Finbarr

Walmart has a major online shopping portal that competes directly with amazon. My assumption is the OP was talking about buying online from Walmart, particularly given the other example was eBay.

We don't really take into account location. We advertise a range, then ask people what they want. Typically we're able to come in at or above what people want. The main factors are experience and the value that an individual can add to the team.

Most SV workers can't afford a house. How would we account for that?

Some VCs seem to be cool about it. I guess it depends on who you have as investors.

We pay more based on experience and value brought to the team. Location doesn’t really factor into it. People tell us what they want (and we also publicize a range) and then we try to find something that works (typically it’s more than what people ask for).

The entitlement part really goes beyond the free lunches. That was just an example. It’s hard to articulate succinctly. Another example is having to tread carefully to avoid people quitting on a whim because there are so many options. So people get pandered to all the time even when it’s not in anyone’s best interest.

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

I can see how you would come to that (incorrect) conclusion. No sense of entitlement to free lunches, plush offices, massages, and other perks that are common in SV. In return, no expectation of being tied to the office or working crazy hours.

We pay everyone exceptionally well - way higher than they would normally make in their home countries. Even at low-mid Bay Area levels. Just not near the top end of Bay Area salaries. There's no huge disparity in the pay for anyone. See my comment history for who is hiring posts with salaries included.

The founders live in SV and earn less than most of the workers actually. I think longer term we're going to just move away - we have no ties here at this point and we're just throwing money down the drain.

I agree with your statement about innovation.

The remote workers are getting exposed to outside influences by working for SV companies and with other remote workers. In fact, I think they benefit from exposure to a wider range of opinions than one typically encounters in SV. They also travel a lot because being fully remote gives them a ton of flexibility.

I think many of them will try to become entrepreneurs at some point. The challenge for people outside SV is always going to be funding. But starting tech companies is constantly getting cheaper.

It remains to be seen whether there is a breaking point in scale for remote teams. Zapier is now in the hundreds and it still seems to be working well for them.

To be clear, I do think people will continue to move here to start companies for the foreseeable future, and so SV is safe in that respect. Reputation and momentum count for a lot. However, I'm guessing the workforces will start to shift outside of the Bay Area.

My prediction is that money will keep flowing into SV companies, but the teams will all start going remote. Shogun is fully distributed and it's incredible. We're able to pay amazing salaries to everyone outside of the Bay Area, for way less than we'd pay in the Bay Area. The result is happy employees/contractors with no sense of entitlement. They're also not all getting hounded by recruiters constantly because they don't have "San Francisco" as their location.

It doesn't make any sense to raise investment in SV and spend it here. Your runway will be 3x or more longer if you hire outside the Bay Area. Also, there are smart people everywhere! There's a pervasive viewpoint in SV that the world's smartest people all come here. It's true that there are a ton of smart people here, but there are way more equally smart people who don't want to deal with the crazy immigration and politics of the US, and the sky high cost of living in SV.

No worries! Thanks for sharing your perspective.

What's unsaid here is that the vast majority of the support interactions are with customers having a positive experience.

Also, we've been able to turn negative experiences like bugs into positive experiences surprisingly often, e.g., by fixing them really quickly.

It's Shopify's (NYSE: SHOP) app ecosystem: https://apps.shopify.com/

I relate very keenly to this and found this resource really helpful: https://www.intrusivethoughts.org/ocd-symptoms/pure-ocd/

The main thing that has helped me has been meditation. I’ve also found labelling of thoughts to be very powerful. If you can realize what’s going on and label it as anxiety, it takes the sting out of it.

Shogun (YC W18) | Support Engineer | REMOTE | Full time | up to £40k

Shogun is looking for a Support Engineer to join our team. We’re a Y Combinator backed startup based in Silicon Valley, with a globally distributed team of 14. Shogun is a storefront builder for eCommerce sites. Our drag and drop tool helps thousands of merchants build beautiful stores without writing code.

Our customer base is growing rapidly, and our technical support needs are growing too! You would join our support team of 2, based in Melbourne, Australia and Colorado, USA. We take customer service extremely seriously. Read reviews of our product here: https://apps.shopify.com/shogun

Requirements:

* Solid grasp of HTML and CSS

* Some knowledge of Javascript

* Positive attitude

* Perfect written English

* Experience with eCommerce platforms like Shopify is a big plus

Roles and responsibilities include:

* Problem solving

* Answering support emails

* Responding to live chat inquiries

* Writing documentation

* Creating FAQ content

* Creating tutorial content

* Documenting bugs/issues

Ideally we are looking for someone in the UK or similar time zone.

Email jobs@getshogun.com to apply and see https://getshogun.com/jobs/support-engineer for more details.

Thanks Ramon! It's in great hands :-)

Really happy to see this running again. The design looks to have been hugely improved. Great job YC software team!

Ideas are pretty worthless. Execution is everything. It takes years of follow through to realize the value of good ideas.

What name was it under? When did you send it? Feel free to send me a bump to finbarr at getshogun dot com.

Shogun (YC W18) | Full Stack Engineer | REMOTE | https://getshogun.com | $80-$140k + 0.25-1% Shogun is a storefront builder for eCommerce stores. We have one of the most popular apps on Shopify (https://apps.shopify.com/shogun) and we just launched on BigCommerce.

We bootstrapped the business to profitability and we're growing fast. The team is distributed around the world and we're looking for more engineers to join us.

Our stack is Rails/React/Postgres/MongoDB and we have big plans for the future.

If you are interested to learn more, email jobs@getshogun.com with your resume and any questions you may have!

Shogun (YC W18) | Full Stack Engineer | REMOTE | https://getshogun.com | $80-$140k + 0.25-1%

Shogun is a storefront builder for eCommerce stores. We have one of the most popular apps on Shopify (https://apps.shopify.com/shogun) and we just launched on BigCommerce.

We bootstrapped the business to profitability and we're growing fast. The team is distributed around the world and we're looking for more engineers to join us.

Our stack is Rails/React/Postgres/MongoDB and we have big plans for the future.

If you are interested to learn more, email jobs@getshogun.com with your resume and any questions you may have!

Shogun (YC W18) | Senior Full Stack Engineer | REMOTE | https://getshogun.com | $120-$180k + 0.25-1%

Shogun is a storefront builder for eCommerce stores. We have one of the most popular apps on Shopify (https://apps.shopify.com/shogun) and we just launched on BigCommerce.

We bootstrapped the business to profitability and we're growing fast. The team is distributed around the world and we're looking for more engineers to join us.

Our stack is Rails/React/Postgres/MongoDB and we have big plans for the future.

If you are interested to learn more, email jobs@getshogun.com with your resume and any questions you may have!

It looks to me like they're designed to help the accused, not the criminal. Here's a great infographic about the problem: http://www.pretrial.org/the-problem/

Webflow is an awesome product and well aimed at designers and developers. We're trying to provide something a little easier for marketers and other non technical folks to use, while maintaining power on the backend that developers love.

The same benefits that any other startup gets from YC (in my opinion):

- Prescriptive, expert advice and course correction at pivotal moments.

- A forcing function around fundraising (Demo Day).

- Access to opportunities in the wider community.

- Name brand investor that helps with hiring.

Most of our elements are pure HTML and the pages are served up natively by the eCommerce platforms, so there’s no hit to performance.

I agree and we're working on fixing that. The prices are listed on each platform page, and we list them publicly on our app store pages. Most people find us through our respective app store pages, not our website.

Rails and React.

Awesome - thanks for letting me know! Will check it out.

Ah thanks for letting us know. I don't think that menu actually does anything. We're in the process of completely overhauling our site with a way nicer design.

We've found that most theme based drag/drop builders are quite limited, and railroad you into the design of the theme. Also it's not possible for a lot of well established stores to go out and pick up a new theme, as they have their own brand guidelines, etc. That said, I'm sure we must lose some customers this way.

Another point here is that most theme developers don't want to provide support. If you read our reviews, our support shines through time and time again. So by using our software, they're getting (and paying for) more than just the functionality.

We'd love to integrate with WooCommerce. Unfortunately their app store is currently closed to new submissions, and has been for some time. As soon as that changes we'll explore an integration there.

You raise a fair point and I can't say with any certainty why YC picked us over any other ideas. One advantage we have over Themeforest is that our customers are willing to pay on a monthly subscription basis, whereas TF is a 1 time fee as you mentioned. We also integrate seamlessly and directly into whatever backend our customers are using, so they don't need to deal with HTML/CSS/other theme files.

This has actually been one of the harder parts of integrating. We mirror all of the products in your store in our db so that you can use them in Shogun pages. We have a Data Collection for your Shopify Products that you can use in Custom Elements as well.

We're flushing out integration with Shopify collection pages right now, so it might be that we end up with a Data Collection for those as well, which I think would make your life easier.