Founder Paydays at Exit (IPO) | Hacker News Reader

Founder Paydays at Exit (IPO)

blossomstreetventures.medium.com

54 pointsturoczy25 comments

Nothing like publishing a textual data table as a giant picture.

"If this data doesn’t get you off the couch and coding the next great product, I don’t know what will." If the hope of a 9 digit payoff is what's motivating you to start a company, you're better off trying your luck on a roulette wheel.

Not to mention the data isn't even de-duped. Weird.

Or even sorted?

Given that Cal Henderson & Slack appears in the chart twice with different numbers each time, I'd take these figures with a grain of salt.

Plus the tone of the article makes it seem like a quick marketing piece to try and advertise their VC fund.

Ah, the repeated companies had me confused for a moment, too! The list is partitioned by { company, founder } (note the different ownership percentages), which is why some companies appear multiple times.

There are repeated entries for the same company+founder but with different values. It doesn't make any sense.

Additionally sometimes the founder's name is right in one row but not in the other e.g. Cloudflare's Matthew Prince (right) vs Matthew Price (wrong).

Not a good look.

Oh man, upon looking closer, I now realize you and this thread’s OP are right. That data is really messy. I agree, it’s not a good look.

> ” If this data doesn’t get you off the couch and coding the next great product, I don’t know what will.”

Well, that’s a severe lack of imagination by the author. I can think of lots of reasons to start coding a new project that are not how much a few dozen of people earned in an IPO.

There are repeated entries for the same company+founder but with different values. It doesn't make any sense.

Additionally sometimes the founder's name is right in one row but not in the other e.g. Cloudflare's Matthew Prince (right) vs Matthew Price (wrong).

Not a good look.

Missing are the zeros (and negatives)

I don't think most people have the bandwidth to download a chart that reflects the employees who get screwed.

Do employees get screwed, or is it just that too many of us employees sign on and see the word equity and think that means we're suddenly co-founders?

When a founder tells you "the salary is low, but you get equity" he is screwing you.

If you take a market salary, and see equity as what it is (a lottery ticket that might, maybe get you a few tens of grands) then it's fine.

Definitely the former, unless you feel that only co-founders deserve market pay and equity that pays out at >$0. In many cases, employees even lose money because they have to exercise options with no insight into if they'll ever be worth a dime.

>We dove into major tech IPO’s since 2018 to find out.

It also self-selects for "major" offerings as well. I'd be curious to see this table for ALL tech IPOs.

Now let's compare to the length of the list of national lottery winners, and how much time and capital each winner put in to achieve the win.

Where is the chart listing the negative opportunity costs from the other 99%?

This is so cherry-picked and editorialized that this feels unethical.

It claims an "average" from this list while intentionally neglecting less-successful IPOs and downright failures.

Also, I'd be curious to see what the exits are after the 3-6 month lockup period. Some startups IPO decently, but then tank.

How many of these were funded by Blossomstreetventures?

Slightly off topic, why do people use `mm` as the symbol for millions? Why not just `m` ?

M is 1000 in Roman numerals. While it is uncommon, M is used to mean 1000 in business contexts, such as CPM: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cpm.asp

Therefore "mm" is the most unambiguous way to denote millions, and is used in accounting.

It’s used a lot in finance and accounting, and stems from the Roman numerals. It’s also used in advertising, CPM = Cost Per Mille.

"mm" is a perversion of "MM", which is derived from Roman numerals (M is 1000, and MM is M*M). This notation has a long history of use in business and accounting.

For consistency, the author's use of "bln" should be "BB", or at least "B". These have no Roman antecedents, but they are common in accounting.

I've never seen "MMM" for billion. Missed opportunity! I'll have to suggest that to our CFO for our next filing.

What a gross overstep by Spotify. Over $9B combined between the two founders!?! Meanwhile bands are struggling to make it through the pandemic. Guess I'll be deleting my Spotify account. Barf.

cool story bro.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com