I took the $300k (2013)
boundary.com
boundary.com
Tom Preston-Werner is a great developer, probably world class. And he was offered a whopping 300K bonus by a company that earns $220K+ profit per employee annually (with a disproportionate amount of value created by the software engineers).
Lots of opportunity cost, gone. How do we offload this risk to the investors? Demand what you're worth. Take money off the table upfront.
Lesson to the Hacker News readers; you're not going to get rich by being an employee. Start your own company if you want any sort of chance of becoming rich. Otherwise forget the extra hours, live a balanced life, play with your kids, love your /(boy|girl)friend/ or spouse.
I disagree. If you're looking at every little startup idea, then yes...you probably won't get rich. Also, you won't get as rich as the founders; however, I have plenty of friends in the industry who have made millions (the typical goog, fbook, yada yada). I think a better suggestion is to shake out the idea before jumping on. I've made poor choices money-wise and I've made great choices in the past (very similar to equity investing)...
"Otherwise forget the extra hours"...
I think there's something in between. As a founder, it's a ridiculous amount of hours / extra stress, etc. Or you can work as an employee and give some extra but still realize it's a job and you aren't a founder. You don't have to work 80 - 100 hour weeks simply because you're at a startup. It's a pendulum with being a founder on one end and being a checked out employee at megacorp on the other. You can work tons of hours at a megacorp (mckinsey, etc.) or.. you can work a reasonable number of hours at a startup.
Apparently your friends are incredibly good at choosing startups; they should be VCs.
And if you're a founder you have those same odds, no? With more skin in the game, being a founder in those cases is probably even worse, too.
I think all I'm suggesting is in the risk-reward decision, it's more complex and subtle than just go be a founder if you're going to do the startup thing as that's the _only_ way it's worth it.
"Apparently your friends are incredibly good at choosing startups; they should be VCs."
Some of them are; however, some are relatively happy going from startup to startup (fairly early) getting things done. I'm sure some of those will hit well and others won't.
edit:
It's companies that are picked by YC
You can get single digit millions rich (which is "rich" to most of America, though obviously not SV or NYC rich) by being frugal, saving and investing
Most people don't have the discipline though.
When you live frugally, you're constrained. There's a max to how much you can save. Furthermore, while you're saving, life passes you by. Opportunity costs.
Who wants to go on a dream vacation when they're in their 60's just to have their hips hurt and their spouse in similar shape? How can we have the dream vacation now and have a pile of savings?
It's better to leverage the upside; figure out how do I significantly increase your income right now. Not increase your income on a probably acquisition 2,3,4 years from now, but increase your income right now.
BTW, I'm very good at increasing my income. I usually bring home an extra $2K to $3K a month on top of my day job, and am always looking at ways to grow this.
Where are they trying to go? We all die. And we can't take it with us. At our deaths, any balance left that is greater than zero is an experience that we robbed ourselves of.
Couldn't agree more. I've done startups and learnt a lot, they got me to where I am today. Now I've found a corporate place that doesn't take away from my personal life. Couldn't be happier.
Acquisitions are rare events (given that 92% of the startups fold). And acquisition where employees actually make out enough to recoup their lost wages, even rarer.
Employee beware.
And the ability to execute, and the confidence to risk your livelihood.
This is one of the many reasons why I think FOSS with a support model has so much potential in the sysadmin world. Tool is FOSS, so you can use it as much as you want (no 50c per device schemes) and then if you want support or a hosted version that's what is charged for.
No one is really doing this, though there are a handful of non-foss "open-source" projects around that give you free versions with restricted feature-sets.
As a side note, I have been using Argus (http://argus.tcp4me.com/) and ELK stack to good effect.
I wonder how much the logo played into picking that name.
EDIT: Turns out, not much. Here's the story. http://www.boundary.com/blog/2013/01/the-story-of-the-bounda...
And of course since the logo is set in CSS it doesn't have alt text so I couldn't hover over it and get the company name.
That said, I am very pleased that the logo is a link back to the main company page and not to the main blog page; it's so irritating to read an article on a company blog, think "hey, I'm interested in what these folks are selling, let's visit their homepage", click on the logo and be redirected to the main page of their blog and not the company's actual web site.
Relationships make a big difference with big company M&A.
Equal equity among initial founders or it's a nonstarter. Avoid the PHB enterprise single founder chief whom treats everyone as employees to be managed and hoards equity... that sort of shop will get angels and mentors and bleed them dry.
What goes unsaid though is that there's a lot of silly hoops that have to be jumped through to get that salary at many of these companies (bad interview processes, companies realizing that actually wanted X skills for a position instead of Y, etc.).
It would all depend on your skills though. I once turned down a $350k-400k opportunity myself in the area and ended up taking a significantly less amount in favor of more vacation, flexible hours, and much less stress.
When I worked at Google (2013) a mid-level engineer was making about 175-200k if you considered publicly traded stock and annual bonuses to be cash equivalent. The numbers grow quickly once you start ascending the ranks to Staff Engineer and beyond but again that's only about 10% of Google's engineers.
I'm about to have to make a decision like this and could do with some advice. A friend of mine (3D artist / graphic designer) tells me he knows two people who want an app doing. It turns out they're just starting a new company and the app is going to be the product. They have already sold it to one customer and have others in the pipeline.
I discuss the app with them, set out a specification / timeline / cost that they like. But then they start with: Can you set up our email? (yes). Can you do us a website? (yes). Can you do a webapp that the customers can use in coordination with the app? (yes). Etc. etc.
So I say: look, I can do all this stuff but it's going to be a pain to keep charging all the time and then there's going to be support costs on top. I like that your sales driven and seem pretty intelligent and we've got along pretty well so far. How about instead of or as well as cash we talk equity?
They think about it and get back to me yesterday and say yes, they've had a chat about it and would like to do that. We're going to meet tomorrow to discuss a package they've worked out for me.
So what equity should I negotiate for? They have no technical experience and it seems to me that I will basically be doing everything at least to start with. One of them is sales and the other is going to be managing the business (which I have no experience of, I've never been a "founder" before).
That just boggles my mind.
Good for you. These people aren't the ones who you'd like to work with anyway, very likely to be toxic clients.
>>> I've tried £50/hr, £40/hr, and now £20/hr
By lowering your requerements, you are attracting more slamming-the-phone clients. Stick to at the very least 50/hr (if I remember well, ~400/d is a common rate for contractors in North, e.g. Leeds). Raise it to 75/hr if you are not junior. It will take longer to get a gig, but it will pay off.
>>> This is in the NW of the UK
Damn, I miss Manchester :) sorry for getting carried away :)
>>> I'm likely not going to get paid anyway
Why wouldn't you? You are not a charity organization, you shouldn't be providing free work. You are providing a valuable service, so you should charge the appropriate rates. You don't owe anything to anyone.
Also, if you are willing to work cheap / for free, you will be treated poorly more often than not.
So raise your rates, be patient, don't let others take advantage of you and everything will be alright ;)
If I wanted to I could take contract work in Manchester and earn twice what I'm on now. But I don't want the 3 hour commute.
So you might say, "well that's your problem right there!" and I accept that. But I was thinking that I might be able to solve the problem I've specified without doing the obvious, "move to Manchester."
Get online to industry-related job boards and search for 'remote', 'anywhere', or 'telecommute' opportunities, especially in places where the cost of living is higher than yours.
I would check out Github's job board, AuthenticsJobs.com , and te Smashing !agasine job board. not the most glamorous places but I have found work!
Good luck, and charge your full rate, you are worth full price :)
People all the time even have spouses and families and manage to pull off respectable M&A events.
If someone doesn't try, they have to live with themselves and their regret for not answering the question of "could I have built something other people think is great?"
It's whether a person has the stuffing to schlep hardcore and drag themselves over the finish line.
Life's strategy is pure and simple:
Pick your battles carefully, and never give up.
Anyone whom has the courage and the inclination can and should experiment often to see if they can hit on something viable. Because unlike the lottery, it's possible to make a few bucks with passive revenue apps without much effort.
I am not saying your proposal isn't a good strategy. There just isn't a guarantee for success. Even your app claim sounds less convincing if you look at the actual average revenue for apps.
Ad supported free OTOH infinite running cool but a little crappy games are great for selling more conversions to better paid apps (CandyCrush). They're also more profitable on Android since users expect mode of "something for nothing" as opposed to the Apple tax. Often with games and other non-one-time-useful and non-business-critical apps, in-app purchase of ad removal, virtual currency buy/offers is the way to go rather than paid. But it depends on the quality expectations of the app too.
Generally, If someone believes they can't, even if they may have the aptitude, they'll never know. That is the greatest regret and waste of talent imaginable. One also has to be clear and honest about one's/others' capabilities/needs in order to not get stuck in wandering in wantrepreneur land.
Finally, startup people are most similar to special forces badasses... able to get sh*t done, figure it out and eventually win.
Honestly, I'm a junior wantrepreneur apprentice too until getting to balancesheet positive at least into the six-seven figure range.
Your life's strategy is simply one of many, and most who follow it fail anyway.
My wealth is pretty much the value of my home. Any risk to losing that is fairly serious. No, my family won't starve, but losing years of equity/value and being forced to move to a shittier part of town and shittier school system, more crime, etc is a demotivator. This is why you see so many startups being kids directly from college. They have much less to lose and they're still young and energetic and haven't been beaten down by the 9-5 grind yet.
>Pick your battles carefully, and never give up.
Agreed, but now I do smaller and less ambitious side-projects than a big dramatic "We quit our jobs and now work out of a garage" type startup stereotype. Its not nearly as sexy or potentially life changing as "I'm selling a small application that targets $boring_industry and solves $boring_problem, but may be a nice small passive income if things go perfectly."
I never said it was easy or that *chances are on your side, if this [...] and that [...]. If that was the case everyone would be building Apple-like companies from their garages but we have only one, Apple.