Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

venturehacks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 124 posts

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#61

Post by idiopathic »

swombat wrote: post #54
mechanical_fish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a startup that failed. My impression is that the founders were never quite the same. It can take a huge emotional toll, especially if you're in the business with your friends. Around here we take pains to emphasize the bright side of failure, but that's because nobody needs to be coached in how to mourn. Mourning comes naturally. It is carrying on in the face of negative feedback from the world that take…

I was just about to reply something along those lines. Failing at your own startup is a bit like burying a child. You start with all these dreams of a bright future, and one day you find yourself facing the stark reality that it just didn't work out, that there's nothing you can do anymore to change that, and that basically the last X years of your life, where you sacrificed anything, were pretty much for nothing. "W…

I know I am being too literal, and I am sure you did not mean it, but... it is nothing like burying a child. I started a company 2.5 years ago and had twin girls a year ago. The thought of losing one of my kids makes me well up while the thought of losing my company just makes me sad. I have heard lots of people in the world of start-ups say that starting a company is like having a baby. It's nothing of the sort. (I know you did not say that, and again, I know I am being too literal, but I just read your first line and the thought of burying a child filled me dread.)

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#62

Post by jshen »

timr wrote: post #56
jshen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born to a single drug addict, into a family in which no one had finished high school, and spent part of my childhood on food stampes. I understand empathy and that I lucked out in some ways, but I had anything but disproportionate good luck. I enlisted in the army at 17 and spent a year deployed. That's how I paid for college. "It isn't their fault, and nearly everyone I've met is doing the best they can with w…

"I was born to a single drug addict and into a family in which no one had finished high school. I understand empathy and that I lucked out in some ways, but I had anything but disproportionate good luck. I enlisted in the army at 17 and spent a year deployed. That's how I paid for college." Fair enough. I'm not trying to take away from your accomplishments. But remember that there are kids born to single, drug-addict…

Why would I care, I'm happy with my life. Anyone that learns to program a computer and is decent at it can get a good job if they live in america barring a few extreme examples.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#63

Post by hammock »

Seems like the premise of this argument is busted. How much stock you own is not the measure of how valuable you are to the company. That's ridiculous. Is Micky Arison, owner of the Heat, more valuable to the team than Lebron James or Dwayne Wade or Chris Bosh? How does this kind of garbage logic make it to the front page of Hacker News?

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#64

Post by wdewind »

gamble wrote: post #52
wdewind wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like to say there is no stigma associated with a failed startup. Quite frankly I think that's bullshit. It may not hurt your chances of getting hired again as an engineer because you will likely have great experience from it. But you will have just spent months/years promising people you were going to improve an aspect of their life (through your business solving their problems, or maybe through getting more finan…

I will buy that it can cause problems with personal relationships, though working 12-hour days as a startup employee will do that too. But the idea that failure hurts you as an entrepreneur is just factually incorrect. Unless personal incompetence was obviously the reason for failure, failed founders have a much easier time raising money and hiring for a new startup.

I think it depends on how you fail. I'm not talking about a 25 year old's Y-Combinator idea not working out. I'm also not talking about a hyper-technical, experimental startup. Those have high expectations and tolerance for failure. I'm talking about something more entrenched in our mainstream culture, years in, people employed and health insured, etc.

Most people who "succeed" have likely "failed" before (that's where they got the experience), but there are definitely levels at which failure hurts you, in many different ways. To say it is "factually incorrect" is over-simplifying the reality.

We don't have a culture that embraces failure nearly as much as we should, though the tech world certainly embraces what it would call the "right kind of failure."

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#65

Post by blacksmythe »

timr wrote: post #44
jshen wrote: post #9

When I was a kid my mom would complain about how the world was out to get her. She didn't frame it that way, but that's essentially what she was saying. One time she was complaining about lawyers because she was charged $300/hr or something like that. I asked her, "why don't you become a lawyer?" It made sense to me as a 12 year old and still does.

I don't know your mom, and I don't know what she is or isn't capable of doing. I also don't think it's helpful to believe that the word is out to get you, regardless of personal situation. But that said, you're absolutely delusional if you think that everyone in this country who wants to become a lawyer or a doctor or a better-paid whatever is capable of doing it. There are a million different reasons why most people…

Certainly not everyone has the opportunity to be a lawyer.

However, any software engineers with the skill to be employee #1 at a startup has the ability to start a company (perhaps a more modest one than the one they are joining).

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#66

Post by blacksmythe »

sbov wrote: post #4

It may not be normal, but the startup I was involved in never had to raise money. Were we all founders? Is anyone they continue to hire a founder?

In many cases the founders have a different type of stock (preferred vs common). In those situations there is no ambiguity about who is a founder.

In other cases, the best definition of the founder is if you joined when there was no company.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#67

Post by gamble »

People are over-moralizing this. Why do CEOs get paid so much? Why are salesmen often better paid than engineers? Does a ditch-digger deserve less money than a lawyer? The market is basically amoral. People get what they can get, not what they 'deserve'. Founders get more money because they have ownership, and in a capitalistic system profits accrue to capital. There's no point in constructing an elaborate moral architecture to justify how a social structure developed to maximize financial gain also somehow optimizes for socially-desirable outcomes.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#69

Post by gamble »

wdewind wrote: post #64
gamble wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will buy that it can cause problems with personal relationships, though working 12-hour days as a startup employee will do that too. But the idea that failure hurts you as an entrepreneur is just factually incorrect. Unless personal incompetence was obviously the reason for failure, failed founders have a much easier time raising money and hiring for a new startup.

I think it depends on how you fail. I'm not talking about a 25 year old's Y-Combinator idea not working out. I'm also not talking about a hyper-technical, experimental startup. Those have high expectations and tolerance for failure. I'm talking about something more entrenched in our mainstream culture, years in, people employed and health insured, etc. Most people who "succeed" have likely "failed" before (that's whe…

This is why I restricted my original statement to YC-style startups. A capital intensive startup that someone invests their life savings into at age 45 is entirely different than a software startup founded on a shoestring budget by new college grads. I don't think the latter is particularly risky, which is why there are so many more of them than even 10-15 years ago.

Re: Are founders really 1000x more valuable than their employees?

#70

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #55
natch wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call bullshit. For financial risk, this doesn't apply if the founder doesn't have much to lose, or has a stable family they can rely on, or is just starting their career, or doesn't care about money. For reputation risk, that's hardly an issue, because making mistakes in considered a legitimate (even honorable) form of learning in startup culture; it certainly does not ruin someone's reputation. The real answer is…

This is head-explodey. If the engineers don't like the deal they're getting, they can go work for other companies . If they should be getting a better deal, they will. There simply isn't a glut of dev talent right now. There is the opposite of that.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN