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Comment by yetanotherforg | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain how Founders are employees in this context?

I read this as pg being focused on justifying post-acquisition wealth. It seemed to be a justification for the founders receiving 100s if not 1,000s of times the level of compensation as the workers.

I would be curious to hear more justifications from him for this. Founders really take far less risk than employees. I say this as someone who missed out on about $75 million from a YC start-up when an unnamed higher-up told them to fire me two weeks before my first vesting, because I had the most amount of non-founder stock in the company (a compensation for which I took a 66% salary cut).

(edit, typos and turned 100s into 1,00s)

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> Can you explain how Founders are employees in this context?

When founders start, unless they're hands-off directors, they'll be CEO/CTO/etc, which are employee positions. They'll get a salary, because they're employees.

> I read this as pg being focused on justifying post-acquisition wealth.

I don't see why. It makes more sense to focus on founders if he's talking early stage, where you can string a load of systems together to produce a business process. As you get bigger you'll probably regress to the mean of driving processes through admin and management staff, unless you stay laser-focused on keep automation around.

Yeah no one has anything to say about this, probably they read it and run to check their agreements sweating buckets. That's messed up, sorry to hear it.

Many of my friends and colleagues became wealthy thanks to winning the YC lottery, some as founders some as employees. The way they changed afterwards drove me away from the pursuit of money entirely. I'm sure the me in this timeline would not like the me in an alternate timeline where I lasted there two more weeks and achieved wealth status.

> I would be curious to hear more justifications from him for this.

Not sure I understand you. Why do post-acquisition wealth need an justification at all?

> Founders really take far less risk than employees.

If it would be true, why aren't you a founder? You know, blaming other people for wealth/startup/marriage or government/party/boss/partner is easy. But when it comes to actual execution, most of these people come up blank.

You have worked for a startup. Well, you was aware of the risks. But I'm pretty sure the founder had more risks than you. I say this as someone who founded a company recently.

> Not sure I understand you. Why do post-acquisition wealth need an justification at all?

Did you read the tweets, or just the headline?

> You have worked for a startup. Well, you was aware of the risks. But I'm pretty sure the founder had more risks than you. I say this as someone who founded a company recently.

I have helped start 4 companies with 1 gracefully neutral exits, 1 sold, 1 gracefully neutral, and 2 nose dives. After every exit I walked into a job making more $$ than at the job I worked at before the previous startup. The only "risk" a startup founder takes is the potential for a below-market salary for a short period of time.

~20 years ago I failed at a music start-up, royally failed. We burned through $2.5m in about 11 months with nothing of value having been produced, then the dot bomb exploded while we were raising our A round. The same investors funded my next failed startup and offered to fund the one after that.

Once you get to say "I'm a founder and names you might know from vc insider have given me amounts of $$" you have a golden ticket.

Is that legal? Were you able to file a lawsuit or just ate all of the loss?

In most US states employees can be fired at any point without cause. What happened to OP is horrible, but not illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

It's just business in the USA, that's all.

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