carrotleads

why are VC's taking 200-300k+ as salaries when founders are expected to subsist on just above avg wage or around 100k?

The 20% discount confused me too.

Am I right then that the discount is to calculate the equity % based on a future Series A valuation.

if so in the scenrio's you posted above what is the new Equity % for the angel.

Looks like it is 20% once it crosses $5m cap as inferred in the article.

How different would your service be to using something like impromptu.js https://github.com/trentrichardson/jQuery-Impromptu

I have come across a startup founder who drives Uber in the evenings to help with cashflow. But he is a unique subset as well. His family lives back in South Africa and this keeps him occupied in the evenings plus he can do a bit of customer validation if occasion presents.

So being ignored is the norm.. that gives me hope.

Many recruiter compensation is not a % and they pocket the difference.

Atleast that is the case in Australia. When we contract we bill the recruiter whop bills the client.

This is one of our pain points as well, educating our customers/users

What do you mean by "we" & sulekha. I used to be a regular almost a decade back. I used to make decent comments but used to put that one snide remark. Over a period I realised that distracted from the point I was making and no longer do that.

Over a period of time I learnt to ignore trolls and baits

VC's offer this deal only when they are desperate to have an entry.

So yeah some VC's may use this argument but if the startup isn't desperate its the VC who will have to make the concession.

Investors motto is "Go big or go home"

Here they are going home and saving some money too. Would you have the same view if Secret went on to make billions and require the Investors to pay the equity back to the founders. 6m could have been a billion there.

The only negative is if investors think the founders lacked imagination to put the money to use with a innovative Pivot.

Maybe there was no pivot in sight and then the best option is to return the rest of money and keep the 6m money the Investors gave up earlier for their big bet.

Growing up we used to wonder as to why our Dad was glued to the Radio or TV... he was used to watching/listening to news at every possible opportunity..

I realised later it ws no different to my constant refreshes of my favourite sites.

My dad was a school dropout and I theorised this was his attempt to remain informed and that gave him a sense of achievement.

I haven't figured out my addiction to the news, maybe I am taking after my Dad.

I have tried to set limits at it and when I am away from the computer, I have no problem missing the news but when I am close, self-discipline is my only answer for now.

Medical imaging desktop app http://www.truelifeanatomy.com.au/software/software-overview... We built it 10+ yrs back and we are still waiting for the big break which I guess in the medical field will come only once the big boys die off.. too many entrenched interests.

My mistake. Point noted.

someone once told me, the Universe is someone's dream.

When we dream, is it in 2d or 3D ?

Joel Spolsky and I haven't even read most of his writings. Whatever I have read have appealed to me. Plus he seems like a cool dude.

Freecycle.org is a good option

One other way is to check out the surrounding local council's hard rubbish collection days. Scour the nature strip for exactly this and you will be quite lucky. Your chances improve with the poshness of the council.

I recycled a Multi-function printer 8 years back in Melbourne, Australia and it works fine except its hard to get the print cartridges, so gets used mostly as a scanner.

I love their designs and Square's. I have used Square's earlier landing page for Square cash as inspiration but I hate the low contrast text on these stripe pages...

I am all for http://contrastrebellion.com/

Reading your post I can understand why the remuneration for SW devs isn't proportionate to expertise/experience/study. Also explains why recruiters take 30% cut of the pay and why managers get paid the big bucks.

Not to mention you will pay company tax on profits made while the big guys route their profits through Ireland & singapore and pay minimal tax.

I would like to know too..

I have long ago stopped applying for awards rort.. took away so much of my time..

established sites with good content go out of business day in and day out... that happens when they don't have a good functional design and when better options come along.

If they are the only game in town, then I will put up with bad functional design and if needed crawl on my knees to solve a problem of mine.

I remember years back trawling through multiple expertsexchange pages to solve some coding issues.. Now I don't as better options have come along...

Why is the same not happening with craigslist, cause they do the basic job well.. have a functional designed site which solves peoples problem easily.

Why is craigslist still popular when there are better looking sites around?

Why are sites like HN and the one linked earlier following a similar style.

Cause core of design != look which is how the 3 apps mentioned above seemed to be looking at.

Function needs to be the core of design.

I am perfectly fine with craigslist look and as you said things are where they are supposed to be and do what they suggest they will do.

I know of designers who rail against that look though. I think HN follows most of the same craigslist principles.

>> You also can't have a functioning site that looks like shit and still have a great product.

craigslist will beg to differ

and is an example of why functioning site with shit look is better than great look with bad function

the guys at 42 floors figured this out by testing. http://darrennix.com/our-homegrown-ab-testing-framework-at-4...

Vesting should be fine if the VC's are willing to pay the founders for the sweat that was already dropped in... most of this sweat would have been at Zero pay to boot.

Asking founders to re-vest nullifies the effort they have put until now and makes it unattractive for founders to seek VC money.

Generally whoever has the greater need makes the bigger compromises...

Hence you need to provide your good customers/fans etc. the tools & incentive to do the marketing for you.

This I believe is the idea behind Trello Gold etc and the solution we came up for a similar problem[1]

Lots of business try to build a referral rewards program and hope it catches fire. But even there it is quite surprising to find the low visibility of such programs. Came across AirBnB users claiming they had no idea AirBnB had one[2]

[1] The startup we founded, http://carrotleads.com

[2] https://www.airbnb.com/invite

Well in this case you have to speak out.. to atleast signal to the next set of scammers to not mess with you.

This..

When the rubber hits the road this is what happens and worse

I would assume they work off the logic, you can always have more weapons...

The softer weapons can be handed to low level personnel...

Well I don't know the composition of the management panel of this business. It is quite likely to be homogeneous and dictatorial.

This is the cost of a lack of diversity in a team and how stereotypes can come to bite one in the foot. As illustrated by the emails expecting the workers to be happy with their living conditions given they were assumed to be "pooping in ditches".

I would wager with better diversity someone is most likely to have challenged some of these views a lot earlier and helped the company from its blunders.