jprocopio

Totally get this. This is where the email screen can be a lifesaver. You fill the social obligation, maybe even lend a hand or get done what you need to get done, and you can prioritize it -- meet now, meet later, meet never.

When you're an entrepreneur, you can easily get up to 50% of your time meeting people outside of your company -- sales, hires, partners, help, funding. It can get tricky real quick. My basic guideline has always been no more than 1 a week unless I'm doing something that specifically requires me to meet external people.

Thanks for the feedback and the extra points you listed.

#2 is intriguing. I started a "rant" on this but it made the post too long so I cut it. What do you do with no-shows? I mean, it's on me for not seeing it coming in the first place, but I've never figured out good etiquette for dealing with them.

Thank you. You bring up a great point and I really debated over the title. I think the mechanics for D&R are pretty well known and most people are aware that it's a marketing effort that needs the extra work. I also think that once we connect the mechanics of Investment Crowdfunding to traditional fundraising, those steps become clearer too. So I didn't want to rehash a lot of what was already out there. The questions I get all the time come down to "How do I get started on this?" So I tried to couch it as that. Hopefully, an entrepreneur who is interested will then choose their Kickstarter or whatever or find the right IC platform like the one I linked to. I will write more on the subject. Thanks again!

I think we agree on those points. Most people don't get to negotiate, especially younger people earlier in their careers, especially when it comes to things like incentives, base/bonus, and milestones. If you negotiate, you're the exception. I know I am.

No, please, be blunt. This is all honest. Let me put it this way. In my 20s, I was 100% money driven. In my 30s, probably 75%, now in my 40s, about 50%. I'm not saying I want to feed starving children in Africa. That'd be a good thing, but my thing is different. I get offers, not a ton, but some, that are for more money, but I'd have to give up things I care about more. Time with my family, doing what I love to do, working with people I might not want to work with, etc. Everyone has these.

So now why is this a thing and not just me-- If you look at millennials, they're nowhere near as money driven as my generation or the one before mine. I've seen it time and again. It's not black and white -- there are some that are mercs, and the ones that aren't are not 100% saints, but the mean is shifting away from money.

Thanks for the feedback.

Good points. I hope I addressed them in the post, but thanks for the chance to summarize them here.

So the difference is this: Most companies, the vast majority, including startups, fall into a salary schedule based on ranges and grades, which serves nobody except the books. It's my belief that job-hopping is so prevalent when companies tell talent they can't pay them anymore because they've hit some sort of artificial ceiling. I'm calling for an individual assessment in salary, from the very beginning (i.e. startups) to be able to get max value. IOW -- pay the employee what they need and make sure we get value back for that money.

Nothing wrong with being a merc. I've been a merc. But I don't do what I do just for the money. If you do, that's great, that's your motivation and you probably return that with tons extra in your output. So when your employer comes to you and says, "Hey, we can't give you more money but here's a fancy title." That's NOT you, right? They should be aware of your motivation and pay you accordingly.

So support came up empty on why that happened:

"I can confirm this is the correct friend link. If your readers access the story via this link, they will always be able to view it, even if they are out of their free monthly previews. There aren't really any limits on this."

So if you think of $250K as the cost to get the business to sustainable, then $60K is part of it, a bunch of your own money is part of it, and your sweat and and anyone who works for you for equity is another part. Think about time too. It could be $250K up front sourced by investors, or $250K over 3 years combining all the sources. Or somewhere in between. There is nuance. Good luck!

Ah. I see the distinction now. That company failed though, so $10K was not enough, that was stuck in my mind. Thanks for the tip.

If you can plan on how you're going to spend that $60K and those plans will get you to a new level of revenue that will provide a good return on the $60K and you're not giving up more of the company than you're comfortable with, then consider the investment.

What I'm saying here is that deciding to take investment should be weighed on the merits of the investment itself. It's part of the equation, not the whole equation.

Actually I didn't say I did it for $10K, I said I'd DO it for 10 dollars.

I get you. I'm talking about the difference between calling something a company and building a sustainable company from zero. $250K is arbitrary because any number would be arbitrary, as you note, but it's also a good minimum baseline to shoot for.

Any one of the caveats I discuss in the article could change the number or how that money is aggregated or how long it takes to spend it.

Aw crap. So the link says "friends_link" right in the link itself. Maybe they turned it off because it's already got like 4K views. I'll send an message to support. Thanks.

This is important to me because I'm pretty sure I did include the non-paywalled link and I always do.

https://medium.com/@jproco/you-need-250-000-to-start-a-compa...

This is what Medium calls a "friend link" and it should work for anyone whether a Medium member or not.

Yes. A lot of people miss #2 and that's my point. Like I said, my first answer was I can start a company for ten bucks. Great. I've started a company. To truly stand it up and make it last, whether it's technology or gardening, takes time and money, all of it equivalent to about $250K. Whether that comes from investment, sweat, or out of pocket is what I'm elaborating on. Thanks.

Totally get your point. To be clear, I'm not against learn to code.

If your goal is to become a tech entrepreneur, then yes, learn to code.

If not, and if you're coming from zero, chase your idea down with HST to prove it's viable before spending all that learning curve time coding it.

Ha! Love it. There are degrees of course. I used to be a coder, now I'm a professional Hack Shit Togetherer.

HELL YEAH I'VE GOT MORE TO WORK THROUGH :)

In all seriousness, thanks for the feedback and I especially appreciate the part about vulnerability. I started writing this just to get it out of my head, then I figured it's probably what I should be writing anyway instead of like "5 ways to hire the right offshore developer"

Update: The story can now be viewed at https://medium.com/@jproco/a-crash-course-in-blockchain-and-... -- hoping to have it back up on hackernoon shortly

Oh, I totally agree. Like when people say "Google" something they just mean "search" not "track every movement you make on the Internet and serve ads based on what some algorithm determines your interests might be"

Working on it

In 3 hours you guys downloaded over 1000 copies, which was my goal, but I'll keep it open a while longer. I'm blown away and totally grateful. Thanks!

Crap. That was funnier than anything we said in the video.