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This comment strikes me as idealistic and disconnected from reality. It idealizes the mythos of risk/reward/effort for founders while minimizing the risk and ef
by iandanforth 7y ago
This comment strikes me as idealistic and disconnected from reality. It idealizes the mythos of risk/reward/effort for founders while minimizing the risk and effort of later employees. Founders work very hard, but I know people at Apple who work harder. Founders take financial risks, but I know people who've taken pay-cuts an order of magnitude larger than bootstrap costs to get 1% of a company that ultimately failed.
The reality is that there are no objective, consistent metrics which map risk to equity or effort to equity, all we have is cultural norms, pretending otherwise is a self-serving narrative.
- Kinnard 7y agoHave you started a company and made it successful?
- andrepd 7y agoI've never held public office, yet I'm perfectly justified in complaining about politicians. I've never played football, yet I'm perfectly justified in yelling at my team's players on the tv. What's the point of your argument?
- iandanforth 7y agoNo. I've been a part of five startups, one which I founded, three are still going, one very well, the other two died (including the one I started.)
- tptacek 7y agoI don't know about "idealistic", but the parent commenter is right that this proposal is disconnected from reality; that's objectively true.
- JamesBarney 7y ago> but I know people who've taken pay-cuts an order of magnitude larger than bootstrap costs to get 1% of a company that ultimately failed. Starting a company can easily be a 70-100% paycut. If someone took a paycut that large for 1% of a company that was just a terrible and I don't think representative decision of a first employee.