Breakout List 2015 | Hacker News Reader

Breakout List 2015

breakoutlist.com

62 pointsvinnyglennon10 comments

I think this is likely just some angel investor's portfolio, with some other companies sprinkled in. A few alarm bells are going off:

* Explicitly filters for people who do not want a work life balance. If a job applicant says they found your company via this list, you don't have to ask, "Will you regularly work more than 40 hours a week for free?" They just told you.

* No information on why these companies in particular are special (everyone has a strong market/team/growth)

* No disclaimers regarding conflicts of interest

* Trying to establish a brand for some reason

* Published anonymously

Hopefully I'm not being too cynical. Just seems very financially motivated.

[I'm a founder of a company on the list, and know the creator Chris as a result.]

He's a student, and has been interviewing a broad swath of VCs, students, and founders to create this list for the past few years. As far as I know, he has no financial upside in any of the companies on this list. In the past, the site has asked for (optional) referral bonuses if candidates find the company through the site. That seems fair given the work involved in creating and maintaining this, but arguably that could be worth a disclaimer?

To many engineers and students, the breakout list brand already means something.

I think you're being too cynical – it's closer to a passion project and I respect that he keeps the site about the companies and not about himself.

I think the list is made by a college student, so presumably there isn't much financial motivation in listing some companies over others. (http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/05/want-to-hitch-a-ride-on-a-...)

For what it's worth, Keith Rabois calls it "the best curated list out there" https://twitter.com/rabois/status/678018057802022913

Why is it published anonymously though?

This focuses pretty well (?) on traditional consumer (e.g., social media): worth augmenting with other strong areas like the data industry, enterprise, and physical (e.g., Flexport). For early stage, greenfield areas are important like VR / cloud streaming (e.g., OTOY is amazing!). Put differently, I've guided many folks towards recent startups.. and generally not to ones on this list.

For job seekers, may be worth resorting. Most of the startups there already dilute away most future employees, and I bet there'd be reordering if you think in that way. I've been wanting, for awhile, to be able to sort & slice offers on sites like AngelList by company phase ($ raised or valuation, revenue, growth, industry). Equity and salary offers change significantly along these. Coarsely, seed companies generally shouldn't be valued the same way as A and certainly not B ones.

I’ll say it again — avoid random startups! In the words of Sam Altman, “unless you are getting multiple percent of equity, it’s usually a bad deal to join an early-stage startup that hasn’t yet found product-market fit and the resulting growth (there is a big exception here for hard tech startups that will take a long time to produce a product but be incredibly valuable if they’re able to).”

I've seen advice to not work for startups that aren't well on their way to becoming the next big thing at least a dozen times this month. Instead go with an established company (Google often mentioned at this point). It seems that this sentiment is spreading quickly right now and often backed up by citing lower wages and lottery type chances at the equity being worth anything in the future. This article gets into it a bit as well as noted in the above quote.

Maybe it is a vocal minority right now, but it seems that it will be difficult for "random" startups to get anywhere if they can't bring talent onboard.

The problem with this list is it essentially reads as if it were compiled by someone who just reads TechCrunch/Hacker News/Twitter all the time. There's no insight and it could easily be someone's investor portfolio, as someone else mentions (even though it is started by a student). The most telling aspect is how strongly it's influenced by "what's hot" right now. There are now a bunch of AI teams at large and small companies, which is a new addition to the list that wasn't there before. Has the author actually worked there or personally known people that worked there? Or is the author just jumping on the ML bandwagon in tech?

The juxtaposition between Google and Facebook alongside Palantir seems strange. Is Palantir really a big, bloated company now? I would've assumed they would be listed by Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest.

Palantir is almost certainly not where you want to work as an engineer. The vast majority of developers there are basically just working as glorified consultants.

This document has excellent advice about choosing a company, such as the interview advice and offer checklists.

The list itself is decent but not great.

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