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What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

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Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#581

Post by S4M »

amasad wrote: post #515
kaspiCZ wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a somewhat similar situation to you, but on the upward slope. If you don't mind, what was the breaking point for you? How did you approach your recovery? How much time and effort did you put into getting your business off the ground? How do you manage to combine enjoyable work with delivery (nowadays it is the mantra - everything has to at least help provide value for customer)? How do you handle employee's fa…

>what was the breaking point for you? It got exponentially harder to get out of bed and get to work. I just had to quit because I couldn't show up. I didn't give anytime to interview or find an offer. I was also in a weird situation with regards to immigration. So it was reckless but goes to show how much I had to leave. >How did you approach your recovery? Joined a big company, got myself on a path to be comfortable…

Oh you are the guy/one of the guys who made repl.it! I saw it on HN couple of years ago, it's an awesome product, congrats! I hope you succeed with it.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#582

Post by amasad »

S4M wrote: post #581
amasad wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what was the breaking point for you? It got exponentially harder to get out of bed and get to work. I just had to quit because I couldn't show up. I didn't give anytime to interview or find an offer. I was also in a weird situation with regards to immigration. So it was reckless but goes to show how much I had to leave. >How did you approach your recovery? Joined a big company, got myself on a path to be comfortable…

Oh you are the guy/one of the guys who made repl.it! I saw it on HN couple of years ago, it's an awesome product, congrats! I hope you succeed with it.

Thanks! :)

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#583

Post by cookiecaper »

sedachv wrote: post #579
cookiecaper wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every job that requires financial incentive to motivate work is automatically "shitty" and "exploitative". There are a lot of things that we really need to get done, that people wouldn't do if their paycheck didn't depend on it. I would say that probably 85% of the white-collar workforce feels that way about their job, and darn near 100% of the blue collar. We're talking about getting paid something on the scale…

> We're talking about getting paid something on the scale of millions of dollars here. I don't know about you, but most people I've met wouldn't keep working if they came into that kind of money, at least not the way that a regular worker works. They'd update to mimic the work-styles of the elite. The context is early-stage startup employees, not white-collar accountants and blue-collar janitors who you are presumabl…

>Your argument is that the profits shared by early-stage startup employees should not be great even when the profits of the firm they were instrumental in building turn out great.

Firms that resell blue-collar labor are often very profitable. I'm not sure why you think they're not.

>How is that fair and why should anyone agree to work with you on those terms?

It's a marketplace, supply and demand is going to dictate these types of arrangements. There are many more adequate employees who want to work at an early-stage startup than there are early-stage startups hiring employees.

I'm not saying anyone should agree to work under these conditions, but as long as they do, others have to remain competitive.

I don't personally think it's fair. I think early-stage employees should get a much larger slice of the pie than they typically do. But I'm also not going to indulge the fantasy that being a non-founder and/or non-investor can lead to riches; it may have happened once or twice, but it's very unlikely to happen to you. In almost all successful startups, already an infinitesimally small quantity, the founders and investors get the proceeds from the exit and the employees are lucky to see a bonus check for $5k.

>You should really make friends with people who are lawyers, doctors, and in finance. I have friends in all these fields and your idea of these peoples' working hours is a deluded fantasy. They usually work around 50-60 hours a week and rarely take vacations.

They certainly want you to think that's the case. I'm not going to say that everyone in these professions works a certain way or another, but there are many who have a lax working schedule (admittedly, I don't know any who close their practice for 1.5 wks every time there's a bank holiday, that's called "hyperbole"). I know this because I have friends who are doctors, lawyers, and in finance.

>I don't want to address the rest of your [essay] except to say that you should think about why you go so far out of your way to rationalize what to most people is obviously unfair behavior.

I went out of my way to discuss because you seemed like you wanted to do that. This is a discussion forum, after all.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#584

Post by laxk »

calcsam wrote: post #249

The most poignant line is near the end: "It's really tough to ask these [questions] without sounding obsessed with money, which feels unseemly, but you have to do it anyway." Basic due diligence on a startup offer is asking for # of shares outstanding, last company valuation, strike price. Advanced due diligence is talking about things like extended exercise windows, secondary sales, and liquidation preferences. Unfo…

Thanks for the link, it is a great project.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#585

Post by pikzen »

ikeyany wrote: post #580
superqd wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. There is a bit of a lie we all participate in at many companies of nearly every size, though sometimes much more so at small startups. The lie is that we are all on the same team and all in this together. In reality, the team are those who actually own the company by virtue of the money they've put in (i.e., investors). Time is regarded as a non-asset, regardless of how much you invest into the compan…

So you're saying that Silicon Valley is full of temporarily embarrassed Zuckerbergs?

Seeing it from afar, it's worse than that. Seems to me it's full of temporarily embarrassed Zuckerbergs that also happen to be blind to the reality of the world.

Re: What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn

#586

Post by calcsam »

laxk wrote: post #584
calcsam wrote: post #249

The most poignant line is near the end: "It's really tough to ask these [questions] without sounding obsessed with money, which feels unseemly, but you have to do it anyway." Basic due diligence on a startup offer is asking for # of shares outstanding, last company valuation, strike price. Advanced due diligence is talking about things like extended exercise windows, secondary sales, and liquidation preferences. Unfo…

Thanks for the link, it is a great project.

Thanks!
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