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Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

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Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#261

Post by walshemj »

aey wrote: post #87

With regard to equity, I wouldn’t join a startup unless it’s cheap for me to buy the options. If you get your cliff, and it costs 50k to buy your options, you are sol. You options are to throw away your equity, or be stuck at a shitty job. Whether it’s worth it “to get rich”, is kind of a bs argument. If the opportunity exists to be a founder go for it, if not take the next best possible option.

So you can do the sell some stock to buy the rest thing Nil Paid I think its called.

And tax wise it can work out better as you don't pay income tax of the shares sold to buy the others - this is scenario dependant.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#262

Post by nostrademons »

xivzgrev wrote: post #260

Have you actually had a startup tell you how many options are out there? I've joined a few different startups all series B or later, and have asked at least 2 of them how many total shares there were. Neither would tell me.

Every startup that's offered me options or RSUs has told me (upon request) what percentage of the company that represents, or given me the total number of outstanding shares and let me do the math. They usually won't share a full cap table, but without knowing the total number of outstanding shares, the dollar value of a share is meaningless.

I'd just value the equity of any company that won't share this information at zero.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#263

Post by balls187 »

ryanmercer wrote: post #2

(I think it's hilarious I'm being downvoted for making a factual observation...) It amazes me how different startup culture, and tech culture in general, is from the rest of the country. ---- Every job I've ever worked at: Relocation expenses? hahahaha Equity? haha we'll wave your brokerage fee to buy as our stock purchase program but if you wanna sell, you'll be paying brokerage fees. Responsibilities? You'll do wha…

It just comes to supply and demand, and being competitive in the market.

Companies looking to recruit and retain specific talent got creative with compensation packages in attempt to keep wages close to market.

I first heard of this during the dot-com boom in the 90's. Companies were paying "huge" signing bonuses.

Sadly I graduated after the burst, but after 9/11, and went into the defense industry. No signing bonuses, but did have a good relocation package.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#264

Post by [deleted] »

gammateam wrote: post #174

the answer to every question on this list: "We are a private company and don't share this information." Outside of the room, the Engineering team laughs at your questions, Operations and the CEO give each other quizzical looks before laughing too, and they go on to the next candidate. You get smug satisfaction for not going with "THAT Company who cant answer simple questions", until a reminder about the rent payment…

[deleted]

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#266

Post by kakaorka »

jiveturkey wrote: post #132
tdumitrescu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect of this is that if you join an early stage startup and work there 5-10 years without any new equity grants (such as the annual refreshers that many companies give) while the company grows and does new funding rounds, then you're getting screwed badly.

only financially, which isn't one of the reasons you should work for a startup!

I think getting paid (preferably well) is always one of the reasons why people work for any company, including startups.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#267

Post by kevhsu »

walshemj wrote: post #261
aey wrote: post #87

With regard to equity, I wouldn’t join a startup unless it’s cheap for me to buy the options. If you get your cliff, and it costs 50k to buy your options, you are sol. You options are to throw away your equity, or be stuck at a shitty job. Whether it’s worth it “to get rich”, is kind of a bs argument. If the opportunity exists to be a founder go for it, if not take the next best possible option.

So you can do the sell some stock to buy the rest thing Nil Paid I think its called. And tax wise it can work out better as you don't pay income tax of the shares sold to buy the others - this is scenario dependant.

it's a startup. your stock is not liquid.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#268

Post by gnahckire »

reaperducer wrote: post #162
latch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect most to be disappointing too, and it's a good idea to avoid those. Proper logging doesn't take more time, it just takes more discipline / giving a damn. People and companies that say: we don't have time to do it right Almost always mean: we don't know how to do it right Talent, not time, is the enemy of quality. (at some point that stops being true, but most companies (startups or not) are soooo far fr…

Proper logging doesn't take more time, it just takes more discipline / giving a damn. People and companies that say: we don't have time to do it right Almost always mean: we don't know how to do it right You're not wrong. But we're talking startups here, not established companies. It's publish or perish time. When the company has enough breathing room, circle back around and do it the way the big boys do.

I disagree. Publish or perish includes time to triage issues, bugfixes, and new developer onboarding.

If logging is fubar'd then all 3 of those are impacted.

If you're pushing a PoC out the door. Sure, go on ahead and forgo proper logging. But if you're secured some form of series funding and need to scale. Fix your boat before you launch.

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#269

Post by Ensorceled »

jmharvey wrote: post #230
Ensorceled wrote: post #220

These are mostly offer stage questions. If somebody asked most of these in the opening interview I'd probably pass. My most important preliminary questions are all trying to get to root of one issue: Does this company follow a theory x vs theory y leadership model. So many companies out there claiming to be team oriented but in actuality are top down, my way or the highway operations.

The "Responsibilities" section is stuff I'd expect to ask/answer in an early round interview. But yeah, the rest is all offer-stage stuff.

Very weird that those were the last questions on the list...

Re: Questions to Ask Before Joining a Startup

#270

Post by jiaweihli »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #239
hobofan wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want your startup to run for more than a year (= roughly the time the effects of technical debt start to kick in significantly in my experience), you need to find a good way how to handle technical debt, and keep it in check. I have seen my share of startups where a platform plagued with technical debt was the main limitation for growth, which is a very avoidable situation.

> If you want your startup to run for more than a year I've never seen a start-up fail on account of technical debt. Re-engineering is expensive, but it means you have something worth re-engineering. I've seen lots of start-ups fail because money that should have been spent attracting and retaining users got burned on an elaborate engineering process.

> I've never seen a start-up fail on account of technical debt.

That's because noone ever says "XYZ startup failed because their code quality wasn't good enough." It's usually something closer to "Their customers didn't renew contracts, they had to slash headcount, and went into a death spiral from there."

If you press for details, the deeper reason might be "they couldn't turn around features fast enough" or "the app was slow or their servers went down too much" which is a symptom of too much technical debt (either directly, or because the better engineers on the team choose to leave as a consequence of the technical debt).

I agree that early startups don't fail because of technical debt, but I'd bet that many mid-size startups do fail because of it.

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