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What if I'm a founder who's also a developer, I have the idea, customer base and I've done ~80% of the code of the product but I need help with deploying and sc

by zmxz 4y ago

What if I'm a founder who's also a developer, I have the idea, customer base and I've done ~80% of the code of the product but I need help with deploying and scaling the product. How much of the profit do I share with the employees? What does the society deem fair in the case where founder comes up with the product, identifies the problem and works with the customer to configure the product? Do I get to take 5 salaries or 1 salary?

JustSomeNobody 4y ago
How much value do you place on "scaling"? You wrote 80% of the code (who wrote the rest?) and you got it deployed. You're making a decent living on 15.000 users. "Scaling" guy comes in and "scales" you to 150.000 users. Do they get an order of magnitude more profit than you?
- zmxz 4y ago
  That's what I'm asking. What does the "scaling" guy get? What's the fair distribution of wealth? I'm not placing any value on "scaling", I'm asking what it should be valued at. > Who wrote the rest For argument's sake, let's say there's 10 devs who wrote the rest. Let's say that in span of 12 months, after paying yearly gross salary of $150 000 to each person in equation (10 devs, 1 scaling/devops guy, 1 founder), $2 800 000 is left and we're dividing it. How much goes to each of the 12 people in the equation?
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    They get what they negotiate for, no? I worked for startups before and I would press for more equity, but I wasn't under any delusion that if there were 4 employees and I was just joining that I'd get 20% equity. They were there first, had to take on the risk, etc.
  - eulers_secret 4y ago
    The only sensible move is to payback investors and yourself first. So, as little as they will accept. If you can afford to (maybe) loose them, give them $0 extra. Economy isn’t so hot anymore, folks with obligations will absolutely settle and take it on the chin. You have all the power here.
    - zmxz 4y ago
      What I'm trying to get for an answer is straight percentages, because there's always this latent hate towards founders or bosses so I'm trying to see what would be fair in the scenario I presented. The "boss bad, worker good" is getting really boring and disgusting, just like not all bosses are evil - not all workers are good. I presented a scenario where there's no investors and where the founder did majority of the work.

by zmxz 4y ago

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

How much value do you place on "scaling"? You wrote 80% of the code (who wrote the rest?) and you got it deployed. You're making a decent living on 15.000 users. "Scaling" guy comes in and "scales" you to 150.000 users. Do they get an order of magnitude more profit than you?

zmxz 4y ago
That's what I'm asking. What does the "scaling" guy get? What's the fair distribution of wealth? I'm not placing any value on "scaling", I'm asking what it should be valued at. > Who wrote the rest For argument's sake, let's say there's 10 devs who wrote the rest. Let's say that in span of 12 months, after paying yearly gross salary of $150 000 to each person in equation (10 devs, 1 scaling/devops guy, 1 founder), $2 800 000 is left and we're dividing it. How much goes to each of the 12 people in the equation?
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  They get what they negotiate for, no? I worked for startups before and I would press for more equity, but I wasn't under any delusion that if there were 4 employees and I was just joining that I'd get 20% equity. They were there first, had to take on the risk, etc.
- eulers_secret 4y ago
  The only sensible move is to payback investors and yourself first. So, as little as they will accept. If you can afford to (maybe) loose them, give them $0 extra. Economy isn’t so hot anymore, folks with obligations will absolutely settle and take it on the chin. You have all the power here.
  - zmxz 4y ago
    What I'm trying to get for an answer is straight percentages, because there's always this latent hate towards founders or bosses so I'm trying to see what would be fair in the scenario I presented. The "boss bad, worker good" is getting really boring and disgusting, just like not all bosses are evil - not all workers are good. I presented a scenario where there's no investors and where the founder did majority of the work.