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Innovation in compensation is great, but this feels like a "I want to play with crypto" move rather than a mature revision of an inequitable existing model. Opt

Innovation in compensation is great, but this feels like a "I want to play with crypto" move rather than a mature revision of an inequitable existing model. Options that don't expire are a huge incentive! Offer that. 10% is a huge incentive! Offer that. If you know you're turning off smart candidates with crypto shenanigans it's a good sign that this is not a mature or pragmatic team.

doctorpangloss 2y ago
On the other hand, what difference does it make if the greater fool is a dentist’s brokerage account or a dentist’s crypto exchange account? The price of the thing is as imaginary in both scenarios.
- hx8 2y ago
  Stock comes with a wide variety of legal guarantees and rights that give it an advantage over crypto.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    Ha ha, so no difference.
- martinsnow 2y ago
  Stocks are regulated by legal frameworks in most countries. You can't dilute at will and you can't remove access to stock nor voting rights if they were issued as such. These crypto tokens aren't even guaranteed to be issued to a wallet you control.
marcell 2y ago
(fetchfox CEO here) I have a few pragmatic reasons why I want to use a crypto token, instead of traditional instruments. The first one is liquidity timing. With a crypto token, you can have 24/7 trading and liquidity from basically day 1. There is no need for second markets with high fees and complicated process. Just a 10 second Uniswap contract. Second, you don't need to "manage a cap table". The token trades and moves freely on the blockchain, permissionlessly for anyone who wants to use it. I have a long article at https://ortutay.substack.com/p/the-computer-science-case-for-web3 https://ortutay.substack.com/p/the-computer-science-case-for... about why I think crypto rails are fundamentally better than the current banking system, from a computer science perspective. The best example is how money transfers work in the current banking system. A money transfer is the canonical example of why you need transactions in a database: you want to deduct money from person A only of you successfuly transfer money to person B. But guess what: this is never executed as an actual atomic transaction, because A and B are usually at separate banks, in separate DB's. Compare this to the blockchain: every single transfer is an atomic, universally auditable transaction. If you ignore all the noise and scams in crypto, this just makes 10x more sense to me as an engineer. FetchFox as a company has two goals: (1) Make the best possible AI scraper (2) Prove that crypto tokens are viable and better alternative to traditional company structures It's lame that so much crypto stuff is caught up in scams that obscure the underlying value.
- martinsnow 2y ago
  Why does your employees need to gamble on crypto assets when stock options are better understood and covered by law frameworks in all countries?
  - marcell 2y ago
    Well, they don't have to be employees. It's not for everyone, if you don't want a crypto token compensation, Fetchfox is not the right company for you to work for.
    - martinsnow 2y ago
      I find your answer incredibly arrogant as a developer because you don't have a successful product so it's a gamble for anyone choosing to join your company. For me it looks like you want to skirt regulations and not pay developers for what they're worth.
      - marcell 2y ago
        We pay very competitive on the cash side (over 200k for exceptional engineers), and have offer options that are 10x more competitive on company stake side than other companies (up to 20% for exceptional engineers, but with lower cash as a tradeoff). I challenge anyone to find better founding engineer compensation. Comparisons from YC: https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/l/software-engineer https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/l/software-engineer
        martinsnow 2y ago
        That is indeed very good compensation. How do you evaluate who gets 20%? That's not something you can afford giving out to many.
        marcell 2y ago
        Our founding engineering team is going to be capped at 3 or 4 max engineers, and to get 20% you need to take a pay cut. So far people have generally taken the higher cash offers. The token grants on those translate to 4-8%, which is still more than typical. It also depends a lot on the person, I have a pretty high bar for "exceptional": https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-thing...

doctorpangloss 2y ago

On the other hand, what difference does it make if the greater fool is a dentist’s brokerage account or a dentist’s crypto exchange account? The price of the thing is as imaginary in both scenarios.

hx8 2y ago
Stock comes with a wide variety of legal guarantees and rights that give it an advantage over crypto.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Ha ha, so no difference.
martinsnow 2y ago
Stocks are regulated by legal frameworks in most countries. You can't dilute at will and you can't remove access to stock nor voting rights if they were issued as such. These crypto tokens aren't even guaranteed to be issued to a wallet you control.

marcell 2y ago

(fetchfox CEO here) I have a few pragmatic reasons why I want to use a crypto token, instead of traditional instruments. The first one is liquidity timing. With a crypto token, you can have 24/7 trading and liquidity from basically day 1. There is no need for second markets with high fees and complicated process. Just a 10 second Uniswap contract. Second, you don't need to "manage a cap table". The token trades and moves freely on the blockchain, permissionlessly for anyone who wants to use it. I have a long article at https://ortutay.substack.com/p/the-computer-science-case-for-web3 https://ortutay.substack.com/p/the-computer-science-case-for... about why I think crypto rails are fundamentally better than the current banking system, from a computer science perspective. The best example is how money transfers work in the current banking system. A money transfer is the canonical example of why you need transactions in a database: you want to deduct money from person A only of you successfuly transfer money to person B. But guess what: this is never executed as an actual atomic transaction, because A and B are usually at separate banks, in separate DB's. Compare this to the blockchain: every single transfer is an atomic, universally auditable transaction. If you ignore all the noise and scams in crypto, this just makes 10x more sense to me as an engineer. FetchFox as a company has two goals: (1) Make the best possible AI scraper (2) Prove that crypto tokens are viable and better alternative to traditional company structures It's lame that so much crypto stuff is caught up in scams that obscure the underlying value.

martinsnow 2y ago
Why does your employees need to gamble on crypto assets when stock options are better understood and covered by law frameworks in all countries?
- marcell 2y ago
  Well, they don't have to be employees. It's not for everyone, if you don't want a crypto token compensation, Fetchfox is not the right company for you to work for.
  - martinsnow 2y ago
    I find your answer incredibly arrogant as a developer because you don't have a successful product so it's a gamble for anyone choosing to join your company. For me it looks like you want to skirt regulations and not pay developers for what they're worth.
    - marcell 2y ago
      We pay very competitive on the cash side (over 200k for exceptional engineers), and have offer options that are 10x more competitive on company stake side than other companies (up to 20% for exceptional engineers, but with lower cash as a tradeoff). I challenge anyone to find better founding engineer compensation. Comparisons from YC: https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/l/software-engineer https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/l/software-engineer
      - martinsnow 2y ago
        That is indeed very good compensation. How do you evaluate who gets 20%? That's not something you can afford giving out to many.
        marcell 2y ago
        Our founding engineering team is going to be capped at 3 or 4 max engineers, and to get 20% you need to take a pay cut. So far people have generally taken the higher cash offers. The token grants on those translate to 4-8%, which is still more than typical. It also depends a lot on the person, I have a pretty high bar for "exceptional": https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-thing...