Ask HN: What HN threads most influenced your thinking about startups? I often find that reading the comments on a HN post lead to more insights than simply reading the linked website alone or just the OP, so in the spirit of HN as a link aggregator: What HN threads have most contributed to the way you think about startups now? |
Coupled with common sense and basic human decency, it still has been an education.
HN also allowed me to be informed early on about COVID-19 and take the necessary measures. I cancelled my flight to Paris in February 2020 after being there in January and computing the risk borders would shut down. They shut down for more than a year and a half, and I have spent that time with my dying mother until the last moment. I would have missed the last year with her if I had taken that trip, and an important factor I did not take it was all the good people here covering the subject and attracting my attention to its evolution internationally. I am yet to pay that debt.
The comments here also drew my attention to how other sectors were suffering, and I made inquiries and talked with many people here in different sectors. It resulted in giving away about 90% of my income to different people as I was fortunate enough to work remotely and they were not. To go back full circle: it solidified the point of how important it was to have the means to do good, which is why I'd like to become confortable enough to help more people (thus, startups).
https://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant...
It's really good!
IMO if you work for a startup company, you should only do so because you believe in it, and if you believe in it, you should exercise your option as fast as you can, perhaps with an 83b election if you can afford it. Otherwise what's the point of taking a job at a startup with a lower TC and higher risk outlook than a FAANG job?
Hence, I think:
- only join startups you strongly believe in,
- only join startups that offer good equity package, have raised good rounds, have healthy cap tables,
- get as many options as you can,
- exercise them as fast as you can,
- work hard to make it worth something,
- leave if it doesn't work out.
Pretty sure 99% of people actually would be better off working at FAANG, or at least the 99% number isn't far off. FAANG promote quickly so salaries will climb and you'll have millions in the bank by the time a start-up would go public, I doubt many start-ups beats that.
The main reason FAANG employees don't have those millions is that they consume them as they get them rather than invest it and then get all that money at once after 6 years.
It confirmed that these days if a startup is successful the founder gets almost all of the reward, the first handful of engineers get a few million bucks, and the thousand+ people that follow simply get a regular salary. There are only two real paths to wealth in tech nowadays: start your own thing or work for FAANG.
Anecdotally, I work for an engineering firm and within 4 years I was able to go from zero savings to a quarter of my retirement. It can be miserable sometimes, but I'd take miserable and retire in my 40s at this point.
I can buy 20,000 shares at $3/share over 4 years. We got a second round of VC funding in Spring with a valuation of $250M. Let's say in 5 years, we go public, I had exercised all my options, and we end up being worth $25B. Would that mean the $60,000 I spent on shares would be worth $6M?
Would another round of VC funding affect this?
Or is there more information needed that I don't know and might not have access to?
If there is a 25B valuation and 25B shares at the time of sale, your shares would be worth 20K (and you overpaid).
If there is a 25B valuation and 25 million shares, you would be worth 20M
What BrandonM actually said was that he had "a few qualms" about Dropbox's YC application (which is what the word "app" meant back then) - i.e. he was worried on their behalf and wanted it to succeed. He was clearly intending to be helpful. He had a nice exchange with Drew, as anyone can see if they would read the replies (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224).
In 2007, the conventional wisdom was that file sync was a solution-in-search-of-a-problem that would never be a successful business because the idea only appealed to technical users. Joel Spolsky famously wrote a blog post mocking technical people who wanted to work on file sync. That's the context in which the comment was posted.
That turned out to be totally wrong, but it took the success of Dropbox for everyone to know that (and then forget that anybody ever said otherwise). Brandon's comment ended up getting stranded like a little island in an ocean of hindsight fallacy.
It's hopeless, of course, to fight the internet once it has decided on a meme. But it bugs me when unfairness get repeated, especially when someone is being scapegoated, so even though it's hopeless, I still post about it from time to time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293146
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27068148
I feel like a lot of them are just people who see something getting praise and need to put it down to make themselves feel better.
Seeing other people be clever somehow threatens them.
Good luck guiding grandma through setting up rsync.
For me, as a tech-guy, rsync (or similar) _is_ actually better than Dropbox. :)
https://carta.com/blog/equity-101-stock-economics/
If your options were priced at the $250 million valuation, and no dilution occurs, the stock value would be 3$*IPO valuation/$250M.
Dilution events are pretty common, even for companies that are revenue positive.
I would recommend viewing the options as a potential windfall, but not part of any compensation evaluation or financial planning.
2. If the company gets acquired there are several mechanisms founders and investors use to wipe out options holders. It is harder to wipe out common stock owners. If an acquisition event takes you by surprise you may not have time to exercise.
3. You may get laid off, decide to quit, or get fired, and have only a limited time (3 months, often) to exercise your options. That might be a bad time for you to spend the case, so you may want to do it now while you are in a better position to do so.
If you can exercise and immediately sell the shares, point 1 isn't relevant.
Another reason is more practical: it's much easier to exercise your options when the tax bill is lower and you just got a job/while you're employed (i.e. you're more plush with money), than when you're quitting/been fired and have 90 days to figure out where to get money from. Basically, it's better to be in control of when you buy, than being forced to buy or lose out.