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Mistakes You Should Never Make

sethbannon.com

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Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#191

Post by slg »

ColinCera wrote: post #186
pjungwir wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also took a few Harvard Extension School classes (mostly Greek and Latin, but also Distributed Computing). I didn't earn a degree, just took a few things that interested me. It's on my resume as Harvard Extension School, and I have to actively correct people who think it's more than it is. My jokey way of putting it is that HES "takes anyone with a credit card." What's really embarrassing is when someone introduces…

> My jokey way of putting it is that HES "takes anyone with a credit card." That's nice & humble of you, but it's not precisely true. There are very few requirements for taking a random course or two (or 20) at HES, but to be admitted to a degree program at HES is not so easy. You have to take a certain number of HES courses and earn a high GPA in them to be admitted to a degree program. Then, of course, you have to…

This is part of what I referred to in my first post and is usually what I mention when someone is truly interested in the school. Harvard College does its credentialing when you apply. A very low percentage of people who apply to the College get in, but almost everyone who does will walk away with a degree. The Extension School moves that credentialing until after the student enrolls in classes. There are virtually no barriers to take classes and the application process isn't hard to get through, but the amount of students who leave the school with a degree is very low. Therefore the school is more of a meritocracy. Almost anyone who is capable and determined enough to earn a degree is able to regardless of their prior educational history. The last time I saw stats on it, the actual percentage of people who apply to Harvard College that earn a degree was very close to the number of people who take a class at Harvard Extension school that earn a degree.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#192

Post by MadManE »

Swizec wrote: post #120
MadManE wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of MVP is that you essentially sell a lack of features. Make something that does as little as possible that someone will buy, not selling something and then figuring out how to do it.

Literally the first step described in Four Steps to the Epiphany is selling mockups . Mockups.

Well, that's depressing. Thanks for the clarification.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#193

Post by larrys »

tptacek wrote: post #33

Of all the financial mistakes you can possibly make running a company, withholding payroll taxes and then failing to remit them is probably the worst. Be thankful you caught this before the liability exceeded your available funds, because company operators are apparently routinely held personally liable when there's a shortfall, and I'm not sure that debt is even dischargeable in bankruptcy. What's worse, minor versi…

"Without making any value judgements about the operations of this particular company, one valuable lesson from the post is: do not ever use the Bank of America Payroll feature."

There are actually all sorts of gotchas in business that happen as a result of some assumption that you make as far as a process being carried out that never has happened. Using BofA wasn't the sole problem here it was being asleep at the switch and not checking that something had actually happened that didn't.

When I pay my taxes (various real estate, business, personal etc.) I typically will actually look for and printout the cancelled check from the bank showing that the check actually arrived at the destination and was deposited.

The example I would use is the long standing thought in backups that you need to actually test your backups, [1] and not assume that they will work when you need them.

[1] For a certain Mac that I am backing up I just bought, for example, 2 - 3tb hard disks. One will be offsite, one will be onsite. One will be a disk clone (super duper) one will be done by Apple's time machine. Also, the two different 3tb disk were purchased from two different vendors. One is WD and is Seagate. [2] I will periodically test both backups to make sure I can boot from either if needed. This isn't for super critical data but for a large collection of photos and videos. (And there are more than one clone of the data for that matter).

[2] Theory being that buying 2 of the exact same 3 tb's (at the same exact time) could come from the same batch and be defective.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#194

Post by extesy »

will_brown wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #33

Of all the financial mistakes you can possibly make running a company, withholding payroll taxes and then failing to remit them is probably the worst. Be thankful you caught this before the liability exceeded your available funds, because company operators are apparently routinely held personally liable when there's a shortfall, and I'm not sure that debt is even dischargeable in bankruptcy. What's worse, minor versi…

As a former transactional/commercial litigation attorney I too would see this issue regularly. One interesting "hack" I would see clients do regularly as owner/employees, they would minimize their own salary to avoid payroll taxes, maximizing their distributions (distributions are not subject to payroll taxes). Unfortunately for them the IRS accounts for this hack , and if an IRS audit finds the salary isn't reasonab…

How is $1 salary justified to IRS? There are a bunch of executives who have $1 salary [0], including Mark Zuckerberg. I really doubt it's considered reasonable.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#195

Post by dsugarman »

xcubed wrote: post #158

This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…

unfortunately I don't think many people would understand what Seth and his team has gone through, and I don't think you could unless you got to a similar stage with a company of your own. what is really awful is that most people only want to hear about mistakes from people who are already wildly successful which is severely limiting your supply of knowledge.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#196

Post by larrys »

will_brown wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #33

Of all the financial mistakes you can possibly make running a company, withholding payroll taxes and then failing to remit them is probably the worst. Be thankful you caught this before the liability exceeded your available funds, because company operators are apparently routinely held personally liable when there's a shortfall, and I'm not sure that debt is even dischargeable in bankruptcy. What's worse, minor versi…

As a former transactional/commercial litigation attorney I too would see this issue regularly. One interesting "hack" I would see clients do regularly as owner/employees, they would minimize their own salary to avoid payroll taxes, maximizing their distributions (distributions are not subject to payroll taxes). Unfortunately for them the IRS accounts for this hack , and if an IRS audit finds the salary isn't reasonab…

"Unfortunately for them the IRS accounts for this hack, and if an IRS audit finds the salary isn't reasonable then those amounts will be subject to payroll, social security, medicare, potentially higher income tax, and moving forward affordable care act taxes plus penalties and interest. "

My experience over time with many business people has shown that since we are not talking about a criminal action but an action that will result in only penalties, interest etc. it is probably a chance worth taking.

This is a frequent occurrence in business in other areas. You have to take your chances and you determine the chances that you take by looking at your comfort level (which is different for everyone) with the potential downside and probability of that downside happening.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#197

Post by MadManE »

raverbashing wrote: post #140
MadManE wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This cannot be overstated. If you give the sales team any room or freedom, they will make your life hell trying to keep up with "features" that outdo everyone else just so they can get their commission check. They don't have to deal with anything beyond signing of the purchase, so they don't care that it sinks everyone else to get that purchase.

You're absolutely right in this specific case. The sales people will go crazy, so don't let them sell anything. Have the technical people evaluate that.

Let them sell what you already have. Why do they need to invent fake products to close a sale?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#198

Post by sethbannon »

xcubed wrote: post #158

This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…

I see that you made this HN account only to comment on this post. I've learned that getting into a back-and-forth with anonymous posters on HN is never a good idea, but I'll respond just this once.

1. You're absolutely right. I majorly screwed up here. I say so as much in the post.

2. I think people can reasonably disagree here. An example: a potential customer asks a sales guy during a demo "...and will we be able to export a list of our users?" Answer: "yes, absolutely". The customer signs. The sales person then runs to dev team and says "we need to build this export functionality before they launch". Did the potential customer think that feature already existed? Probably. Is anyone being hurt? I don't think so, so long as the export functionality can actually be built before the customer launches.

3. I was a degree earning student, as I mention in the post, but that doesn't matter. The way I talked about it was wrong, whether you call it a "half-truth" or a "lie".

Regarding the employees who are no longer with Amicus, anyone that wanted help finding their next job got it. Everyone that wanted their resumes sent over the YC list got that. And I spent a good part of the two weeks after this happened making intros trying to help people land somewhere they could be happy. The team breaking up was one of the toughest parts of this whole ordeal. Having to part ways with an employee when they're underperforming is hard, but having to part ways when they're doing their job well -- because of mistakes you've made -- is almost unbearable.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#199

Post by larrys »

extesy wrote: post #194
will_brown wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former transactional/commercial litigation attorney I too would see this issue regularly. One interesting "hack" I would see clients do regularly as owner/employees, they would minimize their own salary to avoid payroll taxes, maximizing their distributions (distributions are not subject to payroll taxes). Unfortunately for them the IRS accounts for this hack , and if an IRS audit finds the salary isn't reasonab…

How is $1 salary justified to IRS? There are a bunch of executives who have $1 salary [0], including Mark Zuckerberg. I really doubt it's considered reasonable. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary

"How is $1 salary justified to IRS? "

What they report to the IRS and what they show on financials could be 2 totally different things. Entirely possible that they are paying taxes on a higher salary.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#200

Post by king_jester »

rwallace wrote: post #190
xcubed wrote: post #158

This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…

This kind of comment is remarkably shitty. Someone performs the extremely unpleasant and stressful task of publicly admitting to his mistakes so the rest of us can learn from them, and xcubed responds by spitting in his face. What's the result going to be if we tolerate this sort of behavior? Well we don't have to guess, it was documented in the original post: most founders are not willing to admit their mistakes in…

When someone does a bunch of shitty things that directly affects the lives of others, anger is a wholly reasonable response. While it's nice that the OP is being open about mistakes, you don't deserve a pat on the back for telling the truth, it's the default behavior we expect of people.
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