talvi

This was exactly my thought. I guess it’s possible there’s another answer but it feels like marketing bs

When I got kicked out by my cofounder, I kept my shares instead of taking the payout. But we still hadn’t made product market fit and if I had taken the money I would have ended up making the most off of the startup.

The two questions to ask yourself are: 1. What’s the chance this startup fails? Most startups fail, even those with big contracts. 2. Is this the last idea you’ll have? If yes fight hard to stay involved. If no, have the lawyer negotiate a sale for more than 140k and use that plus all the lessons learned to do a new idea better.

Lots of good advice on online resources here. To round this out, I’d highly recommend an accelerator as a first time founder. Any accelerator will be able to introduce you to resources and people, but I’d look for a tech stars accelerator nearby. Getting a mentor you can trust that has recently done a similar path will yield the best advice!

You should read the book that was recommended. Mom Test is about how to talk to customers without doing what you did.

It’s also the most practical business book I’ve ever read. It actually tells you how to execute the ideas than just the ideas.

How many HN readers are jewelry purchasers? Probably not many. I’m not.

I don’t know how to do this but a starting point suggestion is shoot a message to some smallish Instagram influencers that do jewelry stuff and offer them 100 bucks to post a survey for you to their followers. Ask those people. They are your customers.

My own has helped me empathize and help with employees issues. But that doesn’t help with ones own and it has been a struggle personally.

What is your profession? What do you want your profession to be?

I’d say do the second one as it solves a problem you have. At the very least you get that. Also make sure you set up the business properly so that you are protected personally if the business does break ToS and you’ll learn that process as well.

You’re going to fail so don’t stress so much about finding the perfect thing first. If you want to make a business to replace your job you’ll need to learn how to run a business. So do anything first that you can motivate yourself to do.

Set aside a couple grand for business expenses (hosting, compute, marketing, and freelance costs for work you outsource). Follow the first idea that you would want to succeed even if you find no one else wants it.

What ideas have you had? You only posted about what industries you don’t like.

First piece of advice is to make things as easy as possible for others (recruiters, future managers, random online mentors).

For example, put the link to your site in here at least, and a link to resume would be good too.

Things may be somewhat different in Canada but I’ll try to stay generic so it should fit.

Startups are hard to value and they are essentially only valued when someone makes a monetary investment in them. So investor Aardvark puts in 100k and gets 10% sets a value of 1 million for the company and the value of the shares is calculated from that.

In most cases, employee shares cannot be made liquid unless the company offers to buy them. Most stockplans for startup companies don’t legally allow you to sell your shares to random people, but instead essentially make it so you can only sell to specific entities during specific events. This isn’t actually a red flag as this is common.

However the red flag would be if your company isn’t upfront about current valuation and when investment happens. For two reasons, your an employee and especially in a startup should understand roughly what current financial state company is in. But most importantly you are actually a shareholder, if you’ve excercised options, and they have a responsibility to keep you appraised of what’s happening with shares.

I've been on both sides of this and have done it poorly and well. The best way I've found is this.

Talk to your manager first. Communicating via email will send the wrong message and has more of a chance to be misunderstood.

Tell them why your leaving and what constraints you have (do you need to be full time at your new gig in 2 weeks/months/days or are you flexible). Then ask them how they want to proceed. This part is a negotiation and your trying to find what works for both you and the company. Don't agree to something you don't want to do - this can be mitigated by letting them know all your constraints at the beginning of the conversation.

The next steps will be decided by you and your manager. So it changes based on the specifics of your role and the company, but usually this means you'll send something out to everyone else on your team to inform them and then spend the next couple of weeks finishing projects and handing them off.

Management Books

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - What makes your team not work?

Radical Candor - how to treat people without being a jerk or pushhover

Tech Books

Mythical Man Month - The classic on tech management

Phoenix Project - this book is best described as management porn. But it has a focus on dev ops.