Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

> Startups likely can not compete with google

Then why didn’t google found/outcompete the laundry list of unicorns that have emerged over the last decade plus? Google could outspend them all by 10x. Google is very, very good at what it does, but like all big organizations Google has blind spots you could hide a tour bus in.

Part of the problem is voting rights, founders want to control 51% for as long as possible and VCs take 20%+ per round

Idea #2 is genius. In my experience early employees become a liability as you scale and exceed their experience skill level. This makes it a win for them and for the org. Nothing worse than an early employee who is hanging on to a high level role when everyone knows they aren’t cutting it. What are some possible downsides of this?

Yep, the story he tells about Warren Buffett is also (afaik) not true (this is common for basically all stories that are told about Buffett in SV).

By the time that Buffett worked for Graham, he had already studied at Columbia with Graham and worked for a few years at his dad's brokerage business. He worked for Graham for a couple of years, he took a salary (over $100k/year in today's terms), and literally the year after Buffett was running money for other people. He was not a rube who needed Graham's wisdom, he was already Buffett. It is a very odd and specific story to make up.

Interestingly, there is a more well know story in the Berkshire lore on this subject about Mozart (google Munger Mozart story).

But yes, you are right. The idea that you need to sit at the feet of some guru, and that is the only way you will ever learn is utter horseshit (and likely self-serving).

There isn't some secret book with the answers, you have to work it yourself, and build up expertise yourself...you can't borrow expertise (btw, this is something that is kind of common in Asian culture...if you go to a Berkshire Hathaway meeting, you overindex to these cultures that have respect for elders/"guru" culture...if you want to be an entrepreneur, I can't think of a worse attribute).

> without giving them founder equity

To me, it's not a question of monetary reward so much as agency. If you want me to care about something deeply, then I need to have say in how it works. I'm not going to be blindly devoted to a plan that could change at any moment for any reason.

Of course, compensation/equity matters as well, but as a programmer I tend to get heavily attached to work that matters. Nothing is more demotivating then feeling like I'm giving up free time and working long hours to build something that doesn't matter or that is poorly managed. And at a certain point, if I'm devoting that kind of energy into something, I'm going to start having opinions about it.

With many VC funded startups, workers often get sold on a vision, and then in 4-5 years they get sold to Google and everything they build dies. Workers know that their work isn't going to matter in the long run, and that the vision they're being sold could change at any moment (and in fact is highly likely to change once VCs start putting on more pressure for rapid growth). It's hard to invest emotional energy into something that fragile.

Founders have a vested interest in making sure that their baby stays under their control. But if you want me to work like a founder, treat me like a founder. And while equity is a part of that, the biggest thing is that I want a say in how that vision evolves.

The way I work on personal projects and the way I work as an employee are different. It's not the money that makes them different, it's the sense of ownership and agency. As an employee I work from a contractual "what are my obligations" perspective, because I recognize that it's not my vision, it's never going to be my vision, and that it would be problematic and against the company's interests for me to try and make it into my vision.

This is part of why I am very cautiously optimistic about the rise in popularity of worker collectives. I dislike founders who want the employee enthusiasm that comes with ownership and purpose, but none of the employee opinions and agency that are part of that.