Was Aaron Swartz a founder of Reddit? I thought he joined Steve and Alexis after Infogami didn't work out.
Either way, he's a great hacker and that was great candid interview.
Either way, he's a great hacker and that was great candid interview.
The lesson - always vest your equity. Not only for new hires, but also set up vesting schedules for the founders. This ensures everyone can make a fair exit, with no hard feelings.
EDIT: To clarify, by "not a founder" - I was answering the question, "was he a founder of reddit?" He did, of course, co-found not a bug. Here's their website, for the curious: http://notabug.com/ - I believe it's now defunct.
EDIT 2: There's also a pretty good thread on reddit that explains the background: http://reddit.com/info/1octb/comments/c1odac (for those of you who don't know, spez is Steve's alias).
equity, worth and time working are all mixed up if you are a founder. The original idea, the re-write, the bug fixing and all the crappy small things right up to the final sale mean at any one time each founder out-contributed one another at some stage. It's the final result that counts the most. If he wasn't pulling his weight I'm pretty sure the others would have kicked up a stink and given him the boot.
'... always vest your equity. Not only for new hires, but also set up vesting schedules for the founders. This ensures everyone can make a fair exit, with no hard feelings. ...'
This I would agree with. Things don't always go to plan though and people may not like their new role, being told what to do, when. You know the drill. To me the biggest mistake by Naste` is assuming just because you buy a company out that all founders are equally as flexible.
The biggest impression I get with Aaron is people look at him, they see a kid and skip the ability, intelligence, achievement and ideas bit.
"Heh" I joked. "I bet the first time my boss finds out where I am is when he sees my photo on the front page of his own website (Wired)"
I cracked up reading this line because of the irony of it.
I actually talked with Steve about this exact topic a few months ago. The point he made was, in general, if you give a partner all the equity up front, kicking him out later doesn't make sense. Even if he's extremely unproductive, your only choice is to try to work things out.
Otherwise, he's just walking away with a huge chunk of the company.
The "Ki" scenario. Remember in Startup.com (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup.com) where a founder put an estimated 4 months + 20K then didn't quit his job. After negotiation he walked with 200K+ USD but this time paid for by his co-founders. There must be a better way.
Maybe increasing to total equity as progress is made, because you can bet with a group of four there is always going to be a chance of one founder for some reason or another bailing. But the way it's panned all, are paid. Maybe not as much as they theoretically could have. But money in hand (and a job), now is worthy objective.
They didn't push hard enough. This would have been the chance to negotiate ~ "What were some of the most flexible decisions you made?", http://tinyurl.com/39yobc
I don't think I meant to say there would be a problem in taking on a new founder. The fact is someone joining at later time is more vulnerable and therefore you have a greater leverage. Joining later in terms of negotiating is a weakness that could have been exploited.
'... I'd say that you shouldn't blame the people who made that reasonable of a decision for what happened since. ...'
It's not blame, simply 20/20 hindsight. I say the founders in this case have done an exceptional job executing especially with this their first business. I'm just making an observation.
It does sound as though he was not well-suited to corporate life. Where's the crime in that?
According to the site, he's still part of the team. Was Notabug what Conde Nast actually bought? Do they own Infogami, too?
"Paul wanted to give Aaron Swartz, another YC founder, a birthday gift in November. More than anything else, Aaron wanted co-founder so Paul suggested the 'merger'. Merger is probably a bit hyperbolic for what actually happened, Aaron basically moved in with us and we made him a co-founder."