pardner

What a fun idea. Might as well add a Twilio-powered SMS login as well?

Game Theory At work by James Miller is a great non-mathematical description of key game theory and how to apply it in real life. I consider it to be a must-read for any entrepreneur.

Design in the Land of Sharp Pointy Technologies, at Twiliocon

If you decide to move your domains from Godaddy, and if your DNS is hosted there too, and if you have enough DNS records to not want to recreate them, there's an undocumented way to export the nameserver records from Godaddy to another DNS provider such as Zerigo. In a nutshell (1) upgrade to Godaddy Premium DNS ($35 but refundable within 5 days) (2) Export each domain's DNS settings (3) Cancel Godaddy Premium DNS. Now you can quickly import your DNS settings at your new registrar or DNS host if they handle importing of bind files. Not everyone imports nicely, but Zerigo worked for me. Details here http://pardner.com/2011/11/how-to-switch-dns-painlessly-from...

Best. Ever. Corporate happy holidays card.

Nice addition to HN thanks. I particularly liked his suggestion re: companies publishing key failure rates for employees to see. People can gauge whether they are aiming high enough. And it removes some of the fear of failure that impedes progress.

As an "old guy" founder with multiple exits, may I suggest you consider reframing the question in your own mind, perhaps to something like "If I join an 8-person startup, what are the daily qualities I need to exhibit to become indispensible to the team, and maximize the chances of not only riding this pony across the finish line but becoming well-positioned to leverage that success into even bigger and better things going forward?"

A couple of quick observations:

1) It seems unlikely that the CEO you decribe (5 decent exits, and another $2M series A) got that far by screwing people by any objective measure.

2) I've never met a rockstar who (as far as I know) worried a lot about getting screwed... they knew they could walk into a better gig any day if they weren't getting a fair shake.

3) They probably won't have too much wiggle room on their first offer, anyway. Sounds like they have enough experience to know what it takes to attract and retain a good team. So if you feel you can do "a lot" better elsewhere (or where you are) then that would be the right choice for you.

4) It's worth considering that it's one possible stepping stone on your path. When I joined Xilinx very early, I was pretty darned sure I was worth a lot more than the stock I got. That said, it was an awesome education on thriving in a frenetic startup environment with exquisitely talented peers, and fwiw that seemingly-meager stock offering bankrolled my next deal, which bankrolled the next one, etc.

So... next you'll add Twilio support so people can do it by SMS, right?

Bingo. As soon as possible after building a product that starts getting traction I build teams of people who are far better than me in every relevant discipline who can sprinkle true awesomeness on their respective areas. From that point my "deep understanding of all areas" (as you put it) gives me the judgment to lead the team as we relentless prioritize efforts in the individual aspects of the whole product. That skill set was valuable at least through the IPO, twice.

Even before I started my own companies I was a product manager at a large company, and groking the hardware, software, UX, manufacturing, and marketing aspects of the product gave me uncommon influence with the real experts in each of those domains -- because I had and could communicate that end-to-end vision of what was possible.

Really great question, Daniel. I can see where it might often be the case that someone 50+ might not know people able to devote startup-level time to a new project. I've done solo deals from time to time, but having great partners is infinitely more fun, and that's what I'm doing again this time. In my case it wasn't hard. I tend to hang out with people similarly energized by startups, and did a decent job staying in touch after my last company. My last company had a good outcome (IPO) so I'm fortunate to have a fair rolodex of people I've worked with who wouldn't mind doing so again, some of whom are my age, and some are quite a bit younger.

Don't disagree. Tropo does some extremely cool stuff... having a single app handle IM, SMS, tweets, voice is kinda magical. Seems to have better local number availability as well. The lack of any rate limiting handshaking for handling sms blasts was a deal killer for my app however... imo if you try to push sms faster that they can send it they should either queue the messages (as twilio does) or provide handshaking that says "can't send that message" instead of silently discarding the message.

That said, our app uses a mashup of both tropo and twilio now, we use tropo to handle "tweet" dialog with consumers.

I would add that the kids eventually leave home which, in my case, un-filled things considerably. A lot of friends my age (54) choose to re-fill that time with charity boards, golfing trips, etc. But some of us choose to go right back to the drawing board, and have a blast doing it.

That's a superb article re: real-world Twilio. We did a head to-head with twilio and tropo and twilio won hands down in terms of actual "production-worthiness" despite tropo having "more" features including speech reco. http://pardner.com/2011/04/tropo-not-ready-for-prime-time-we...

Thoroughly brilliant example of relentless execution of a vision with a higher purpose.