JonFish85

13 ms·

61.
by JonFish85 10y ago
> Hiring is the primary source of dilution at new companies. Is that true? Generally don't companies set aside ~5% of the company for employees? Even the first 5 employees probably get a combined total of less than 10%, whereas the
62.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Even if it doesn't, do you have the money to pay the lawyer(s) enough to get it that far? And is it something you care enough about that if you were offered $25k to drop it, you would reject it?
63.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Don't spend the money before you have it in your account. It's easy to get lured into the idea that the paper money is real ("worst case, it's worth 25% of that and it's still millions!"). There are still so ve
64.
by JonFish85 10y ago
>> I worked for one startup which got bought. The founders made money. All of the employees lost money. I think this is far more common than you'd think. Take YC for example. I'd be really curious to compare SamA's outc
65.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Nope, I think I mis-understood what you were saying :) I thought you had said "risk $100k" meaning $100k worth of on-paper gains, not $100k of cash to gamble on stock. My mistake!
66.
by JonFish85 10y ago
>> I cannot imagine having enough liquid assets to be happy to risk $100k like that $100k isn't much money. If you've taken stock in lieu of $15-$20k/yr salary, $100k is pretty easy to make up (especially considering th
67.
by JonFish85 10y ago
>> Equity is a good bargain right before the next funding round — when cash balance is low and founders pay with shares. I don't think that's true in general. If it's right before the next funding round, that's whe
68.
by JonFish85 10y ago
If you ever wanted confirmation of this, suggest to your company that instead of "unlimited vacation", which is really vague and hard to understand, the company give 8 weeks vacation that doesn't accrue or roll over year to y
69.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Just to expand on this more, there are some reasons why this is. The biggest one is that even if you have all cap-table information available at the time of your offer (which you almost certainly don't), you don't have to be told
70.
by JonFish85 10y ago
>> * Remove the boundries of the state borders. This is regulation. Not allowing companies to work and provide across state lines is ridiculous and again government overreach that could quickly drive down costs. I think this is someth
71.
by JonFish85 10y ago
If you're looking for something directly in the law, you're not going to find the government saying that prices should be raised. It's a second-order effect; there was minimal cost control in the ACA, and plenty of room for c
72.
by JonFish85 10y ago
I'd fine it humorous if this gets shut down as illegal if Airbnb units continue unchecked.
73.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Is Africa stable enough? I feel like South America has a better shot at this than Africa. Maybe in a few generations? Edited to add that I'm speaking in very broad terms, I know that Africa as a whole is enormous, but I don't thin
74.
by JonFish85 10y ago
> assume the company exits at its latest valuation and do the calculations of what your options would be worth in that case. Sure, but even in this case, you have no idea what the provisions of that round are, most likely. The investors
75.
by JonFish85 10y ago
As a counter-argument to this, the employees at Enron were pretty blindsided (for the most part) when their stock was wiped out.
76.
by JonFish85 10y ago
>It's unfortunate that we don't have a "yo-yo" knowledge with a easy to remember URL we can point to. Plenty of great articles out there, including by prominent VCs. But it requires a lot of digging. This seems imposs
77.
by JonFish85 10y ago
"I was an early engineer at Zenefits and found myself holding stock options seminars to explain this stuff to the rest of the engineers." This is a tricky position to be in, considering that in this sort of situation, you're
78.
by JonFish85 10y ago
> They can sit back any day and rake in billions I don't know if this is accurate. They're fending off lawsuits pushing them to recognize their drivers as employees, their prices are artificially low (in the sense that it'
79.
by JonFish85 10y ago
And they were a tremendous success for their pre-IPO investors.
80.
by JonFish85 10y ago
There are lots of ways around that. His stock is worthless, sure, but he probably has something else, whether it's a huge retention bonus (cash or Fitbit stock, which is public and can be sold), an executive-level salary at Fitbit, or
81.
by JonFish85 10y ago
> So, this is more of a success story than most of us might consider savory to think about. In general this sort of thing is probably far more common than you'd think (top brass gets paid, everyone else gets a "thank you")
82.
by JonFish85 10y ago
>"Had they came to the community and said, "hey we are losing sales and we need everyone to pitch in $10 / year for software support (maybe a web interface for fitness or something) I guarantee a few hundred thousand peopl
83.
by JonFish85 10y ago
"What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times." It's easy to say that, but when you are up against the Apple/Samsung typ
84.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Dick move, maybe. But when you have no money, you're limited in what you can do. As a separate cousin-post said, this is why Fitbit bought some assets, but ultimately they probably didn't get stuck with any liability (e.g. warrant
85.
by JonFish85 10y ago
"I was simply shocked to read that Google as a whole consumes as much as a whole metropolis." Considering that they employ ~70k people, plus the hardware to run their business, that sounds about right.
86.
by JonFish85 10y ago
"If I were to stash trillions of income overseas to evade taxes" Evade, or avoid? It's a big difference--as I'm sure has been said, tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is not.
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by JonFish85 10y ago
Cool. When a coal fired power plant moves in next door, you might think twice.
88.
by JonFish85 10y ago
If this starts becoming a pattern, that's how a $25B valuation becomes a $1B acquisition, where common stock becomes worthless. I'm curious how quickly Airbnb is pushing for an exit.
89.
by JonFish85 10y ago
"But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it?" This is a red herring. It's easy to assuming that such an enormous undertaking can be solved by "tax the rich". It doesn't w
90.
by JonFish85 10y ago
Guessing "Worcester Polytechnic Institute".

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