90 Days and My Six-Figure Mistake | Hacker News Reader

90 Days and My Six-Figure Mistake

medium.com

15 pointssajid12 comments

Author here. Yes, that was my stupidity at 24 that cost me over $100k. Woohoo!

Ask away. This is early, feedback welcome.

Loads of edge cases to explore and catch. For the most part, saves the 30-minutes “this is how equity works” conversation, and tries to prevents mistakes on both sides.

How come you were considered an insider ? In my experience that's C*O level.

IIRC (8+ years ago), athenahealth was very open with internal data, as part of building an internal culture of honesty and trust. The Exec team walked the walk and showed us very detailed financial info during all-hands.

Heh .. I'm 37, in tech and still struggling to make the downpayment. I wonder how many well-payed tech folks in their 30s are in a similar position where we are completely screwed for housing?

Just have to put away 5k/month to afford a barebones downpayment... in 5 years.

Out of curiosity, is that something that you could opt out of ? Not knowing too much about how to read a financial report, I might have preferred that to avoid the blackout.

Important issue. Glad it's being talked about and worked on.

A bit of a tangent, but I see the author in the comments and that he is at a VC now. Im not a founder or VC, but do have a Q: to what extent do you see common term sheet practices and current gov regulations causing issues for founders?

Clearly employee equity letters could be more fair, and I realize founders have opportunities to exit that later employees don't get. But to what extent are founders being educated on the risk/reward involved in starting a startup, taking VC funds and their term sheet implications? and are some founders pushing back or deciding not to take the risk of starting a startup at all?

> Once an employee learns how equity really works, they often leave startups. Want to make money? Go work at Google.

Want to be happy? Stop worrying about making money, accept you never really will, and go work for a startup with people you like who are trying to accomplish something interesting.

Note: article is pretext for a product ad.

That experience was the instigator. It's why I wanted to make the product.

That does not match the intent of the headline, which makes it a form of clickbait as opposed to an "Announcing a Clear Letter of Equity and Remuneration" headline.

Fair. I went too terse with the title.

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