birken

44 ms·

391.
by birken 11y ago
> Writing blog posts about running startups Glad this is first. It is ironic because the founders writing the blog posts and giving advice have proved that they actually don't know what they are doing by the very act of wasting the
392.
by birken 11y ago
FWIW any professional investors, especially VCs, would love to buy out previous investors: fewer signatures, less dilution, fewer lines on the cap table, etc. But as a seed or early investor, you probably don't want to be bought out
393.
by birken 11y ago
I have a bit of a different perspective because my equity turned out to be much more valuable than my salary, but even before that I was heavily motivated by equity. First of all, you are framing the discussion in the context of doing extra
394.
by birken 12y ago
I'm a cyclist and I completely disagree with this. I've biked thousands and thousands of miles in SF, and I think probably 80 or 90% of cyclists are responsible and law abiding. There are maybe 10 or 20 percent who are bad, run
395.
by birken 12y ago
They already do. Search for "Los Angeles House Cleaning" (or many similar types of searches). There is a 'Google places' block of results pushing down people like Thumbtack and Homejoy. Having used both services, I ca
396.
by birken 12y ago
Having been one of the people who built Thumbtack (and a shareholder), this would have been much more of a concern 2 or 3 years ago. At this point Thumbtack (and other companies like Homejoy) are big enough to be able to compete against hu
397.
by birken 12y ago
Here is an example I made to help me understand it. Say SuperAwesomeStartup had a system like this, and the threshold was an ungodly high amount of 50 million dollars. The company IPOs and is worth 100 billion dollars. Founder X owns 10%,
398.
by birken 12y ago
Previous discussion from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3252290 Seems about time for a repost, this is a really great read for people who are receiving or considering stock options as part of their compen
399.
An Introduction to Stock and Options for the Tech Entrepreneur or Startup Employee(scribd.com)
3 points by birken 12y ago|1 comments
400.
by birken 12y ago
Paulg's recent tweet sums up the response to this [1]: > If you're expanding too fast, don't count on your board to warn you. As VCs, kill-or-cure strategies serve their interests. VCs like high burn rate companies, becaus
401.
by birken 12y ago
This isn't necessarily an alternative, but a good compliment would be finding an open source project you like and make a few different contributions to it. You'll learn a bunch of skills that are entirely independent of things yo
402.
by birken 12y ago
> Likewise, students say hackathons are an ideal way to test-drive the experience of working at a start-up before committing to a job. I don't really understand this. Working at a startup is not about sleeping 2 hours a night and&#
403.
by birken 12y ago
> Press flowed effortlessly, funding fell from the sky > Looking in from the outside, I could only assume they possessed secret advantages that I lacked access to. Those secret advantages were just relationships with journalists and i
404.
by birken 12y ago
When funding is announced the amount put in via pro rata rights would be included in whatever the total that is announced. If a startup said they raised $10 million led by XYZ VC, that means that XYZ VC probably put in $5-7.5 million, and t
405.
by birken 12y ago
Well a worst case scenario might be something like: 33% * (66% seed funding) * (66% angel round) * (60% series A) * (60% series B) * (70% series C) * (85% series D) * (90%^2 series E/F) * (95% series G) ~= 2.4% Still > 2% of an 11B
406.
by birken 12y ago
I know nothing about their specific situation but based on this many rounds at this size they've almost certainly had the opportunity, and if they chose not to that would be very risky (and probably stupid).
407.
by birken 12y ago
Yeah, assuming all founders started out with 33%, they'd probably have 5-10% right now, probably closer to 5%. Best case scenario would be: 33% * (75% angel) * (75% series A) * (75% series B) * (85% series C) * (95%^4 Series D-G) = ~10
408.
by birken 12y ago
What a shame that the mentioned lyrics sites like these are going to lose traffic: * http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ledzeppelin/stairwaytoheaven.... * http://www.songlyrics.com/led-zeppelin/st
409.
The Best Startup Advice is to Trust Yourself(danbirken.com)
3 points by birken 12y ago|0 comments
410.
by birken 12y ago
For those of you that found this interesting and want to learn more about stock options, with advice that is a bit more general, I highly recommend "An introduction to stock options for the tech entrepreneur or startup employee":
411.
by birken 12y ago
So you are saying that an article written by a person that ran an unsuccessful startup for 1 year contains wisdom so deep the original commenter can't possibly understand? Don't canonize startup founders. Many of them have no ide
412.
by birken 12y ago
I agree with lessons 1-3, but I'm not convinced about the rest of them. By definition, any engineering on a failed project is "over" engineering. But there are certainly some projects where investing in a little more develop
413.
by birken 12y ago
I've seen VCs sleeping during partner meetings. I don't want to defend that type of behavior, but I don't think it is necessarily indicative of some deeper issues. If your company isn't in the area of expertise of a part
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Interview with Bill Nguyen, Co-Founder of Color (2011)(youtube.com)
1 points by birken 12y ago|0 comments
415.
by birken 12y ago
But IPOs are essentially zero too. If I took a sample of 100 startup employees, the number who have made any significant money in an IPO is way below 1. The fact that the fraction of a person made a really huge amount of money doesn't
416.
by birken 12y ago
This is a good article, and I strongly agree with the general premise (which is: when given an offer at a company involving stock options, get the percentage, not just the raw number of shares). However, most startup exits aren't going
417.
by birken 12y ago
Google has massive teams that are devoted to detecting click fraud and getting rid of it. They really really want to detect and remove click fraud. If I'm selling a product that makes $50 profit, all I care about is how much I have
418.
by birken 12y ago
Yeah, it is a bit confusing. There are 2 types of PIN numbers. 1. The E-file PIN (5 digit PIN). This is the one most people use when they e-file. You either use a special IRS website or phone number to get it by verifying basic identific
419.
by birken 12y ago
I've had it happen to me. My experience was: 1. Scammer filed a tax return under my name/SSN, probably with a large return to their bank account/address 2. Later in the year I filed my tax return, but it was rejected because
420.
by birken 12y ago
My guess is Travis does need sleep (like all humans), he does lose focus from time to time (like all humans), and does need to eat (like all humans). I'm glad Uber exists, and good for Chris Sacca for investing in Uber, but Travis is n

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