btrautsc

13 ms·

91.
by btrautsc 12y ago
rahimnathwani is spot on with my interpretation. Absolutely only start a business because you are driven to make something people want, customers & users love, and to create wealth for you, your partners/ shareholders/ stakeho
92.
by btrautsc 12y ago
Echoed from other places - but doing YC shouldn't be about the money or percentage ownership. Yes, one day you'll look at the cap table and say, "man it would be great to have that x% to give to employees" - but very lik
93.
by btrautsc 12y ago
investors understand YC and don't utilize the investment for valuation purposes that I've seen. most companies I know were going backwards by that math to bring YC on board as an investor (which we did so willingly).
94.
by btrautsc 13y ago
As spullara mentions, owning a smaller portion of a more valuable company is obviously preferable than owning a lot of a less valuable company. I am all for bootstrapping and people choosing their model, but lately there has been quite a bi
95.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Our company (Ambition, YC'w14) has thrived with this logic. Its really part of our culture & our philosophy for being a "cockroach" startup (aka stay alive long enough to build a great business). Our HQ is in Chattanooga,
96.
by btrautsc 13y ago
this is such an undervalued point (which many in SV ignore). many, many "startups for startups" die because naturally most startups die. [no judgement on this proposed service - it indeed looks interesting]
97.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Meh. I'm not sure. I am on mobile constantly. I don't particularly enjoy the experience. Instagram/ Snapchat/ Twitter/ Spotify are all nice - but doing real world work, heavy email, hipchat discussions, really anyth
98.
by btrautsc 13y ago
these are all fair points if not slightly pedantic... obviously I feel I received some value from college (in my case, the soft value outweighs the hard values). like I said, I don't necessarily think college is the best place to spe
99.
by btrautsc 13y ago
This is the reality for so many that is conveniently ignored by many posts such as this. My major (finance) has almost nothing to do with my day to day work. But I became best friends with my cofounder our freshman year, met his high scho
100.
by btrautsc 13y ago
this was my opinion. this is art/ marketing... brilliant, brilliant 'artketing'
101.
by btrautsc 13y ago
White, male, southeastern state school, to quote a VC "literally no fucking pedigree", no engineering backgrounds... we just participated in demo day. YC has been incredible for us and the partners have been amazing to work with.
102.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Yes. there is no pro-rata follow on.
103.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Agreed, in many cases you have early access to those firms (as they have some very small interest in your company) - but I've not heard of anyone experiencing signaling issues from those LPs
104.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Unequivocally, yes. You can haggle over the $'s and %'s all day - but what you can't argue over is where your company stands after YC, especially in the eyes of customers & investors. Some people have the ability to never
105.
by btrautsc 13y ago
I've talked to a few potential applicants this week and something that perturbs me in particular is that YC will somehow "make everything work". In startups things rarely work (at least initially). YC should be regarded as fu
106.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Our team put a lot of thought into deciding whether YC was a good fit for Ambition (YCw14) - well, after it was a possible option - as my cofounders actually didn't know I'd applied to YC for us until we were invited to interview.
107.
by btrautsc 13y ago
This can happen for multiple reasons - but more often (IMO) is being driven by investors who know they need super outsized results, and at some point <insert giant tech co> will come shopping for the portfolio company. So investors ar
108.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Enterprise salespeople may be expensive - but they are usually making a significant amount of their total compensation from commissions - which ideally means they are being paid some % of new $$$'s they are bringing in. So, yes the p
109.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Box comes from a very different situation from the astronomic growth and beast that was pre-IPO FB. Realize they've raised at least $414M that has been reported. At many of those rounds it was likely possible for founders/ early e
110.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Pre-ordered. Unfortunately when traveling - device power is a constant pain point for me. very excited about utilizing for both Macbook & phone.
111.
by btrautsc 13y ago
I can't upvote this plan enough. Well done, Steli. We're transitioning into stage 2 right now which has been an exciting ride, this is basically exactly the playbook we're running. Our biggest challenge has been finding the r
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by btrautsc 13y ago
I am an enormous fan of Abacus and the problems they are solving. Couldn't be more pleased as a user.
113.
by btrautsc 13y ago
Just noticed your comment, albeit a few days late. If you have questions about getting started or making connections in Chatt - shoot me an email and we'll try to set some intro's up. Per your ideals, this could be a pretty good p
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by btrautsc 13y ago
Cheers to that! Shameless plug: Tennessee is a great place for startups. Ambition (YC w14) is based in Chattanooga, TN - a beautiful city, nestled in the mountains, with great quality of life, low cost of living, plus an awesome, smaller bu
115.
by btrautsc 13y ago
This is true. I actually had the opportunity to sit in many meetings with EPB "officials" as the pricing aspects were discussed. It was fascinating - but ultimately they threw a dart on a high price, IMO, basically out of fear of
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by btrautsc 13y ago
quite welcome. and thank you, I'm in the bay area for the next few months, maybe we could connect sometime.
117.
by btrautsc 13y ago
I was part of two failed attempts at personalizing news/ creating communities of topic expertise around news. Both ended in the many tens of thousands of users, and acqui-hire talks (not with either Zite or Flipboard). My thought on th
118.
by btrautsc 13y ago
in a past life I spent a lot of time concerned about how M&A would unfold in this space... This is interesting as we never had the sense Zite had particularly innovative tech, whereas Flipboard needed a 'horseman' to acquire t
119.
by btrautsc 13y ago
> when you’re the nontechnical cofounder, your job is everything that’s nontechnical’ including grocery shopping and errand running. I don’t know why this comment struck me as odd As a non-technical cofounder, this is the truth. I&#x27
120.
by btrautsc 13y ago
their

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