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Posting anon. In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding f
by throwaway724 8y ago
Posting anon.
In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go.
To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the wind down however, I took up some contract work that I found through various friends in the SF startup scene. One company that I really liked and did some small stuff for was Burbn, which was a mobile-only location check-in that was hinged around taking photos of your location.
Missing my friends in NYC (I made a lot of friends in SF, but my inner circle were my college buddies from CMU; I went to tech and they went finance, sigh), I decided to leave SF to head to NYC and get a fresh start.
As I was leaving, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends, so I emailed my contact at Burbn and said I was likely to be unavailable for any more work, but that I liked the project and hoped for the best for him. He responded and said that he was near funding on a small pivot, and that if I was interested, there might be a full-time role available. I declined - I was mentally done with SF and the startup scene (Larry Chiang, 111 Minna, the rise of FB spam-crap like RockYou, etc.) as it was then.
That person was Kevin Systrom; that pivot was Instagram.
- hitekker 8y agoMight be worth reaching out and saying best wishes. Short & sweet. Not for any ulterior motive, just out of the spirit of an old, forgotten friendship.
- benchplz 8y agotaking you up on your advice would be an ulterior motive.
- dangwu 8y agoYour life now may be better than the one where you accepted Kevin’s offer.
- 2_listerine_pls 8y agoDoubt it
- confiscate 8y agoThat is rationalization, where we try to apply "logic" to make ourselves feel better about a bad situation. The chances are low that life is better now, after losing out on a chance to be an early part of Instagram. That's like saying a homeless person's life may be better than if he had a home. Ya statistically that scenario is possible. But if you had a choice, do you really want that homeless person to stay homeless and just keep telling him "your life may be better now"? Or do you want that person's life to improve so that he eventually has a home?
- weego 8y agoI think the more brutal reality is that just because you had been there then instead of someone else doesn't mean Instagram would have done what it did. Maybe as a first hire you'd have jerked around more than the actual person, or missed deadlines or just made bad choices which lead to zero traction. It's egotistical to assume that it being you instead leads to the same result
- confiscate 8y agoYa I agree, but on the other hand, it's possible that if you had been there instead of someone else, you would have made better choices leading to 10x traction and made Instagram 10x what it is today I mean, what signals lead you to believe one scenario is more likely than the other? It didn't sound like he was a weak employee in any way--if anything, he sounded like a strong employee because the founder of Instagram wanted to create a full-time role just to keep him, despite not having much money for the startup back then. I would assume the founder of Instagram is a better judge than I am, of who is good to hire. It's possible that Instagram would have been more successful if he was there to support it back then.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
- quintin 8y agoYou know what they say: “When humans discover immortality, the person who will die the minute before will be the most …”
- dgzl 8y agoThe most what?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago"the most..." what? Is that an add-your-own-ending quote for reflecting on personal philosophy? :). (Also, this is a plot point in Bostrom's "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" - the last people to die will really be mourned, and people will then start asking if, maybe, they could have started working on the problem sooner...)
- thedailymail 8y agoI think all the people who die unwillingly after humans discover mortality will have a good claim to be the most...
- stef25 8y agoImmortality will probably never work for those that die from getting hit by a train and the like. This will make their death so much worse for their loved ones.
- tsunamifury 8y agoWhy did everyone run into Larry so much back then and what happened to the startup party scene... which was so odd at the time. Edit: Found my answers on quora, I’ll let you look yourselves as I don’t want to link to what may be gossip but I had a laugh and a wave of nostalgia for those heady nonsense days
- confiscate 8y agowho is Larry and why does this person matter? I searched on Google but could not find anything relevant. I actually met Larry at a bitcoin event a while back. Seems like a normal guy. Is there some back story I am not aware of?
- apetresc 8y agoYou simultaneously don't know who Larry is, but also know you met him?
- TomMarius 8y agoYou can see him, talk to him, ask his name - and still not know who is it. Is he a super-rich former founder? A VC? Chinese agent? Inherited money? Etc.
- confiscate 8y agoYes I met him at a bitcoin event for 20 seconds, so I only know his name before talking to another person.
- person_of_color 8y ago> I went to tech and they went finance, sigh I doubt they would be that much better off...
- uuilly 8y agoYou know how in war movies when the guy leaves the trench only to come back and find that all his friends have been killed? In the valley you leave the trench and come back to find that all your friends are rich. No words can alleviate that regret. But if you’re having near misses like this you’re actually really close to something good.
- skrebbel 8y ago> No words can alleviate that regret. I can relate. I cry myself to sleep every night thinking about those bitcoins I didn't mine, back when you could get hundreds on a single GPU overnight.
- jorvi 8y agoWell, at least you aren’t the guy that bought two pizzas for 10 000 bitcoins. If he’d have held onto them until the $20 000 peak (a tall order in itself) he’d have netted a cool $200 million.
- skrebbel 8y agoWell, not so bad if they were nice pizzas!
- Thlom 8y agoDid that guy who binned his hard drive with his bitcoin wallet ever retrieve it from the garbage dump? Last I heard he was planning on digging up the entire dump to find it.
- Ntrails 8y ago> If he’d have held onto them until the $20 000 peak (a tall order in itself) he’d have netted a cool $200 million. If he could have sold them at that price without moving the market, that is.
- uncle_d 8y agoOTOH, the pizza shop owner sure struck lucky, if he kept them
- laurieg 8y agoA lot of commenters seem to be bemoaning this poster as missing out on endless riches. Why? we already know that being super rich doesn't really make you all that much happier compared to being rich (and if you are a programmer in work in then you are pretty rich). I feel that they missed out more on the rocketship journey of being on a startup. And even then that's not everyone's cup of tea.
- monort 8y agoAnecdotally, when you don't need to work it makes you happier (though you can still work, but only when you want to). High wage vs passive income is a big difference and the research you are thinking about only captured the former.
- mockingbirdy 8y agoI have a passive income of €1.5k/month without being a millionaire. Some of my friends are millionaires and we are basically equal. We all can choose to work and are free, this makes all the difference. The main differentiator between rich people and others is the fact that rich people don't have to work. This is the biggest freedom. I figured out that I don't need to be rich to do that. I still work, but I mainly do this because I want to. I say no to things that I don't like and I've never been employed (I'm an employer myself). I wouldn't trade this freedom for 10-20k/month (which I could achieve, but I would have to work my a* off). Deciding what to do with your time is the ultimate freedom. edit: I worked like this in the past (making good money and having lots of stress), but nowadays I don't see the point anymore. Even if you like your work, wouldn't you prefer to work on your own visions and on your own terms?
- Rinzler89 8y agoMay I ask what kind of business are you running for your passive income and how you got there? Background of this question: Also form Europe (Austria), an EE engineer but modestly paid and overworked. I figure I should pivot to a passive income source as even switching jobs won't imporve my quality of life since companies are overly stingy on paying competitive salaries and most try ot burn you out in the long run as they try to be more competitive and government will tax the hell out of you the more you earn so I figure why bother, my healh is worth more than that.
- tmvnty 8y agoThe fandom of getting rich and famous in the Silicon Valley is equivalent to high school girls wanting the bad boys as boyfriends.
- pm90 8y agoI don't think that's accurate. A more apt anology (and one trending on HN, coincidentally) is the California Gold Rush. The prospectors (workers) are willing to work super hard and risk it all to find gold (unicorn equity).
- GuiA 8y agoYou made the best decision you could at the time. That’s the only thing and best thing you can ever do in life.
- jumbopapa 8y agoExactly. You can only make decisions based off the information you have. Heck, for all we know if this guy did go work at Instagram then the company could have never taken off! You can never be sure of anything.
- throwaway724 8y agoHi everyone! Well, thank you for all of the comments - didn't expect my short little tale to be that interesting :) As for me, it worked out - soon after arriving in NYC, I took a chance at starting a company for myself. Unlike Burbn/Instagram, which I would have liked from a market perspective, I went all-in on an idea and an industry that I truly loved. I managed to raise a little bit of funding, hired a great team, and exited 10x a few years later. Still at the company, now CTO. Love it more and more every day. Right around the same time I started my company, I also met a beautiful woman who is now my wife. Bonus! Do I think about what could have been? Sure. But I didn't let it stop me from plowing ahead and moving forward. What happened yesterday or last week or last year only impacts you to the extent that you let it. All you can ever do is believe in yourself and make the best decisions you can with the information available to you.