7 ms·

I have to commend TC for writing an article like this, as they are largely the biggest vehicle for turning founders into Hollywood-esque stars and boasting foun

by TheBiv 12y ago

I have to commend TC for writing an article like this, as they are largely the biggest vehicle for turning founders into Hollywood-esque stars and boasting founders as being disruptive (heck, their own conference is called Disrupt). The central principle of realizing that there are more people behind a startup and we should cherish them as well, is an absolutely awesome thought!! I just hope that the vision for how we recognize them is not how the author describes in: "We need to find a way to build up the profile of that quiet army of people who are developing products behind the scenes, the engineers and product managers who took risks to build their founders’ dreams." Because that just sounds like what they currently do to founders! Idea: maybe TC could take the charge and list the founding employees profiles with every company article they write?

ChuckMcM 12y ago
I like your idea. I expect if they implemented it they would see that the article gets it wrong on a number of levels. Take any successful company, Google, Intel, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Boeing, any of them. Now compile a list of the first 10 - 100 employees. Now take the net worth for those individuals and compare it to the rest of the world. You'll find it lands north of the 99th percentile. You can pull out exceptions of course, the sales guy at Sun who was worth several million and lost it all through a series of really poor choices, the Googler who left 6 months in rather than vest that first tranche of stock, the Apple employee who gave up their shares to live a simpler life. But for the most part all of those people have a net worth north of $1M. Ask Charlie Ayers, the original chef at Google if he is mad/bitter/whatever because Larry and Sergey are billionaires and he is just a multimillionaire. The narrative that founders win and everyone else loses is wrong. You've heard about the abominable failure rate of startups 9 in 10 fail. An employee can get a piece of 10 different startups in 10 years if they move from place to place, vest their 25% of their option and exercise it. A founder is lucky if they get 3 shots at the prize in 10 years. Do the employees who are driving around matching Ferrari's in the Facebook parking lot feel bad that Zuckerberg is worth a lot more than they are? Most of them no, they don't care, they are "rich". Do founders get the 'fame' ? Sure, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Sometimes it makes you a target. I was amazed at how much Eric Schmidt paid for personal security (its in the 10Q) he can afford it of course but really? You have to hire ex-special forces types because you're too tempting a kidnapping target? I personally would much rather be anonymously wealthy than 'target on your back' wealthy. One summer I worked at IBM and lost my housing just before my internship was up. I stayed at one of my co-workers places for the last three weeks. He had a computer which he used to monitor the stock market, I helped him enter data into it (which at the time there was no Internet). One evening having just gone through a list of number/value pairs (qty and price) I multiplied them all out in my head and summed them, the result was over $2M. I asked him if that was his savings and he said "yup". I couldn't believe this guy who lived in the same tract house he had been living in for years was a millionaire. Where was the fancy car? the lavish furnishings? None of that. I asked him what it was like, he said, "I worry less about the future than I did before." My point is that the ecosystem that is Silicon valley creates a lot of those kinds of people. People who don't get caught up in the razmatazz and just save money when they can, diversify when their stock value goes up, and accumulate over time. They are usually "employee" types and not "founder" types though.
- te_chris 12y ago
  I think you are correct about the big companies, but I didn't get the feeling that's who the author was addressing. They seemed to be addressing the new up and comers with founders who are stingy with equity and bad at sharing the limelight with their staff.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Big companies were small companies before they were big companies. It is important to understand that as they grow companies issue new stock, that new stock "dilutes" the existing stock, so lets say your a new company and you have Scrooge as you CEO who gets half, and you as the employee get 1/100th. Now while the company is growing and new investors are coming on board, typically new stock gets issued, they get new stock, the CEO's 1/2 becomes 2/5ths and you the employee who is doing great get another 'evergreen' option to keep you interested. So the CEOs percentage drops a lot faster than your percentage as an employee does. It may be that you're stays constant with new options while their falls. But none of that matters if the company is growing and growing. The stock splits two for one and you've got twice the number of shares. If the company is going to become big, you will always do well in a company that has been sharing equity from the start. The math makes it come out that way. But it does only work if the company succeeds enough to either be acquired for the product or go public. Sometimes you can be acqui-hired and still get rich, there are number of folks who got into Facebook that way early on and have done well, but as always there is timing, luck, and quality. If you are in this valley to "get rich" then my experience is that you won't do as well as people who are here to "do great things." That was made really obvious to me when the company that acquired the company I helped get going hit an all time high, and some of the employees did nothing but hit 'refresh' on the NASDAQ page all day "Oh look another $100K, oh wait, -$50K, or good $200K, oh wait ..." They became completely non-functional as employees. The people who were there to get things done, didn't have that issue.
  - TheBiv 12y ago
    Agreed! I was just addressing the type of startups you mentioned!
  - walshemj 12y ago
mathattack 12y ago
Definitely goes against the grain of their usual writing.
alexthomas 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

by TheBiv 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I like your idea. I expect if they implemented it they would see that the article gets it wrong on a number of levels. Take any successful company, Google, Intel, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Boeing, any of them. Now compile a list of the first 10 - 100 employees. Now take the net worth for those individuals and compare it to the rest of the world. You'll find it lands north of the 99th percentile. You can pull out exceptions of course, the sales guy at Sun who was worth several million and lost it all through a series of really poor choices, the Googler who left 6 months in rather than vest that first tranche of stock, the Apple employee who gave up their shares to live a simpler life. But for the most part all of those people have a net worth north of $1M. Ask Charlie Ayers, the original chef at Google if he is mad/bitter/whatever because Larry and Sergey are billionaires and he is just a multimillionaire. The narrative that founders win and everyone else loses is wrong. You've heard about the abominable failure rate of startups 9 in 10 fail. An employee can get a piece of 10 different startups in 10 years if they move from place to place, vest their 25% of their option and exercise it. A founder is lucky if they get 3 shots at the prize in 10 years. Do the employees who are driving around matching Ferrari's in the Facebook parking lot feel bad that Zuckerberg is worth a lot more than they are? Most of them no, they don't care, they are "rich". Do founders get the 'fame' ? Sure, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Sometimes it makes you a target. I was amazed at how much Eric Schmidt paid for personal security (its in the 10Q) he can afford it of course but really? You have to hire ex-special forces types because you're too tempting a kidnapping target? I personally would much rather be anonymously wealthy than 'target on your back' wealthy. One summer I worked at IBM and lost my housing just before my internship was up. I stayed at one of my co-workers places for the last three weeks. He had a computer which he used to monitor the stock market, I helped him enter data into it (which at the time there was no Internet). One evening having just gone through a list of number/value pairs (qty and price) I multiplied them all out in my head and summed them, the result was over $2M. I asked him if that was his savings and he said "yup". I couldn't believe this guy who lived in the same tract house he had been living in for years was a millionaire. Where was the fancy car? the lavish furnishings? None of that. I asked him what it was like, he said, "I worry less about the future than I did before." My point is that the ecosystem that is Silicon valley creates a lot of those kinds of people. People who don't get caught up in the razmatazz and just save money when they can, diversify when their stock value goes up, and accumulate over time. They are usually "employee" types and not "founder" types though.

te_chris 12y ago
I think you are correct about the big companies, but I didn't get the feeling that's who the author was addressing. They seemed to be addressing the new up and comers with founders who are stingy with equity and bad at sharing the limelight with their staff.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Big companies were small companies before they were big companies. It is important to understand that as they grow companies issue new stock, that new stock "dilutes" the existing stock, so lets say your a new company and you have Scrooge as you CEO who gets half, and you as the employee get 1/100th. Now while the company is growing and new investors are coming on board, typically new stock gets issued, they get new stock, the CEO's 1/2 becomes 2/5ths and you the employee who is doing great get another 'evergreen' option to keep you interested. So the CEOs percentage drops a lot faster than your percentage as an employee does. It may be that you're stays constant with new options while their falls. But none of that matters if the company is growing and growing. The stock splits two for one and you've got twice the number of shares. If the company is going to become big, you will always do well in a company that has been sharing equity from the start. The math makes it come out that way. But it does only work if the company succeeds enough to either be acquired for the product or go public. Sometimes you can be acqui-hired and still get rich, there are number of folks who got into Facebook that way early on and have done well, but as always there is timing, luck, and quality. If you are in this valley to "get rich" then my experience is that you won't do as well as people who are here to "do great things." That was made really obvious to me when the company that acquired the company I helped get going hit an all time high, and some of the employees did nothing but hit 'refresh' on the NASDAQ page all day "Oh look another $100K, oh wait, -$50K, or good $200K, oh wait ..." They became completely non-functional as employees. The people who were there to get things done, didn't have that issue.
- TheBiv 12y ago
  Agreed! I was just addressing the type of startups you mentioned!
- walshemj 12y ago

mathattack 12y ago

Definitely goes against the grain of their usual writing.

alexthomas 12y ago

Since I started with my online business I earn $58 every 15 minutes. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don't check it out. ▂ ▄ ▅ ▇ LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY ▇ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁ >>>>>>>>>➜➜➜➜➜➜➜ ➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜ WWW.PAYRAP.cℴm

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]