, and if so, how? How does the interplay with product/growth teams work?

Yes! It looks different when you're scaled as a company than in the early days.

Product managers drive a lot of it, I expect that group to be spending at least 50% of their time talking with customers. They'll then bring in engineers when you have a higher priority or more technical issue as it's appropriate with customers. For particular features we have what we call "Customer Development Partners" who are the alpha/beta users for a feature as we develop the feature before we get to general availability and they'll interface with engineers. Shadi, our SVP of engineering, is also working on more ways to make this happen!

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

#106

Post by sskates »

nedwin wrote: post #80
sskates wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of SV passed on Amplitude at one point or another. I remember one of them made a comment like "analytics companies pop up like mushrooms after a rainstorm". Raising our seed round was brutal. It took 6 months end to end and was one of the lowest points for me personally. I was trying to scrape together $1M in $50k chunks from any angel who would give us money. We ended up having to lean on our background a…

How much of that first $1m was mid-market/enterprise vs lots of smaller plans?

Deals ranged between $12-120k/year. We were very much the "deer" range vs rabbits or elephant hunting. The customers ranged from small to mid sized companies, we only had 2-3 true enterprises at the time.

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

#108

Post by tehlike »

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.

An engineer 6-7years into their career can pull more than 1M$/yr in FAANG.

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

#109

Post by hooda »

sskates wrote: post #106
nedwin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that first $1m was mid-market/enterprise vs lots of smaller plans?

Deals ranged between $12-120k/year. We were very much the "deer" range vs rabbits or elephant hunting. The customers ranged from small to mid sized companies, we only had 2-3 true enterprises at the time.

Getting first 1-10 paying clients is really tough. And with the $12k-$120k/year range, it might have been really tough. Would you be able to share how did you get those first few paid clients? Thanks.

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

#110

Post by light_triad »

sskates wrote: post #64
light_triad wrote: post #6

Congrats Spenser & team! I hadn't realised that you pivoted a couple of times before starting Amplitude. Do you have any advice for powering through in the early days and evaluating startup ideas to get beyond the dreaded 0 to 1 stage?

What I say here around not quitting is the most important one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28701942 You'll get better at evaluating what directions will result in traction as you go through more ideas and spend more time. We went through 6 or 7 different ideas, including: outsourcing website, website for finding photographers, alumni map for MIT students, Sonalight voice recognition, before landing on Amplit…

Thank you for your reply and for the links. Much appreciated.
Post reply on HN