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Comment by Silhouette | Hacker News Reader

This sounds a lot like questions someone whose experience of start-ups consists mostly of reading Hacker News would ask. I wouldn't be offended if someone I was interviewing asked me those questions, but I sure as hell wouldn't answer some of them, given that things like detailed financials wouldn't necessarily even be revealed to current employees. If sound basics like "we're profitable" isn't enough, that's a no-hire.

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If you expect equity to make up part of my pay, then knowing the financials is critical. You are basically asking me to be an investor with my time, so this sentence doesn't make sense: "If sound basics like "we're profitable" isn't enough, that's a no-hire."

If we're in this kind of interview situation, where I am openly recruiting for a position and you are a job applicant, then it is very unlikely that I expect equity to be part of your pay.

These days, equity is for founders (if you're serious) and prospective employees who didn't get the memo about the .com bust (if you're both fools). A fixed salary at a credible professional rate is for prospective employees you respect, possibly with some clearly defined bonus structure.

YMMV, but I haven't seen any exceptions to this from either side of the table in a long time.

These days, equity is for founders (if you're serious) and prospective employees who didn't get the memo about the .com bust (if you're both fools).

Of course it's an outlier, but do you really believe Facebook isn't going to make a lot of its early employees rich at some point?

But the point is that it is an outlier. Most people interviewing with a start-up aren't interviewing with the next Facebook. Even if they are, paying single-digit employees who are not founders in equity isn't nearly as common as it used to be IME.

This list of questions is great. I would say that some of these are a bit invasive as you pointed out, but a good sign that the applicant is really considering the company. I think casting aside someone who is genuinely interested in the future of the company would be a silly move: Even if you're not transparent about your financial situation, you should at least be honest about their chances of having a job in 6 months.

The intention isn't to get detailed financials necessarily. "Profitable" is a pretty good indicator of some level of success. The issue is more with pre-revenue or pre-profit startups that are "burning cash" and have X amount of time to live. That's important data for an employee.

Sure. I think what I'm getting at is that the questions seem to implicitly assume anyone applying to a start-up is looking at a company that is (a) externally funded, and (b) not yet profitable. There's a lot of hero worship around here about getting early stage funding and Ramen profitability, but in the real world there are plenty of other possibilities.

Yes, the questions are targeted to a specific type of startup, although not necessarily one with huge funding.

But the questions don't change drastically in other types of startup either. Maybe some of the financials do, but questions about founders, business fundamentals, metrics that are focused on, how employees are assessed, etc. remain true regardless of whether it's a funded startup, bootstrapped, revenue generating, profitable or otherwise.

Most of the things you mentioned remain true for any prospective employer, though, whether it's any form of start-up or already established. Only the financial questions from the original set were particularly start-up specific, and those are the ones where I see a bias in the article, because a different approach would be appropriate depending on the nature of the start-up.

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