anmol

French food, art and culture. (Not to take anything away from Thailand or Chile)

A founders perspective on this:

I think such negotiation tips are great because they helps engineers, many of whom are not the best negotiators, get the fair market value they deserve. This is a real concern when recruiters are involved, or its a big company, or even a large startup (e.g. 50+ people).

However, as a technical founder for a smaller team, its not really in my interest to mis-align employee incentives, especially engineers.

The people we hire are at the top of their game. If they're are not treated fairly, they will eventually find out, and someone will feel bad or be de-motivated or eventually leave. Every instance of lack of transparency or apparent "unfairness" will breed resentment and impact the net productivity of a team that's trying to run at its 110%. Even if/when we do get things wrong occasionally, quarterly/annual reviews are a great way to correct for decisions made with limited initial data.

Tl;Dr : Founders don't get rich by cutting corners on someone's salary/benefits.

Due time, thanks for doing this. Everytime I'm booking an Indian rail ticket I cringe at the UI/UX on the official Indian Railways site.

As one of the ML alums on HN, happy to share a few pointers.

The lab is a total of about 250 grad students and faculty, including MS and PhD. I imagine about 60% of grad students are MS. Even if you have an MS before, you'll have to start with the Media Lab MS degree.

You really apply to a specific adviser, so its important to know your research area, and define your past work in that context.

it could be revolutionary if it helps create a slew on android education/entertainment apps meant for low CPU / low network tablets.

note the official poverty line in India is about $1/day and 30% of the population is below it. These people are not worried about YouTube videos.

So much for building a Boston startup eco-system.

See Netra: http://mashable.com/2010/07/01/netra/ http://web.media.mit.edu/~pamplona/NETRA/

Netra is an MIT Media Lab project ($2 attachment that attaches to a cameraphone) for measuring prescriptions. Huge market.

They're in the process of making it into a company and putting the team together. If you send them a friendly email, might even get you a job/consulting position.

I know of several MIT people who've been early employees at startups in their 20s / early 30s and made few hundred K upon exit.

Does that happen often? No.

Will it happen for early Dropbox and Airbnb employees? Yes.

Can you get the same options if you joined Dropbox today? No.

How did they burn through $3.5MM in less than a year? Curious.

Doesn't google have an IP assignment like every other tech company, that affects what you can work/own, on the side?

Also, as oft-repeated, part-time startups don't quite work.

Funnily enough, I'm one of the people mentioned in this article, and we're a 3 person startup making this real.

the most amazing thing about all these companies is the level of market traction, almost all of it achieved in the last few months.

vieforit-- fashion deals site has the top 25 premier labels signed up and selling.

red rover-- corporate q&a site has over a million $s in revenue scheduled for 2011

immersive-- video display site has LOIs with manufacturers of 20% of all public display screens in the US.

thinknear-- has about 10,000 stores signed up as of today

not to mention the hackers and engineering chops across all of them

we are called ginger.io

Consider an example of the revenue focus:

-- The valley has Dropbox (a Boston company with an awesome product that moved west)

-- People here cite Carbonite (which apparently makes a lot of $$ and is heading to IPO, but no tech person seems to use it, and they market to the Glenn Beck audience)

got links to what models you're using? I used to analyze such data.

interesting idea, definitely a lot of value. I've seen many of the big telcos and large companies spend a lot of resources and $$ on this problem.

disclosure: we're a three person startup in Cambridge, and just spent the last week in the valley.

There are both pro/cons of the startup ecosystem in Boston.

-- Its harder to raise funding in Boston compared to SV. In addition, a big part of the funding discussion is timeline to revenues, which is just completely ignored at this stage in the valley.

-- Given this higher bar, the startups that do rise in the Boston ecosystem are of generally higher quality. I was at the launch conference last week, and several companies in the demo pit were honestly just "me-too" class projects. GreenGoose (at Launch) was an example of a Boston startup.

-- Nonethless for consumer web/mobile, Boston startups tend to be inferior to the valley ones. The reasons for this are multifold. (a) The angel/adviser community seems less comfortable funding companies that don't have a clear path to revenues. (b) The entrepreneurs themselves are not the best at designing products / UX etc. (c) The better Boston consumer web/mobile companies move west anyways

-- Given the less "bubble" ness in Boston, hiring top-notch engineers from MIT, Harvard, Olin or other good technical schools is a real option for startups. I'm hearing horror stories on the west coast+ NYC of companies that are funded and can't find the right engineers.

To me, Jon seems to have demonstrated exactly like the type of resourcefulness YC asks for in its applications [1].

Unfortunately there was no way for YC to predict the Jon had these chops at the time. The fact that YC can make such predictions with high-accuracy, from simply an application and a 10-minute conversation, is very impressive. There are bound to be borderline calls now and then.

If you have de-identified application data, it would be interesting to know what early patterns in applications predict future success.

[1] Jon hustled his way into YC, found a way to make the move when his co-founders weren't willing to, kept the company running and profitable meantime, and closed a large seed round with top-notch investors, in perhaps roughly the same timeframe that he would have with YC.

And then there are media articles like the Independent[1], which compares the Winklevoss twins the to Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Oprah Winfrey, and suggest they're modern American heroes.

This whole saga is an media circus. They already made $140MM (current value of previous settlement in escrow), fu money for anyone. 80% of that $140MM (post lawyer fees) is straight up $$, without payouts to VCs, seed investors, or employee options.

If they are serious about being entrepreneurial, maybe they could start an angel fund with $20MM?

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/is-there-anyth...

[2] They are probably making more straight up $$ than the Mint or Heroku founders. Who deserves it more?

ceo is a ex-mckinsey partner who draws a $400k salary. what do you expect the internal culture is like?

if one agrees with the idea that js will be everywhere, why learn a skill that will be commodity? there will be lots of people you can hire to do it for you.

real world example. say my html is sloppy. but I'm really good at core components (python, django, machine learning bits). So I can just hire a less skilled person off oDesk and pay them $10 an hour to review my HTML code, while I spend time on more important things.

isn't hunch an example of #2?

as an outsider, with many west coast friends, it appears that both start-ups and investors move in herds. for example, six months ago it was location-based check-in services?

a) this is wicked cool b) in person, these guys are rockstars, esp aaron

just sent some swag on a buget to a consultant who went out of his way.

-- XKCD comic book -- LHC tshirt (havent printed our own yet) -- cookies and chocolate with our logo

IMHO really think you need to aim outside your demographic, pick a lot of non-web / computing skills.

You'd be surprised how much value tech can add in basic professions.

Also, learn to partner. Go to the local cleaning-maids agency, ask them if you can setup a free peer coaching site for their maids. Or for the local cab company, or the construction site. No cost to them.

Even if # of users are small, they will be targeted. Great for ad-based revenue. CPM / CPCs increase drastically when the content and users are targeted.

This depends on your product / idea. Both Android and iPhone have a substantial install base, why not pick one and test first?

If you get traction, then expand etc. Choose the platform that makes more sense for your app (capabilities, payment options).

As for outsourcing, depends on the complexity of the app. Basic apps you could use a consultant off CL for some quick prototyping.

IMHO using consultants is OK, if (a) speed is essential, (b) you can build and test the code yourself, but just don't have the time (c)Make sure you have a rock-solid contract

As a recently-minted PhD from a good university, there is at least some stigma associated with blogging or appealing to general population.

your academic peers, determine where you get your next job, whether you get tenure, etc. You don't want them thinking that your research is frivolous because you have popular blog posts or press coverage. strong publications come first, everything else is lower on the scale.

Another example is teaching. At top univs, getting an award for teaching as an untenured prof may indicate that you're not spending enough time on research.

I'm a big fan of this sort of work, and also an area of ym past academic research and current startup. its evident there is a ton of consumer-facing data, which can add remarkable value to our lives.

I like the general idea about peer-coaching, but why web entrepreneurs? IMHO such tools would be more valuable for non-web specialty skills, where RTFM isn't an option. e.g. I use you tube to learn how to do oil changes for my car.

any insight on why didn't it work with coaches? too many conflicts? not enough incentives?

Fair enough. We'll suck it up and do the detailed financial projections.

It just sucks from the perspective of pivoting the product/tech if the first version doesn't work out as planned.