The laser cuts the holes perfectly-- so you do have to stitch it, but there's no skill involved-- just time. :-)
9,537 karma · joined April 2, 2007
We're building a low-cost CNC laser cutter/engraver can create beautiful products in wood, leather, paper, food, and more. We are a fifth the cost of comparable products because we've offloaded much of the functionality to software. Our cloud backend that does motion planning and machine vision to make it dead simple to use. Push a button, out come flat-pack wallets, lamps, board games, and anything else you can dream up.
We're up in Seattle, just closed $9M from Brad Feld and True Ventures, and have 12 employees.
The three founders have manufactured hardware, sold companies, graduated YC, and built profitable businesses. Check out this article about us: http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/glowforge-series-a/
Our greatest need right now is software engineers, but we're interested in passionate creators of all stripes. To learn more, check us out at glowforge.com/careers!
PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, and especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply.
The iPad was a massive step up from previous tablet efforts-- both with touch technology and software experience.
Certainly there is a timing and luck component to both of these.
But "mostly luck" - that's just wrong.
We're looking for (more) full-stack web software engineers. We could also use an amazing visual/UI designer and a senior electrical engineer.
We're 6 months into building the a consumer-friendly laser cutter/engraver (and the the software to operate it). We call it a 3D Laser Printer because we're rolling in some pretty tremendous 3D-oriented features. The stuff we're building is straight from the pages of science fiction.
We're well-funded ($9M) and founded by three technical founders (one YC alumnus) with 7-9-figure exits.
Jobs page here: https://jobs.lever.co/glowforge
That aside, you earn equity with risk, so my question to you would be: "What are you risking?" Certainly there's an opportunity cost (you're risking not working somewhere else). If you think your work-remotely-market-rate for a non-startup (i.e. no stock) is X, then you are risking X - 130k per year for 0.2%/4 (vesting over four years). So if X is $150k, you're buying those shares for $80k (4 years of salary difference). Is that a good bet in your eyes? It'd only be a good bet in mine if I had fairly heroic belief in the startups shot at "unicorn" status or if I was really excited about the work/team.
However, if you think $130k is a reasonable salary for remote work and the contribution you'll be making (it could well be), then the stock is a high-risk bonus.
Regardless, you should certainly negotiate for more salary OR equity (whichever you care about more) every time.
It's usually a network thing. Founder X says to (slightly better connected) Founder Y, "I'm raising a round. Who should I talk to?" Assuming Founder Y thinks that an intro to Founder X is something investors would want, they say, "I could intro you to Firm X, Y, Z."
Clever fundraisers do this in a systematic when when it's time to raise. They make a spreadsheet of investors that might be a good fit, scour LinkedIn and the firms' portfolio pages to see if they are connected with them, try to see if the firm is a good fit (firm personality, conflicts, check size they write, geographic focus, etc) and then start working on getting warm intros. They try to get as many of these conversations going in parallel as possible, which is freakin' HARD.
Which is where this article comes in. It's massively wasteful to have conversations with investors which end quickly with "We don't do seed rounds," or "we only invest in New York" or "We already invested in a company that you compete with", "we don't write checks that big", "you don't fit our investment thesis", etc.
PS: We'd love to talk to anyone, but especially want to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to apply. We're building a product for all kinds of people, and we'd like it to be built by all kinds of people, too.
We're looking for (more) full-stack software engineers, back-end engineers, and front-end engineers. We could also use an amazing visual design and a mechanical engineer who has injection molding experience.
We're well-funded and founded by three technical founders (one YC alumnus) with 7-9-figure exits. We're building an insanely challenging hardware+software product straight from the pages of science-fiction that's aimed at makers and creatives. It's early-- our product team is just 5 folks, but we're growing.
You can read our "coming out" article in the New York Times here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/slice-and-carve-the...
Actual job openings here: https://jobs.lever.co/glowforge
Well-funded and founded by three technical founders (one YC alumnus) with 7-9-figure exits. We're building an insanely challenging hardware+software product straight from the pages of science-fiction. It's early-- our product team is just 4 folks and we could use two more.
https://jobs.lever.co/glowforge/fd6f421a-b6cc-413e-8b0f-7523...
(also interested in mechanical engineers with injection molding experience and a visual designer)
A question successful people ask themselves is "Why be mean? What do I get out of it? What does my company get out of it?" They can be ruthless but realize that treating people with respect and warmth is smart in the long-game. Forum-trolls don't ask that question-- they just get emotional satisfaction from being mean.
Note that I'm not saying successful people are necessarily ruthless and manipulative-- just that they CAN be and still correctly be called "not mean".
I guess I'll try to say it slightly differently to clarify: "it's worth working to expand who you know, how much they like/admire you and how much they want to work with you". This is a skill you can get better at. It's hard work that you need to do. And yes, sadly, this work is certainly easier if you're a 25 year old white guy who went to Stanford.
Do you think people who have worked to have a deep network of folks to sell to, hire from, get introductions from, etc., have done meritorious work? I'm suggesting that how hard you work on this stuff (and how good you get at it) is part of your merit (in the world of startups/entrepreneurship). I certainly don't think it's the only part.
Given that about half of the top venture backed startups are founded by immigrants, I'd say the startup is more meritocratic than a lot of people seem to think. But I'd agree with you that we have a ways to go.
So, with ~50% of the top venture backed companies being founded by immigrants and 75% of them having immigrants in key product/management positions, you think we're in a "burn it down" moment? This doesn't even account for the non-immigrants-non-insider people who succeed in the Valley every day. I'm all for working to reduce cronyism, racism, ageism, etc. But I don't think we're remotely near needing to set fire to things (metaphorically or otherwise).
Because hiring, sales, pr, marketing, bizdev and fundraising are all part of startup success... Building and cultivating a good network is hugely valuable for all of that, no?
I'm going to add some stats to my OP.
Point #2: You need to expand your view of meritocracy beyond just product/code. Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy. Imagine it as a multiplier to product merit and,as a founder, you NEED to imagine it as part of your job. In a failure scenario, it absolutely helps turn a zero into a one. But it also helps you hire, sell products, raise money, get press, do bizdev deals, sell companies, etc.
All sorts of other nits I could pick with your comment. Strawmen (really? Does anyone go into YC thinking advice at dinners is the primary value they offer?) and ad hominem attacks (what does Sam's previous company have to do with the merits of his "polemics"?).
Some stats to challenge the "rich white dudes raining gold on each other" theory:
52% of founding teams in the Valley have 1st generation immigrants on them. Just shy of half of the top-ranked venture companies (in case you think all of these immigrant-heavy startups are floundering while rich white guys are winning). Does anyone believe that a meaningful percentage of this group is rich and white? The same study also found that immigrants were key members of the product or management teams in more than 75% of those companies.
Robinhood will offer margin trading as well as API access, which will allow partnered developers to build applications in conjunction with Robinhood. Robinhood will also receive remuneration for providing trade volume in certain markets. In the future, we plan to offer premium services for active investors.
"Robinhood will offer margin trading as well as API access, which will allow partnered developers to build applications in conjunction with Robinhood. Robinhood will also receive remuneration for providing trade volume in certain markets. In the future, we plan to offer premium services for active investors.
Robinhood is venture-funded by Google, Andreessen Horowitz and many others, which affords us the freedom to focus on building a wonderful brokerage experience rather than short-term profits.
The last thing these guys want is tons of articles saying, "I lost my life savings on Robinhood". Why wouldn't they do their best to give their customers access to smart context-specific investment advice?
Pay-per-trade brokers are incentivized to have you trade frequently and/or buy certain securities. RobinHood doesn't actually profit from each trade, so it could be argued that they have are likelier to care about the retail investor's long-term success (providing automated tools for monthly investments in low-fee funds, etc).
Regardless, let's give some love to the fact that people are accountable for their actions and the vast amount non-bad information on the internet. A beginning retail investor is one search away from a strategy that is a metric ton better than not investing at all (which is what most of them do): https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C5...
If RobinHood causes some people to piss away their savings on crazy-risky investments, it's not because those people didn't have access to decent investment advice.
Say something like, "You guys seem like you're pretty organized, but I've heard a horror story or two about startup hiring... Companies pivoting and laying people off/etc. Given that I'm moving for this opportunity, can we have a clause in the agreement that spreads the risk around a bit? Say, if you guys let me go for any reason before the end of the contract, I get $X as a severance in consideration for my moving expenses, etc."
Uber in LA costs 67 cents per minute (avg. speed in LA is 26MPH). Car2Go in LA costs 25-41 cents per minute (41 per minute with a max of $15/hr).
Unsurprisingly, one of the more expensive parts about Uber is having a human being driving the car for you. Car2Go (if you don't mind driving janky little SmartCars) trims that cost now.
Might want to consider that inflation averages about 2.5-3% annually... So effectively you're treading water there in terms of investment (though saving is good).
That's half the road, which is the OP's point. We all know tons of people who earn a ton of money, but they never get rich or free because they keep ratcheting up their spending.
The road to wealth is spending dramatically less than you make in an ongoing way.
Any money manager will tell you that what you just said is false. Excepting a few cities, when you look at the data and adjust for inflation, owning a house is not a particularly good investment ( http://files.foreclosureradar.com/images/foreclosuretruth/Hi... ). Add in that the average home loan lasts about 6ish years before folks sell/refi, the fact that interest/fees are front-loaded into the first 5 years of the loan, and that avg. annual maintenance on a house (NOT improvements) tend to average about 1% of the value of the home per year, it gets worse.
What it CAN be (if you're disciplined and lucky) is leverage and liquidity. Example: I have my house paid off. I get a mortgage on it, essentially getting a loan at 4% for $700k. Now I have $700k that I can make work for me-- a worthwhile idea if I can find a way to make more than 4% on that $700k via other investments (which are not remotely risk-free, but can pay off). Of course, what most people do when they re-fi their house is self-indulgent stuff-- buying a vacation home, a boat, home improvements that don't pay for themselves, etc.