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jean_valjeanon Union Sq ventures to lead $10m investment in Dwolla

It could be worse, they could've invested in StickyBits...

jean_valjeanon Joel Spolsky's Totally Fair Method to Divide Up The Ownership of Any Startup.

This isn't some search for objective truth. It's me sharing my opinions and the supporting rationale in the hopes that somebody might find them useful when they run into this situation in the future.

jean_valjeanon Joel Spolsky's Totally Fair Method to Divide Up The Ownership of Any Startup.

The goal of the equity adjustments is to keep the expected value (at time of compensation) roughly equal.

The expected value of a $100k IOU from a startup is likely $10-20k.

The expected value of $100k in equity is (if priced reasonably) roughly $100k even though the value in case of default is $0.

If somebody was really adamant with me about IOUs being treated equivalent to cash, I'd ask if we could simplify and just pay all the founders equally, at the same time to get rid of the discussion.

jean_valjeanon Joel Spolsky's Totally Fair Method to Divide Up The Ownership of Any Startup.

I disagree with his assessment that it's fair for some founders to take cash now and others to receive only IOUs payable later.

The second group face not only a time value of money problem, but they're also accepting the risk of default (which is fairly likely in startups). They deserve substantial additional compensation for their willingness to leave capital in the company during early growth. One potentially fair way to do this would be to give them convertible notes with the same terms as whatever your first external angels get.

After all, leaving $100,000 in the startup's bank account has the same net effect as drawing the salary, then investing $100,000 in the startup.

jean_valjeanon Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

The US government has been a staple of comedy for many, many years.

See: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_Rogers His quotes from 80 years ago still sound timely.

jean_valjeanon Why the feds smashed Megaupload

When I read the details of the story, I feel like this isn't meaningfully different from a few years back when there'd be warehouses of DVDs or VHS tapes,and hundreds of duplicators seized along with bags of cash.

The medium change, but the crime appears to have remained essentially the same.

There were two interesting things to me:

1) the email from Kimble to PayPal where he was clearly trying to cut off PayPal to his competitors whilst keeping it for himself; trying to convince PayPal that they shouldn't do business with those other guys.

2) the type of evidence they have makes me wonder if it was an inside job, or perhaps even a setup by a competitor who hacked into their systems. It doesn't feel like a case the FBI would pick up without a strong bootstrap.