Hacker News Reader

> A $100M company takes years to build. You think in 2020, if these guys walk away from the table with $400k each for ~20 hours of work they did in 2015, that's reasonable?

Yes?

It's a lottery ticket with less than a million-to-one odds. The expected value of the hypothetical payout is arguably lower than 20 hours of contract work.

Ok -- at 40 bps per 20 hours, assuming that their total stake is ~12% (there's 8 of them dividing the whole pie) their vesting schedule is a little short of four months.

There's a lot of big talk on HN about being a tough guy negotiator, earning your keep in this harsh Darwinian landscape, looking out for number one, etc. I'd like to meet the person who's negotiated a 4 month vesting schedule with no cliff.

Once you put actual numbers to the proposition, it's instantly obvious that these badass negotiators are suddenly full of shit. Reminds me of being elementary school recess, where everyone's dad was the strongest man in the world, and this one time he picked up a car and lifted it over his head.

That grant would be bigger than anything any subsequent engineer would earn, and it's beyond dubious to think the contribution of this guy -- who's patting himself on the back for figuring out a CRM schema -- is worth more than the guy who stays for 4 years and actually helps brings the product to maturity and exit.

If I've learned anything since I got out of graduate school, it's this: what you're "worth," what you "deserve," are meaningless concepts. You get what you negotiate, no more and no less.

Someone who thinks that 40 beeps for the founding team is too much probably shouldn't invest in this startup. For me, if I thought that the company would be worth $100M in five years, the $1.6M the SW team would be getting would be the least of my concerns, well behind 'how do I get in on this?'

> Someone who thinks that 40 beeps for the founding team

Not the founding team. Some guys who contributed 10-20 hours one time.

> For me, if I thought that the company would be worth $100M in five years, the $1.6M the SW team would be getting would be the least of my concerns, well behind 'how do I get in on this?'

Nobody would be complaining about how difficult fundraising is if investors were all so amenable.

Not the founding team. Some guys who contributed 10-20 hours one time.

The guys who built the MVP.

You've posted this all over the thread and I don't understand it.

It doesn't matter what you or I think of 0.4%. They all agreed to 0.4%. Either that agreement is honored, or all IP remains with its creator--and Bobby takes his code and goes home.