Comment by argonaut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by argonaut | Hacker News Reader

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Firstly, while I think Scott is wrong, I don't see much that's disrespectful or implying disloyalty about his tone. Not even the stuff about "dead equity."

I'll extend some comments I made downthread:

a16z is a major investor (growth round resulting in a board seat for a16z) in many of the companies that have extended vesting periods, such as Coinbase, Pinterest, Asana, and Tilt (list here: https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows). They also invested in CodeCombat and I'm sure some other startups on that list (I didn't check them all). So I seriously doubt they block companies from doing extended exercise windows.

And claiming that those companies were/are hot and therefore had leverage is a bit circular because hot companies are the kinds of companies a16z often funds in growth rounds (and often it is because a16z funded you that makes you hot).

> So I seriously doubt they block companies from doing extended exercise windows.

You're right that they don't veto companies from doing extended exercise windows.

That doesn't mean they don't oppose them and argue against them. This post makes their viewpoint quite clear, and it means that any founder wanting to do right by employees will have to argue strongly for that position.

Even beyond the specific issue, the tone of this article makes it very clear that they are not employee-friendly.

Contrast that with Sam and YC, who indicate both through the policies and their tone that they recognize that employees also make sacrifices to join companies and invest in their success even if they don't stay through IPO.

Yes, a founder giving some reasons for wanting to do something is not a high barrier to overcome.

And your argument degenerated to stupidity. Do you think there's no difference in effort it takes to do well for your employees when you have to argue with an employee unfriendly person on your board, rather than having employee neutral or employee friendly people on your board? What you said is not grounded in reality, and this topic is super important for people considering different employers.

Your argument is the one that has degenerated into name-calling. Mine hasn't.

Founders routinely ignore the advice of board members. In fact it's almost a meme in the startup community for founders to politely listen to, and then ignore, their VC's advice. This is no different.

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