9 ms·

I took the $300k (2013)

110 points by domrdy 11y ago

alex95 11y ago
clickbait anyone?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dang 11y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5771558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5771558.
atmosx 11y ago
Good reading. What I take away from these stories is that... Work or no work, family or no family, one way or another, people who are willing to put the effort to implement an idea into a 'startup', always find a way.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- facepalm 11y ago
  Survivor bias...
  - bro-stick 11y ago
    For most people, they're not going to die or starve to death if their startup fails. I literally have no money and live in a van right now, but it could be far, far worse so I have no complaints. Hit the reset button and try again. People all the time even have spouses and families and manage to pull off respectable M&A events. If someone doesn't try, they have to live with themselves and their regret for not answering the question of "could I have built something other people think is great?" It's whether a person has the stuffing to schlep hardcore and drag themselves over the finish line. Life's strategy is pure and simple: Pick your battles carefully, and never give up. Anyone whom has the courage and the inclination can and should experiment often to see if they can hit on something viable. Because unlike the lottery, it's possible to make a few bucks with passive revenue apps without much effort.
    - facepalm 11y ago
      Again, survivor bias. I am not saying your proposal isn't a good strategy. There just isn't a guarantee for success. Even your app claim sounds less convincing if you look at the actual average revenue for apps.
      - bro-stick 11y ago
        That's reality of uncertainties/risks in life and business. There are no guarantees until the acquiring company's funds transfers clear and the accounting dept transfers it to your estate trust in Bermuda or other passport-for-sale island nation. Publishing a two weekend simple, beautiful iOS app with nice 99designs assets makes it easy for people to buy it. Android apps margins are terrible, the best apps are one-time utility apps which charge more for something because they immediately save the user time and money (unlimited vehicle history VIN lookups, automatically decide what to have for dinner based on preferences and not what I had in the last two months). Ad supported free OTOH infinite running cool but a little crappy games are great for selling more conversions to better paid apps (CandyCrush). They're also more profitable on Android since users expect mode of "something for nothing" as opposed to the Apple tax. Often with games and other non-one-time-useful and non-business-critical apps, in-app purchase of ad removal, virtual currency buy/offers is the way to go rather than paid. But it depends on the quality expectations of the app too. Generally, If someone believes they can't, even if they may have the aptitude, they'll never know. That is the greatest regret and waste of talent imaginable. One also has to be clear and honest about one's/others' capabilities/needs in order to not get stuck in wandering in wantrepreneur land. Finally, startup people are most similar to special forces badasses... able to get sh*t done, figure it out and eventually win.
    - spacemanmatt 11y ago
      I've got to agree with survivor bias here. The path to success is littered with failed startups. You're ignoring a lot of data to conclude that most people aren't going to starve if their startup fails. Not everyone can survive living in a van.
      - 11y ago
  - atmosx 11y ago
    Agreed. Maybe I didn't make my self clear. I'm saying that we have example of successful startups under any condition imaginable. I never said it was easy or that *chances are on your side, if this [...] and that [...]. If that was the case everyone would be building Apple-like companies from their garages but we have only one, Apple.
    - Retra 11y ago
      You said people who put in the effort always find a way to succeed.
      - atmosx 11y ago
        Yeah, but I never used the word succeed, I was thinking about myself and would rather use the word complete (the project - as in LAUNCH/RUN the side-project). Not that it matters anyway...
bro-stick 11y ago
Oh yeah. Startups try to hire me outright all the time for below market salary when I could land in a bracket $250-380k at Google, Twitter, wherever. If they are, I say "I'm flattered but I have other plans." I laugh them out the door if they're not clients. I'd rather build something other people think is great, even if it's not imminently gigabuck-scale, with my own two hands (and whomever else I can rope in with equity and a fun vibe) than build someone else's vision at a discount. Equal equity among initial founders or it's a nonstarter. Avoid the PHB enterprise single founder chief whom treats everyone as employees to be managed and hoards equity... that sort of shop will get angels and mentors and bleed them dry.
- merrywhether 11y ago
  As someone about to make this decision from outside of SF and with less knowledge about the market there, I'm curious to know what you think an SF "market-level" salary would be. Would you mind elaborating?
  - Bahamut 11y ago
    I'd think the Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc. numbers is the market salary - it is somewhat known in the Valley that Netflix pays its engineers around $375k, mostly cash, for example. What goes unsaid though is that there's a lot of silly hoops that have to be jumped through to get that salary at many of these companies (bad interview processes, companies realizing that actually wanted X skills for a position instead of Y, etc.). It would all depend on your skills though. I once turned down a $350k-400k opportunity myself in the area and ended up taking a significantly less amount in favor of more vacation, flexible hours, and much less stress.
    - go1979 11y ago
      Hmm ... I am very skeptical when people report numbers of 350-400K. Apart from Netflix, which claims it pays at the top of the market, I didn't think other companies paid this much in base salary to mid-level tech employees. Glassdoor, etc. suggest the numbers for base salary are closer to 150-170K.
CPLX 11y ago
Not to digress from the point of the blog post, but that is one truly fantastic logo that Boundary has.
- marktangotango 11y ago
  I will call your digression and raise with a further digression: there really seems to be an abundance of these cloud metric startups now. It's quiet bewildering to think the trivial python scripts I wrote in '09 to gather server and application stats (tomcat) could've been the basis for one of these. If only I'd had the vision.
  - stuartaxelowen 11y ago
    Having those what-ifs is a sign you're got some good ideas - we'll see the right ones at the right times.
  - nailer 11y ago
    > If only I'd had the vision. And the ability to execute, and the confidence to risk your livelihood.
  - arca_vorago 11y ago
    There is still time. I don't like using any of the cloud metric services with a few exceptions, because I don't feel they are getting a large segment of the market that is undervalued: sysadmins. Most of us are on very tight budgets already, and while tools like splunk and boundary are pretty awesome visually and in the ease of use department, as soon as I start getting back the numbers I get sticker shock, especially because I want to monitor much more than seems to be the norm for their target markets. This is one of the many reasons why I think FOSS with a support model has so much potential in the sysadmin world. Tool is FOSS, so you can use it as much as you want (no 50c per device schemes) and then if you want support or a hosted version that's what is charged for. No one is really doing this, though there are a handful of non-foss "open-source" projects around that give you free versions with restricted feature-sets. As a side note, I have been using Argus (http://argus.tcp4me.com/ http://argus.tcp4me.com/) and ELK stack to good effect.
domrdy 11y ago
Posted in light of BMC acquiring Boundary: http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/18/bmc-has-apparently-acquired-app-monitoring-startup-boundary/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/18/bmc-has-apparently-acquire...
- mattzito 11y ago
  And as someone who also was acquired by BMC, the interesting bit for me was that the acting CEO of Boundary was a guy named Larry Warnock, who had another company that was acquired by BMC, Phurnace, for what I expect is roughly the same amount of money as Boundary was acquired. Relationships make a big difference with big company M&A.
aantix 11y ago
$300K, taxed as a bonus after 4 years of working at below market wages? All of those life experiences they could have had in those four years forgone to.. eventually break even. Tom Preston-Werner is a great developer, probably world class. And he was offered a whopping 300K bonus by a company that earns $220K+ profit per employee annually (with a disproportionate amount of value created by the software engineers). Lots of opportunity cost, gone. How do we offload this risk to the investors? Demand what you're worth. Take money off the table upfront. Lesson to the Hacker News readers; you're not going to get rich by being an employee. Start your own company if you want any sort of chance of becoming rich. Otherwise forget the extra hours, live a balanced life, play with your kids, love your /(boy|girl)friend/ or spouse.
- ironchef 11y ago
  "you're not going to get rich by being an employee" I disagree. If you're looking at every little startup idea, then yes...you probably won't get rich. Also, you won't get as rich as the founders; however, I have plenty of friends in the industry who have made millions (the typical goog, fbook, yada yada). I think a better suggestion is to shake out the idea before jumping on. I've made poor choices money-wise and I've made great choices in the past (very similar to equity investing)... "Otherwise forget the extra hours"... I think there's something in between. As a founder, it's a ridiculous amount of hours / extra stress, etc. Or you can work as an employee and give some extra but still realize it's a job and you aren't a founder. You don't have to work 80 - 100 hour weeks simply because you're at a startup. It's a pendulum with being a founder on one end and being a checked out employee at megacorp on the other. You can work tons of hours at a megacorp (mckinsey, etc.) or.. you can work a reasonable number of hours at a startup.
  - aantix 11y ago
    92% of startups fail. For most, it's not going to turn out pretty. Apparently your friends are incredibly good at choosing startups; they should be VCs.
    - ironchef 11y ago

110 points by domrdy 11y ago

alex95 11y ago

clickbait anyone?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dang 11y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5771558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5771558.

atmosx 11y ago

Good reading. What I take away from these stories is that... Work or no work, family or no family, one way or another, people who are willing to put the effort to implement an idea into a 'startup', always find a way.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
facepalm 11y ago
Survivor bias...
- bro-stick 11y ago
  For most people, they're not going to die or starve to death if their startup fails. I literally have no money and live in a van right now, but it could be far, far worse so I have no complaints. Hit the reset button and try again. People all the time even have spouses and families and manage to pull off respectable M&A events. If someone doesn't try, they have to live with themselves and their regret for not answering the question of "could I have built something other people think is great?" It's whether a person has the stuffing to schlep hardcore and drag themselves over the finish line. Life's strategy is pure and simple: Pick your battles carefully, and never give up. Anyone whom has the courage and the inclination can and should experiment often to see if they can hit on something viable. Because unlike the lottery, it's possible to make a few bucks with passive revenue apps without much effort.
  - facepalm 11y ago
    Again, survivor bias. I am not saying your proposal isn't a good strategy. There just isn't a guarantee for success. Even your app claim sounds less convincing if you look at the actual average revenue for apps.
    - bro-stick 11y ago
      That's reality of uncertainties/risks in life and business. There are no guarantees until the acquiring company's funds transfers clear and the accounting dept transfers it to your estate trust in Bermuda or other passport-for-sale island nation. Publishing a two weekend simple, beautiful iOS app with nice 99designs assets makes it easy for people to buy it. Android apps margins are terrible, the best apps are one-time utility apps which charge more for something because they immediately save the user time and money (unlimited vehicle history VIN lookups, automatically decide what to have for dinner based on preferences and not what I had in the last two months). Ad supported free OTOH infinite running cool but a little crappy games are great for selling more conversions to better paid apps (CandyCrush). They're also more profitable on Android since users expect mode of "something for nothing" as opposed to the Apple tax. Often with games and other non-one-time-useful and non-business-critical apps, in-app purchase of ad removal, virtual currency buy/offers is the way to go rather than paid. But it depends on the quality expectations of the app too. Generally, If someone believes they can't, even if they may have the aptitude, they'll never know. That is the greatest regret and waste of talent imaginable. One also has to be clear and honest about one's/others' capabilities/needs in order to not get stuck in wandering in wantrepreneur land. Finally, startup people are most similar to special forces badasses... able to get sh*t done, figure it out and eventually win.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    I've got to agree with survivor bias here. The path to success is littered with failed startups. You're ignoring a lot of data to conclude that most people aren't going to starve if their startup fails. Not everyone can survive living in a van.
    - 11y ago
- atmosx 11y ago
  Agreed. Maybe I didn't make my self clear. I'm saying that we have example of successful startups under any condition imaginable. I never said it was easy or that *chances are on your side, if this [...] and that [...]. If that was the case everyone would be building Apple-like companies from their garages but we have only one, Apple.
  - Retra 11y ago
    You said people who put in the effort always find a way to succeed.
    - atmosx 11y ago
      Yeah, but I never used the word succeed, I was thinking about myself and would rather use the word complete (the project - as in LAUNCH/RUN the side-project). Not that it matters anyway...

bro-stick 11y ago

Oh yeah. Startups try to hire me outright all the time for below market salary when I could land in a bracket $250-380k at Google, Twitter, wherever. If they are, I say "I'm flattered but I have other plans." I laugh them out the door if they're not clients. I'd rather build something other people think is great, even if it's not imminently gigabuck-scale, with my own two hands (and whomever else I can rope in with equity and a fun vibe) than build someone else's vision at a discount. Equal equity among initial founders or it's a nonstarter. Avoid the PHB enterprise single founder chief whom treats everyone as employees to be managed and hoards equity... that sort of shop will get angels and mentors and bleed them dry.

merrywhether 11y ago
As someone about to make this decision from outside of SF and with less knowledge about the market there, I'm curious to know what you think an SF "market-level" salary would be. Would you mind elaborating?
- Bahamut 11y ago
  I'd think the Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc. numbers is the market salary - it is somewhat known in the Valley that Netflix pays its engineers around $375k, mostly cash, for example. What goes unsaid though is that there's a lot of silly hoops that have to be jumped through to get that salary at many of these companies (bad interview processes, companies realizing that actually wanted X skills for a position instead of Y, etc.). It would all depend on your skills though. I once turned down a $350k-400k opportunity myself in the area and ended up taking a significantly less amount in favor of more vacation, flexible hours, and much less stress.
  - go1979 11y ago
    Hmm ... I am very skeptical when people report numbers of 350-400K. Apart from Netflix, which claims it pays at the top of the market, I didn't think other companies paid this much in base salary to mid-level tech employees. Glassdoor, etc. suggest the numbers for base salary are closer to 150-170K.

CPLX 11y ago

Not to digress from the point of the blog post, but that is one truly fantastic logo that Boundary has.

marktangotango 11y ago
I will call your digression and raise with a further digression: there really seems to be an abundance of these cloud metric startups now. It's quiet bewildering to think the trivial python scripts I wrote in '09 to gather server and application stats (tomcat) could've been the basis for one of these. If only I'd had the vision.
- stuartaxelowen 11y ago
  Having those what-ifs is a sign you're got some good ideas - we'll see the right ones at the right times.
- nailer 11y ago
  > If only I'd had the vision. And the ability to execute, and the confidence to risk your livelihood.
- arca_vorago 11y ago
  There is still time. I don't like using any of the cloud metric services with a few exceptions, because I don't feel they are getting a large segment of the market that is undervalued: sysadmins. Most of us are on very tight budgets already, and while tools like splunk and boundary are pretty awesome visually and in the ease of use department, as soon as I start getting back the numbers I get sticker shock, especially because I want to monitor much more than seems to be the norm for their target markets. This is one of the many reasons why I think FOSS with a support model has so much potential in the sysadmin world. Tool is FOSS, so you can use it as much as you want (no 50c per device schemes) and then if you want support or a hosted version that's what is charged for. No one is really doing this, though there are a handful of non-foss "open-source" projects around that give you free versions with restricted feature-sets. As a side note, I have been using Argus (http://argus.tcp4me.com/ http://argus.tcp4me.com/) and ELK stack to good effect.

domrdy 11y ago

Posted in light of BMC acquiring Boundary: http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/18/bmc-has-apparently-acquired-app-monitoring-startup-boundary/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/18/bmc-has-apparently-acquire...

mattzito 11y ago
And as someone who also was acquired by BMC, the interesting bit for me was that the acting CEO of Boundary was a guy named Larry Warnock, who had another company that was acquired by BMC, Phurnace, for what I expect is roughly the same amount of money as Boundary was acquired. Relationships make a big difference with big company M&A.

aantix 11y ago

$300K, taxed as a bonus after 4 years of working at below market wages? All of those life experiences they could have had in those four years forgone to.. eventually break even. Tom Preston-Werner is a great developer, probably world class. And he was offered a whopping 300K bonus by a company that earns $220K+ profit per employee annually (with a disproportionate amount of value created by the software engineers). Lots of opportunity cost, gone. How do we offload this risk to the investors? Demand what you're worth. Take money off the table upfront. Lesson to the Hacker News readers; you're not going to get rich by being an employee. Start your own company if you want any sort of chance of becoming rich. Otherwise forget the extra hours, live a balanced life, play with your kids, love your /(boy|girl)friend/ or spouse.

ironchef 11y ago
"you're not going to get rich by being an employee" I disagree. If you're looking at every little startup idea, then yes...you probably won't get rich. Also, you won't get as rich as the founders; however, I have plenty of friends in the industry who have made millions (the typical goog, fbook, yada yada). I think a better suggestion is to shake out the idea before jumping on. I've made poor choices money-wise and I've made great choices in the past (very similar to equity investing)... "Otherwise forget the extra hours"... I think there's something in between. As a founder, it's a ridiculous amount of hours / extra stress, etc. Or you can work as an employee and give some extra but still realize it's a job and you aren't a founder. You don't have to work 80 - 100 hour weeks simply because you're at a startup. It's a pendulum with being a founder on one end and being a checked out employee at megacorp on the other. You can work tons of hours at a megacorp (mckinsey, etc.) or.. you can work a reasonable number of hours at a startup.
- aantix 11y ago
  92% of startups fail. For most, it's not going to turn out pretty. Apparently your friends are incredibly good at choosing startups; they should be VCs.
  - ironchef 11y ago