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>>"I'm not saying I agree with this piece, but would you admit that it might get difficult to hire someone with noodles & options if there hadn't been any exits

>>"I'm not saying I agree with this piece, but would you admit that it might get difficult to hire someone with noodles & options if there hadn't been any exits in your vicinity for a while" If we chose to hire someone full-time we'd pay them an above market salary. Luckily, we probably won't need to do this for a while (at least a year). >>"Is that an equilibrium? Without investment, exit or revenue increase in the mid-term future, are you still going to survive?" It's only temporary as not only are we already profitable, but our sales & traffic are growing every day and we've been launched less than two months. We could last two years without revenue anyways (even though it doesn't apply). The launching of concerts, improved crawler speed, SEOism (once Google updates their PRs) and some other non-public things we're working on should improve revenue & traffic significantly as well. We're almost certainly not taking investment, and we're certainly not exiting anytime soon. We're going to issue dividends without balance sheet risk - like real companies do.

netcan 18y ago
The idea I was trying to put forward is that employees taking a high stock/salary ratio & founders are investors. This is obvious on the theoretical level. But the point that I am making is that they are also subject to market 'whims.' In fact they constitute their own sort of a sub-market with it's own whims (as is the VC market, IPO market, etc). A year or two of bad news & bad predictions could sour it. Employees & founders might start to favour corporate jobs. Not saying it has to be drastic. VCs pulling purse strings a little tighter. Founders ready to bail a little earlier. Employees a little less willing to take stock. Angels preferring to take a year or two off. Most 'startups' would be affected by at least some of these.

netcan 18y ago

The idea I was trying to put forward is that employees taking a high stock/salary ratio & founders are investors. This is obvious on the theoretical level. But the point that I am making is that they are also subject to market 'whims.' In fact they constitute their own sort of a sub-market with it's own whims (as is the VC market, IPO market, etc). A year or two of bad news & bad predictions could sour it. Employees & founders might start to favour corporate jobs. Not saying it has to be drastic. VCs pulling purse strings a little tighter. Founders ready to bail a little earlier. Employees a little less willing to take stock. Angels preferring to take a year or two off. Most 'startups' would be affected by at least some of these.