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Being a founder in a SV-funded startup is not a hardship. You spend some number of weeks taking coffees with investors. You get funding and start recruiting f

Being a founder in a SV-funded startup is not a hardship. You spend some number of weeks taking coffees with investors. You get funding and start recruiting friends and posting job openings. You go to SV conferences and meetups where, as Founder, you're one of the elite. You're invited to the summer party at August Capital, and year-round founder events by your investors. And yes, you work hard. And the employees also work hard, and are working on reduced pay, and are doing it because it's fun and they believe in the mission. And they believe they're all "in this together," but learn otherwise only when the big day arrives.

parvenu74 8y ago
Your story doesn’t speak well of SV. If employees are led to believe — or even let to believe — they are in this with the founders and will share in the rewards but it’s not in their contracts... I’m not sure if it’s on the Founders or the people who believe beyond what their contracts oblige their founders and investors to perform. Which case are you making here? Personally, I assume I don’t get anything not stipulated in the employment contract regardless of enthusiastic assurances to the contrary.
nostrademons 8y ago
The GitHub founders spent 5 years entirely bootstrapped before taking any outside investment. IIRC, they spent the first 2 without any employees, doing all coding, sales, and evangelism themselves and making barely-pay-the-rent revenue. Their salary had they not started GitHub would've been roughly $300K/year. That's close to a million each in opportunity cost, with no obvious indication they'd be successful at the end. (They were themselves early employees of PowerShell, working for startup salaries until it was acquired by Microsoft. They chose not to continue working at Microsoft after the acquisition.) Methinks you need to distinguish between startups like Theranos, Clinkle, or Juicero, where a well-connected and charismatic founder meets an investor who takes on all the risk and then they crash and burn spectacularly and nobody gets their money back, and a bootstrapped team of engineers that build a product millions of people want and then get handsomely rewarded 11 years later.

parvenu74 8y ago

Your story doesn’t speak well of SV. If employees are led to believe — or even let to believe — they are in this with the founders and will share in the rewards but it’s not in their contracts... I’m not sure if it’s on the Founders or the people who believe beyond what their contracts oblige their founders and investors to perform. Which case are you making here? Personally, I assume I don’t get anything not stipulated in the employment contract regardless of enthusiastic assurances to the contrary.

nostrademons 8y ago

The GitHub founders spent 5 years entirely bootstrapped before taking any outside investment. IIRC, they spent the first 2 without any employees, doing all coding, sales, and evangelism themselves and making barely-pay-the-rent revenue. Their salary had they not started GitHub would've been roughly $300K/year. That's close to a million each in opportunity cost, with no obvious indication they'd be successful at the end. (They were themselves early employees of PowerShell, working for startup salaries until it was acquired by Microsoft. They chose not to continue working at Microsoft after the acquisition.) Methinks you need to distinguish between startups like Theranos, Clinkle, or Juicero, where a well-connected and charismatic founder meets an investor who takes on all the risk and then they crash and burn spectacularly and nobody gets their money back, and a bootstrapped team of engineers that build a product millions of people want and then get handsomely rewarded 11 years later.