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The worst kept secret in Silicon Valley.... I would argue this is the best kept secret, because this flush out needs to occur to wash away all the so called di
by blantonl 11y ago
The worst kept secret in Silicon Valley....
I would argue this is the best kept secret, because this flush out needs to occur to wash away all the so called disrupters who, as you put, are really just shuffling piles of money around instead of actually doing any innovation.
I hate to invoke schadenfreude here, but the past few years have been incredibly insulting to those of us who have been running highly profitable bootstrapped businesses, and so I eagerly await this flush. Picture Mr. Burns from the Simpsons tapping his fingers together.
- malchow 11y agoLike you, I am a co-owner of a bootstrapped, profitable, conservatively managed technology company. I am happy to have built what I have. But I can't find a whit of pleasure at the prospect of a disastrous reversal in private technology financing. There are a lot -- a lot -- of bad deals receiving favorable financing from out-of-touch or non-traditional institutionals. That's true. And painful but non-combustive reversals are part of the functioning of markets, sure. But SV remains the one place in the world where smart investors with genuine science and technology backgrounds are willing to play the long game with entrepreneurs. I spend a lot of time in London and New York. The generally hidebound nature of their investment cultures, which make perfect sense when you're doing an Exotic Pet Vet Tax-Free Rollup, or a Midwest Refrigerated Storage Debt-Chummed Dividend Fête, would never have made a bet on Google, Oracle, Nvidia, PayPal, Oculus, to take a few at random. So while there are a good dozen $1b liquidation preference-cap companies that are fundamentally silly, wishing for a tidal reversal in private tech funding isn't a good idea. VC qua asset class is important.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- e40 11y agoWhy I want the bubble to burst: I can't afford to pay Google, et al and unicorn salaries. My bootstrapped, profitable, conservatively managed company isn't swimming in cash. 10 years ago the pay we offered was competitive, but now... salaries (+ benefits) have gone through the roof.
- khuey 11y agoComp is being driven by Google, Facebook, Apple, etc, generally not unicorns.
- cft 11y agoBut before this bubble, as a bootstrapped startup one could beat Google by offering very early stage employees an attractive mix of cash and a lot of stock: Google's stock options are not that attractive since it has gone public. Now on paper you cannot beat the offerings of the unicorns, since they also offer cash and stock options. From experience, the existence of unicorns made the life for a bootstrapped startup in San Francisco very difficult. In our office building in SF, we had probably about 6 bootstrapped companies in 2012, now only mine is left: the other 5 moved elsewhere (most are still open). The smaller offices were joined and the companies were replaced by the larger funded ones. Also the building was bought by a more greedy landlord.
- mylons 11y agoGoogle's stock is very attractive. employees are generally paid in actual stock, and not options. there's a huge difference between options, and stock. options in a startup, especially since ~95% of startups fail, are generally worthless.
- cft 11y agoI am talking about very early employees. What is the typical dollar amount in RSUs or stock a new engineer after MEng is getting in Google?
- mylons 11y ago>$100k over a few years at the initial date of the grant. You can roll the dice all you want on startup options or take RSUs with actual value
- rhino369 11y ago
- jazzyk 11y agoTrue, but imagine how many more new Google-like companies VCs could have helped to create if they hadn't spent money on silly "Uber for Pets" start-ups. It almost seems like investing in early stage, but serious companies is a thing of the past. Now, it is more like "pump-and-dump".
- gmarx 11y agoExcellent
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- AJ007 11y agoI have read more than one post on hn about freelance developers bragging about how much money they are making and handing out advice to others for how to make more. When this 'bubble' deflates, dev salaries are going to take a big hit and it is going to be painful. The best advice for those of you getting paid $150+ an hour is save your money and don't take on long term liabilities.
- exstudent2 11y agoWhy would contractors suffer? Generally when the economy dives it's full-time employees that get replaced by contractors. Also, $150 /hr is a pretty low rate even in the leanest of times. EDIT: Really surprised at the down votes on this. What I'm saying is hardly radical. There seems to be a lot of sour grapes in this thread sadly. My tip: don't envy those doing better than you, learn from them.
- bshimmin 11y agoYeah, practically a McDonald's salary. I am reminded of that lovely remark once made by Boris Johnson's, London's blond bombshell of a mayor, when asked about his £250,000 a year contract to write a column for The Daily Telegraph: "It's chicken feed."
- exstudent2 11y agoYou do realize that most contractors don't have 100% utilization (far from it) and also don't get paid for time it takes to make sales, find clients, they pay for their own health insurance... $150 /hr is basically the least you're going to want to charge. Realistically you're going to be looking at 90-120k /year depending on how much work you land at that rate. For highly skilled intellectual work, that's not very much money.
- jazzyk 11y agoHello form planet Earth: It is not what you "want to charge", it is what they are willing to pay you, that counts.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- fweespeech 11y agoGiven it was obvious to people on the sidelines for awhile that something was off, I'm not sure if its well kept. > I hate to invoke schadenfreude here, but the past few years have been incredibly insulting to those of us who have been running highly profitable bootstrapped businesses, and so I eagerly await this flush. I wouldn't say its insulting. Business is business. You'll have a company when this mess implodes, they won't.