Couple getting married, creates registry for funding for their startup
aboomba.com
Jefft Bar already got AWS hosting for them
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What kind of VC expects you to buy them a $291 lunch? If I were a VC I certainly wouldn't invest in any company that thought buying me lunch was a good use of their funds.
If so, is it common for people to spend over $100 on a wedding present for another couple? $420?
More to the point, if I'm going to give a couple a $400 gift, I want them to keep it and appreciate it. I want it to be the good silverware which only comes out on special occasions, or the fancy glassware that the children aren't allowed to touch. I don't want it to wind up as a small part of a line item on an accountant's bill.
But this couple seems annoying, and doesn't seem to understand the social process of gifting.
As explained in sister comments, much of this stuff will be expensive, impractical things they don't actually use very often if at all, but will provide an expensive and symbolic keepsake that satisfies people's mammalian hoarding instincts until making for an awkward asset-division discussion during the probable divorce or, less probably, will probably either be inherited or bring in some moderate amount of money at the longest-lived partner's estate sale. (You can look at it more romantically than this, but I'm in an existential mood.)
More practically, a gift registry prevents a couple from getting ten unique waffle makers when they only need one.
some modern couples cohabitate before getting married
Do accountants really make $420/hour? I'm in the wrong field...
One way is to perpetually earn $500k on a 5% rate of return from $10,000,000. That's 33% equity in a startup that's acquired for $30,000,000--probably more rare than a tax accountant.
A programmer doing consulting work might make around $420 per billable hour, but probably as a peak rate and not sustainably.
You could combine income streams: a high paying software job (that's $100,000-$200,000/yr at the top levels) plus consulting (another $100,000+ worth of contracts in a given year is doable for some) plus some equity as a founder or early employee ($100,000 as 5% return on $2,000,000 in wealth) could get you there. It's not as convenient as putting in hours at an accounting firm, but a lot of good programmers fall into it anyway.
1. You built something really complex and a very rich client needs emergency help with it.
2. You are extraordinarily famous and a very rich client feels they must have you.
3. You are convincingly misrepresenting yourself as a team of 7 hardworking people.
4. You have an unusually efficient way of doing something, so you can win fixed-cost-for-deliverables contracts and execute them in fewer hours.
As for what a mortal working as a consultant can normally achieve, $420/h is more than twice what I would consider a very good rate. Only under very unusual circumstances can I imagine a programmer billing at this rate, even on a large corporate client.
Well, maybe if you were working for a bank...
Of course, there is much work that went into developing those classes that I get no hourly wage for at all. So I think of it in terms of, "I need to teach x courses a year" rather than $x/hour.
But technically, that is what the client pays.
OTOH, if they can get people to fund their startup with donations, more power to them. Then I'd say something like, "Gee I wish I would have thought of that."