Before You Grow • Hacker News Board

Re: Before You Grow

#171

Post by duncanawoods » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 9:32 AM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #165

duncanawoods wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Seed and Series-A are two entirely different games. Are you actually in a position to offer advice? What you say seems outdated - seeds grew to multi-million figures such that "seed is the new series A" was a thing back in 2013 - firms now offer "pre-seed" funding and "second-seeds" seem increasingly common. The assumption today seems to be that if you have no connections, you must self-fund / bootstrap / FFF your…

Are you actually in a position to offer advice? Are you in a position to question that I am? I've raised a seed round for my company 3 years ago and we are now going for Series A. I feel experienced enough to share some of my thoughts. Feel free to ignore it if you disagree.

Sorry I said that aggressively. I'm tired of low signal startup advice that does not address real-world complexity and it got the better of me.

What would have been fascinating, practical and not have raised my doubts would be if you compared the metrics and institutions you used to raise your seed compared to what you are using for your Series A.

Anyway, best of luck. Three years seems like a long time to live on a seed.

Re: Before You Grow

#172

Post by tim333 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 12:02 AM UTC

mck- wrote: post #169

jayjay71 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YC Fellowship got axed. From what I understand, they're replacing it with an online course (similar to their startup videos/lectures) and it does not include any funding.

Oh that's sad - do you have link to an announcement? I wonder why..

It was announced here https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-changes/

and confirmed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490241

Re: Before You Grow

#173

Post by ethiclub » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 5:17 AM UTC

web007 wrote: post #33

Who finds actual value from Net Promoter Score? It's a vanity metric, just like asking "would you pay $10 for this?" instead of getting someone to actually pay $10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter#Criticism_of_NPS

Ditched it, and now only deal with a cut down version every year or so with clients.

CSAT has been far more illuminating. NPS often indicates success, while CSAT would actually show issues happening on the ground. It feels like NPS is idealistic and in the clouds, while CSAT is grounded and shows real feedback.

Plus, clients just don't like NPS either.

Re: Before You Grow

#174

Post by rsp1984 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

duncanawoods wrote: post #171

rsp1984 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually in a position to offer advice? Are you in a position to question that I am? I've raised a seed round for my company 3 years ago and we are now going for Series A. I feel experienced enough to share some of my thoughts. Feel free to ignore it if you disagree.

Sorry I said that aggressively. I'm tired of low signal startup advice that does not address real-world complexity and it got the better of me. What would have been fascinating, practical and not have raised my doubts would be if you compared the metrics and institutions you used to raise your seed compared to what you are using for your Series A. Anyway, best of luck. Three years seems like a long time to live on a…

Thanks. We hustled to "Ramen profitability" so we don't actually need the money. We'd still very much like it though to speed some things up and to buy ourselves some ice cream to the Ramen every once in a while ;-)

Re: Before You Grow

#175

Post by rajacombinator » Tue, Nov 29, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #135

rajacombinator wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually implemented this idea in contracts? It sounds cool in theory but a PITA/unrealistic in practice.

Yes we pretty much did and why?

Well to name a few reasons ... seems infeasible/inaccurate to measure and attribute the various changes in the product to individual contributors or changes. (eg. what if multiple changes are occurring simultaneously, what about seasonality, what if it's just a random surge, etc.) Further, seems impossible to verify or trust metrics for the external developer. If the company is behaving unethically and misreporting/shortchanging, good luck suing them. Furthermore, from the company's perspective they're opening themselves up to massive legal risk by making this as a contract for the reason above - developer might try to sue them claiming gains which may or may not rightly be attributable to that developer's effort.

I think this is a situation where be a just ruler and exercise judgment in paying employees in proportion to their contribution, makes a lot more sense than trying to codify an agreement.