emmett

28 ms·

241.
by emmett 14y ago
The point is, if investors are in at $2M, we are assuming $2M is market price. The point of market price is that includes things like "google will compete with us" or "my share will be diluted when the company raises again" as well as "the
242.
by emmett 14y ago
I'm friends with founders of many YC startups (and a number of non-YC startups as well). If you're a smart founder, you will offer a very good deal to your first N employees. They are by far the most important hires you'll make. Even if you
243.
by emmett 14y ago
Which is why it's $100k of risk-adjusted equity. Some high percentage will fail[1], but that's already accounted for in the price. In the case the equity is worth a non-zero amount, it will probably be worth much more than $100k. Trying to
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by emmett 14y ago
Unless you think you're a better judge of company valuation than the market, the current risk-adjusted value of the company is approximately the valuation set by the recent round of funding. The fact of future dilution is irrelevant, since
245.
by emmett 14y ago
Of course early stage startups aren't judged by business fundamentals. Your argument is fully general against valuing equity in any early stage business ever at any price. It equally says that the investors are "gambling" and the founders a
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by emmett 14y ago
Don't focus on Zuckerberg. If you think Facebook was just luck, pick someone who you think succeeded by skill. Would you invest in their next company at a $20M valuation?
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by emmett 14y ago
Yes, if you take a $50k/year paycut for $25k/year in equity, you're getting screwed. But mess with the numbers just slightly - a $4M premoney valuation, and 2% of the company - and suddenly you're getting $100k/year in equity for a $50k/yea
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by emmett 14y ago
Why is it "wrong" for something to be priced high? Try this thought experiment: Mark Zuckerberg (or whoever your favorite entrepreneur is) comes to you and says he's quitting Facebook. He's going to start a new company, and he'll let you in
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by emmett 14y ago
If they're not paying you and you accept <10% equity, you're getting ripped off.[1] But if they've raised money and you're drawing a salary? The startup is massively de-risked. You should accept far less equity. You take on virtually no
250.
by emmett 14y ago
No, Facebook's P/E has been high because people having been willing to buy the stock at a high price. Facebook can't dictate what price other people are willing to pay. It's always been set by the market, from day 1.
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by emmett 14y ago
composed_of is the "other half" of what I want. I don't want to use custom ruby classes, I want to use custom Postgresql types. Turns out support for that's in 4.0 too! https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/4775
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by emmett 14y ago
"A live video platform for the whole web" vs. "a social video layer for video games" are very different visions. The most obvious difference? We have a partner program to help encourage an ecosystem of professional casters and players to fo
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by emmett 14y ago
I want support not just for PostgreSQL native datatypes, I want ActiveRecord support for adding my own custom datatypes.
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by emmett 14y ago
Speaking of a cofounder of Justin.tv, I'm not sure what you'd call TwitchTV other than a pivot and it seems to be working out well. SocialCam as well. Definitely a pivot for us.
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by emmett 14y ago
You're missing monetization. I love instagram, but it's a lot harder to monetize than a service which amounts to a giant online shopping guide.
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by emmett 14y ago
Delicious was far smaller than pinterest is today. And unlike pinterest, it did not have an excellent monetization option attached. Not really comparable.
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by emmett 14y ago
On what basis could you not have said the exact same thing about Facebook 5 years ago?
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by emmett 14y ago
Would you care to set any kind of specific timeline on your very confident sounding prediction? Put your (reputational) money down?
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by emmett 14y ago
We use Swiftype at TwitchTV and it's amazing. Great technology, easy to integrate, simple APIs. Can't recommend Swiftype enough.
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by emmett 14y ago
No more drunk driving. Vastly more efficient shared transportation infrastructure. Greater freedom for people too old (or young) to drive themselves safely.
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by emmett 15y ago
I really like this idea. You can apply this to every transactional email, not just to bounce messages. Off the top of my head: - Vacation auto-replies - Receipts - Error reports (ok, that might be a bit coding specific)
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by emmett 15y ago
This is the opposite of my experience. When we greatly narrowed the pool of applicants from "people who want to work on live video" to "people who want to work on live video for gaming", we saw a huge uptick in how many people were interest
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by emmett 15y ago
Um, you're applying to be FUNDED by YC. They are going to meet you in person. You are going to be talking with them about your entire background. And somehow it's a problem that they'd get to see your public Facebook page? I just don't un
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by emmett 15y ago
You do know that anyone can already look up your Facebook page anyway right? Y-Combinator isn't asking for you to give them access to log in as you on Facebook, they're asking for a link to your public page.
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by emmett 15y ago
No, but the average developer costs the company $150k/year at least. Fully loaded employee costs are much higher than salary.
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by emmett 15y ago
Imagine, for a thought experiment, that you were running YC and Mark Zuckerberg came and said "I am done with Facebook. I want to do YC but I don't have an idea right now." You would feel pretty stupid turning him down right? It's a reasona
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by emmett 15y ago
And yet...Reddit, Facebook, and Dropbox ALL had highly technical founders. I'm not sure about Twitter, but I think so too in that case. So maybe it IS important.
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by emmett 15y ago
Equity is not a sure thing, by any means, but it's worth something . And that something means that on average startups will pay less salary than big companies.
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by emmett 15y ago
Your compensation for any given job can be broken down into an equation that looks something like: Compensation = Equity + Salary + Bonus + Benefits + Training + Credentialing + Interest Level of Work... Clearly some places (Academia, for e
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by emmett 15y ago
No need to sign your posts here. We can see your name at the top of every post already.

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