271–280 of 339 posts
his story serves as a strong deterrent for those who want to quit their jobs at FAAG to do a startup. Financially, it just doesn't make sense. It is only for those who prefers startup lifestyle and are willing to sacrifice potential economic loss for it.
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I did almost say ~ "it's possible we just see very different deals and it colors the perspective". I never deal with asia. Maybe everything I'm saying is off base given it's hardware and asia is a thing in that realm.
I'd just like to say that I very much appreciated reading both of your responses, and commend you both for firmly but politely and reasonably disagreeing.
The finances work out better too. Market salary as a software engineer is easily in the 200-300k range and increases over time with experience and skill. You can also more easily cap your work hours at 30-40 hours a week especially if you're remote. Then if you can figure out a way to do that while living in Southeast Asia, it's hard to imagine quality of life getting better than that as you're now living like a king and should be able to save as much as 50% of your income and retire young.
This shows that going out on your own is not always strictly better or more rewarding. As a software engineer you can simply rent your skills and be part of a bigger team and company that's arguably doing something more impactful than building widgets. The finances work out better too. Market salary as a software engineer is easily in the 200-300k range and increases over time with experience and skill. You can also…
So good to see some actual Startup News on here. I miss the old days of this site when things were more optimistic and less click-bait.
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This is Hacker News. Not news-news. HN does not have to, and should not, look or feel like a news site.
I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…
> creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings Only high-growth, high-margin businesses can get 7x+ earnings. Creating a sufficient level of growth to garner 7x valuation is very tough to do bootstrapped. --- EDIT: The only reason anyone gets a 10x etc valuation is because they're doubling+ year-over-year, and very likely they'll be 3x bigger in 18 months. So basically, that's a 3…
Not really, the S&P 500's P/E multiple has historically been at around 15x and now is somewhere around 30x [0]. And with that, we're talking about large, mature businesses that are not growing super fast -- more like 6-7% annualized, post-inflation [1].
[0] https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...
I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - t…
more like 3.5/4x sales for a small saas not certanly 7-15x
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in what sense is it getting worse? While there may be local minima, I'd argue that its the best its ever been. News has always been pessimistic because negative emotions are easier to trigger to drive attention which pays the bills.
A lot of things are getting superficially better (personal computing tech has never been more incredible), but there's a lot scary shit that is encroaching on the daily without sufficient plans in place to really deal with. Off the top of my head: - Global warming and how we don't seem to have any plans to a path to hit any of the less-than-apocalyptic warming targets, - Corporate regulatory capture, with more and mo…
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Idk, optimizing inefficient systems sounds a lot more interesting to me than working for the man, as you put it. Thanks for writing this out. It seems very difficult to get into. I'll reread this a couple times.
> Idk, optimizing inefficient systems sounds a lot more interesting to me Yeah, I guess I’m being somewhat disingenuous. I like optimizing systems, but I’m aware that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. You learn that very quickly at cocktail parties when people ask you what you do, ask for more than the headline answer, and then have their eyes glaze over when you get into the details. > than working for the man, as you…