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We pay you peanuts but you have stock options so you're part of the company success The tricker one for me, personally, was a slight variation on this: - We p

We pay you peanuts but you have stock options so you're part of the company success The tricker one for me, personally, was a slight variation on this: - We pay you decently enough - below market rate but enough - and since you have stock options... Due solely to my own stupidity, it took nearly a decade of hard work before I realised that gambling on other peoples' success wasn't the best long-term option for me.

amelius 11y ago
> I realised that gambling on other peoples' success wasn't the best long-term option for me. Gambling on your own success is also not always a good idea. See many startups.
- x5n1 11y ago
  Actually it's not usually a good idea, they more often than not fail. But that's the point of startups, to try to play the lottery. But if you are going to play the lottery then play to win it, otherwise what's the point? Who cares if you make a few thousand more. If you are going to play, play to make millions for yourself, or don't play at all.
  - lmm 11y ago
    Everyone has their own risk profile. For some people "$50k + moderate chance of $100k" would be better than either "$80k" or "small chance of $1m".
- brightball 11y ago
  The difference there is that the education you get from trying and failing at a start up will rival most business Master's programs.
- themartorana 11y ago
  No, but at least you hold the reigns. Failure is your own, not someone else's. Taking a bet on yourself is an honest gamble. Taking a bet on someone else is a huge unknown. If you're gonna take a bet, you might as well hold all the cards.
  - amelius 11y ago
    The problem is that you are still betting on your customers buying your product.
    - delinka 11y ago
      In the case of someone else's startup, you're also betting on the ability of the rest of the team that the founder(s) hired. E.g. if they hired a lousy sales team and they can't make effective sales.
    - jwdunne 11y ago
      That doesn't sound like a straight up gamble. It is if you have no idea if your customers want to pay for your product but there are ways to remove this unknown i.e knowing that people are willing to pay before building anything that costs a significant amount.
      - amelius 11y ago
        How many startups are actually researching this beforehand? Did Google even research this for e.g. Wave and Glass? In any case, I think you are making it sound more easy than it actually is.
        jwdunne 11y ago
        I never said it was easy. That and most businesses don't create new technology. There are industries out there that could use tech that already exists but either they don't know about it, it hasn't been shaped to their needs or both. There is also the possibility the market leader is offering a crap solution (I've seen this a few times in the healthcare space).
        nostrademons 11y ago
        Wave and Glass aren't great examples of how to run new product design. Usually, the way to handle this is to build a really cheap, quick & dirty prototype and put that in front of users. Etherpad did this for collaborative editing, then got bought by Google, with the functionality folded into Google Docs. Google Cardboard did this effectively for augmented reality, and I'd bet that they're taking the learning from it right now for Google's 2nd-gen AR/VR products.
- ToPutItBluntly 11y ago
  But it depends what you want. VC-backed startup and all the BS that comes with funding for about 11 years? Or bootstrap a relatively profitable business that wouldn't interest VCs but can keep a couple of employees well paid for near lifetime?
angersock 11y ago
Last year I left a company after ~26 months and some great work due in large part to the below-market-pay and shitty options situation. Founders were super secretive about how stock and options had been handed out, and even worse, very opaque about things like "how much money do we have left"? If asked to bump salary (paying their technical lead, me, $60K sans benefits), they'd say "we have no money to do so". If asked to provide more equity (because that's how companies have traditionally handled having little cash-on-hand), they'd say "we can't issue more options". That continued inflexibility, plus other things, meant it was time to leave.
- ToPutItBluntly 11y ago
  How did you last 26 months with that? Life is way too short for those kind of games. Congratulations on getting out.
  - angersock 11y ago
    I believed in the product and in my team, and was still slightly on fire from my own most recent attempt at founding a startup. There's no shame in picking a suboptimal solution if it addresses stability and anxiety concerns--it's just important not to stay if things get better and you can't upgrade the solution.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
>gambling on other peoples' success To be clear unless you are running your own independent shop you are doing this by default. You are either chasing your dreams or someone else's - it really is binary.

amelius 11y ago

> I realised that gambling on other peoples' success wasn't the best long-term option for me. Gambling on your own success is also not always a good idea. See many startups.

x5n1 11y ago
Actually it's not usually a good idea, they more often than not fail. But that's the point of startups, to try to play the lottery. But if you are going to play the lottery then play to win it, otherwise what's the point? Who cares if you make a few thousand more. If you are going to play, play to make millions for yourself, or don't play at all.
- lmm 11y ago
  Everyone has their own risk profile. For some people "$50k + moderate chance of $100k" would be better than either "$80k" or "small chance of $1m".
brightball 11y ago
The difference there is that the education you get from trying and failing at a start up will rival most business Master's programs.
themartorana 11y ago
No, but at least you hold the reigns. Failure is your own, not someone else's. Taking a bet on yourself is an honest gamble. Taking a bet on someone else is a huge unknown. If you're gonna take a bet, you might as well hold all the cards.
- amelius 11y ago
  The problem is that you are still betting on your customers buying your product.
  - delinka 11y ago
    In the case of someone else's startup, you're also betting on the ability of the rest of the team that the founder(s) hired. E.g. if they hired a lousy sales team and they can't make effective sales.
  - jwdunne 11y ago
    That doesn't sound like a straight up gamble. It is if you have no idea if your customers want to pay for your product but there are ways to remove this unknown i.e knowing that people are willing to pay before building anything that costs a significant amount.
    - amelius 11y ago
      How many startups are actually researching this beforehand? Did Google even research this for e.g. Wave and Glass? In any case, I think you are making it sound more easy than it actually is.
      - jwdunne 11y ago
        I never said it was easy. That and most businesses don't create new technology. There are industries out there that could use tech that already exists but either they don't know about it, it hasn't been shaped to their needs or both. There is also the possibility the market leader is offering a crap solution (I've seen this a few times in the healthcare space).
      - nostrademons 11y ago
        Wave and Glass aren't great examples of how to run new product design. Usually, the way to handle this is to build a really cheap, quick & dirty prototype and put that in front of users. Etherpad did this for collaborative editing, then got bought by Google, with the functionality folded into Google Docs. Google Cardboard did this effectively for augmented reality, and I'd bet that they're taking the learning from it right now for Google's 2nd-gen AR/VR products.
ToPutItBluntly 11y ago
But it depends what you want. VC-backed startup and all the BS that comes with funding for about 11 years? Or bootstrap a relatively profitable business that wouldn't interest VCs but can keep a couple of employees well paid for near lifetime?

angersock 11y ago

Last year I left a company after ~26 months and some great work due in large part to the below-market-pay and shitty options situation. Founders were super secretive about how stock and options had been handed out, and even worse, very opaque about things like "how much money do we have left"? If asked to bump salary (paying their technical lead, me, $60K sans benefits), they'd say "we have no money to do so". If asked to provide more equity (because that's how companies have traditionally handled having little cash-on-hand), they'd say "we can't issue more options". That continued inflexibility, plus other things, meant it was time to leave.

ToPutItBluntly 11y ago
How did you last 26 months with that? Life is way too short for those kind of games. Congratulations on getting out.
- angersock 11y ago
  I believed in the product and in my team, and was still slightly on fire from my own most recent attempt at founding a startup. There's no shame in picking a suboptimal solution if it addresses stability and anxiety concerns--it's just important not to stay if things get better and you can't upgrade the solution.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

>gambling on other peoples' success To be clear unless you are running your own independent shop you are doing this by default. You are either chasing your dreams or someone else's - it really is binary.