There are some games where it's simply not possible to compete without 'jet fuel' if you will. The key is understanding if this applies.
Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
241–250 of 271 posts
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#242DHH and Jason from Basecamp have been talking about this since day 0. Even now we've indiehackers owned by stripe.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
FAANG tends to pay ~300k for senior engineers. For 400k you usually need to get lucky with stock appreciation.
Nah, that wasn’t my experience (apple/Facebook). Just look at the levels posted here: https://www.levels.fyi Hitting 400k total comp if you have the right experience (5-10 years, good brand university or companies) is totally doable.
But the is a big difference between total compensation and salary. Just to be clear
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is assuming one can get hired by a FAANG, which is not true for many.
Thank you for saying this. The point about FAANG paying so much gets made a lot, and that employees of startups are fools for their decisions, as if everyone's handed a dozen offers and makes a choice. Most of us are lucky to get a single offer, sometimes after months of trying, so we take what we are given. The rosy picture portrayed on HN isn't at all accurate to my experience. Though to be fair my current salary,…
These two statements contrasted is pretty fascinating:
> The rosy picture portrayed on HN isn't at all accurate to my experience.
> I'm payed a crazy amount of money ["far more than I need to live and have a pretty easy life"] to do something I love.
You're living the rosy picture portrayed on HN. You react to $400k the same way most people would react to what you're describing.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#245Because compared to before the shift from CAPEX to OPEX is making that easier for more startups than before.
Thank Amazon, Azure and Google helped by the generous Fed.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#246VCs win if enough of their bets make it big enough to offset the ones that go under. Naturally the big hits are few and the ones that fail are numerous. That means the big hits need to be huge and the failures need to have a certain cap. The latter also means you can't run a company for 10 years in slowmo until they get profitable. And the big hits need to be huge which means they need to take over a nice chunk of a…
While your stats are right, the reality is that people aren't interchangeable and life isn't a perfect game to be approached from a statistical standpoint.
For some people, "100% on" environments are the right choice, and entrepreneurial activities are a natural outlet, whether in isolation or with others. For others, traditional careers offering stability and insurance from any threat of rapid change, or even hermit-like isolation may be favorable. Personally I've fluctuated between the former and the latter, and VC has done well by me as an employee. YMMV. Do what excites you.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#247It's a testament to the propaganda that VCs set up in the last ~20 years that this is even a newsworthy article. Since the first dotcom boom, basically, the popular idea of a startup has been synonymous with taking venture capital and then building your business based on making the VC firm fabulously wealthy in the relatively near term. Of course there are a million other ways to build a successful business, but for…
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Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
UBI needs to be furloughed. UBI aka just a scheme to keep the money flowing from the prole’s wallet into altman’s pocket. Universal basic EQUITY is a different thing. But he’s not offering that.
"I think that every adult US citizen should get an annual share of the US GDP." -Sam Altman http://blog.samaltman.com/american-equity
Oh fuck. I’m totally wrong. I take back what I said. My bad. Thanks for the link. Altman is a boss
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#249From the investor point of view, there's a clear problem with the VC model as described. How do you establish that a VC has any skill? If the game is to throw a load of money at different firms, in the hope of getting 99 losers and a massive winner, how do you tell the good ones from the bad ones? Keep in mind there's noise; a guy with alpha might have a bad day before going to meet Uber or Facebook. He then gets 100…
> How do you establish that a VC has any skill?
The Queensland University of Technology study showed that startups that took VC funding were no more or less likely to succeed than those that didn't.
This suggests that the average VC cannot pick winners better than chance, and that "skill" is therefore not a requirement to be a VC.
I find this disturbing.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#250VCs win if enough of their bets make it big enough to offset the ones that go under. Naturally the big hits are few and the ones that fail are numerous. That means the big hits need to be huge and the failures need to have a certain cap. The latter also means you can't run a company for 10 years in slowmo until they get profitable. And the big hits need to be huge which means they need to take over a nice chunk of a…
Employees get cash, which has the lowest risk of the three players (no cash for founders, cash loss for a VC).
You reduce VC earnings by having more VC competition. You increase founder earnings by having more VC competition as well. Also by providing a better environment for success (that VC's provide, like it or not) You increaes employee payout by the number of competing startups for talent-> more VC and more founders better deals for employees.
There are things that tip the scales amongst the players, but its not true employees lose out as a whole: the majority of minted millionaires in this game are employees, not founders. Even more than VC's. VC's meanwhile have not great returns as an entire industry. And in the founders game, most lose out with detrmient to health, status, or family fortunes.