20yrs_no_equity

I've spent my career at early stage companies, sometimes as CEO sometimes as CTO and many times as an engineer.

It may be right that you become trained to be a Startup CEO by being a Startup CEO, because there are some things that you cannot get any other way. However, you can get a lot of the necessary perspective as a Startup Employee and then Startup Founder. This way you will start with a big leg up compared to a CEO who has no startup experience. I think probably it would be a good best practice for us entrepreneurs when starting our career to start as employees, then on our second job be founders, then if you want the third company would be the one where you become CEO. Thus when you are founding a company, look for someone who has previously been a founder and an employee, to be your CEO. I'm not saying you need a grey hair, but someone who has been on the roller coaster before and who knows what he is signing up for. First job out of the gate as CEO is romanticized by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg et al. but it's not the best chance for your company. Generally.

Also, critical for a Startup CEO is that the CEO have training in the primary industry of the company.

IF you're disrupting real estate sales, and your primary competitive advantage is legal or structural (eg: an old school not really technical business) the CEO needs to be a salesman. In this way the CEO is experienced in the primary area that determines success.

If you're doing this with software, however, the CEO needs to be an engineer (not a salesman.) As an engineer who has learned to sell (by being a sales engineer, after creating an evangelism department which became our marking department) learning to sell was rather easy, and a CEO as salesman can work with pure salesmen very well, with the CEO coming in as the Closer.

But a CEO without an engineering background who is trying to manage a company whose primary business is software development is going to be a problem-- the only way this works is if you have a co-founder who is an engineer and is effectively in total control of the technology side.

Maybe a better characterization is that, sales is a skill that can be taught. Certainly talented sales guys have a talent that can't be taught, but anyone can be taught to be a competent sales guy. Engineering does involve skills that can be taught, but that capacity for grasping engineering concepts, that seems to not be something you can teach. Either that or I've just seen a lot of non-engineering CEOs who didn't care to learn enough about engineering not to undermine it.

The number one killer of startups in my experience is arrogance and the Dunning Kruger effect (they are linked.) VCs forcing bad pivots on companies because some MBA with 2 years experience as a junior associate at a VC firm thinks the company (run by industry veterans with 20 years of experience) should chase the latest fad for example (and yes I've seen exactly that though most cases are less obviously asinine.)

But I've also seen the CEO who thinks because he's CEO he HAS to "Make Decisions" or he won't have "authority" undermining the technology side he knows nothing about... but is too arrogant to realize he's the cause of the companies problems. That I've seen a whole lot too[1].

A lot of the founder fights I've seen have been due to this too-- the CEO keeps pushing the CTO to do something wrong, that the CTO knows is wrong.

So, the real thing I would look for in a CEO of a startup is that they are the kind of person who is not focused on their own ego, not arrogant.

In fact, I'm starting to think that the CEO role is itself obsolete.

First off, there's three people in the company and one of them's title is "Chief executive officer"? Three words none of which actually involve getting things done?

I think a better arrangement might be one that is flatter where at the top of the org is a committee made up of the heads of the departments who have to reach consensus, with the Chairman of the Board being the tie breaking vote... but it should never come down to votes. There should be someone who is on that committee who is understood to have the best product vision and who has the loyalty of the rest of the committee regarding the product vision. That could be the chairman (in which case he acts like CEOs do now, only less involved in the day to day stuff where he may be tempted to meddle.)

I'm not completely sold on this idea, just thinking about it. At any case, the totally hierarchical 5 layers of management in a 50 person company structure is out of date by about 50 years I think.

[1]Example of the above: Stopping engineering from using an issue tracking system (which he was not interested in logging into even though it built burndown charts and predicted ship dates and gave him great visibility) and forcing everything to go onto a single medium sized white board with sticky notes. (which are constantly falling off!) So, instead of QA writing up an issue with reproduction steps, we are working of of vague notes on sticky notes, like "server disconnects from peer", or "memory is too much". This has dramatically slowed us down, probably, along with other process undermining decisions, cost us a good 2 months in the past 5 of delay, etc. But of course its engineerings fault for not meeting the (arbitrary) deadlines he picked. (Yes, I'm a little bitter, it sucks to see a potentially great company tanked by this kind of stuff. It's salt in the wound to see the business guys running around arrogant and making comments about how bad engineering is, when we can't even get them to give ups a spec, let alone participate in an agile process.)

This is based on a survey of Management Consultants. For those who have not worked with Management Consultants, or seen the Showtime series "House of Lies", these are not the guys you want to be your CEO. (The TV show is fictionalized, of course, but it's based on a book written by a management consultant.)

Their characteristics are rapaciousness, self focus, political and emotional manipulation and greed. They do well for themselves, not so well for the company.

So, I question the premise of this article from the beginning as its source material is not successful CEOs who spent more than 10 years at the company in question or in the CEO role.

Edit: I see I'm being buried. To be fair, there's a difference between a "management consultant" and an consulting engineer. consulting engineers get stuff done. Management consultants can also come up with great ideas (as shown in the show I referenced above) and can legitimately add value. But they are best as consultants, not employees and not CEOs. Of course generalizations are false if applied strictly- there are exceptions.

I just think that a better survey of successful CEOs would be necessary to draw any serious conclusions.

AND - more specifically- having worked with management consultants and a variety of CEOs of startups who didn't have startup backgrounds, for a startup you generally don't want a management consultant as your founding CEO.

This is a line too far for me. I will not comply. I think we should all insist that we build systems where the encryption is open source, out of our control and we never have access to the keys.

It's time to get rid of passwords too. Start, step by step, getting users used to keys, and used to being responsible for them. IT won't happen overnight.

Doing this takes care of a whole lot of social engineering problems too where hackers could call your customer support reps and get access to an account via an out of band password reset.

It's not just about not trusting the government, it's about not trusting yourself. Your company could make mistakes procedurally, your employees can make mistakes via human weakness or trickery, and as a society we need the trust that comes with real security.

You can dispute a charge on a debit card the same as on a credit card. Just say the merchandise was not what you ordered and you attempted to return it and they wouldn't take it back. Include in your dispute the email from them saying they won't take it back (or notes about the phone call).

They will suddenly want to get it back, and most likely will not argue against the dispute.

The rules are pretty clear on this stuff from Visa and Mastercard-- retailers are on the hook. With the kind of fraud they deal with ,being able to actually get the item back from the customer is a good thing for them.

Their return policy is asinine and counter productive. Maybe they think that so many customers will just eat the charge it is worth it.

But I would highly doubt you will lose your dispute (unless your bank is terrible.)

I have disputed various things over the years, when running into bad merchants. Only once has the dispute not gone in my favor -- and I no longer do business with that bank (Wells Fargo, it was a particularly egregious situation too. Over a $60 dispute they have lost $400 a year in revenue.)

And with wikileaks they have a convenient way to release that info while on the surface maintaining a friendly relationship with the USA.

Not sure what you mean about Malcolm X though. What are the chickens here?

Since you're charging, by definition you're not mobile.

Easy: http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/09/08/belkin-announces-s...

I once had a twitter handle that whose gender wasn't obvious, leading to people thinking I'm a guy. I used that handle to defend the creator of redis when he was being wrongly convicted of being sexist.

As a result, I did get a great many rape threats and violence threats because they thought I was female -- form people whose identities were not hidden at all, in fact (eg: CTOs of startups in SV with more than $40M in venture capital behind them were threatening me with rape).

These were the "feminists" threatening a perceived female for defending a male, who was not being sexist, but who was the current target of 5 minutes of hate.

Given the amount of harassment anti-gamergate people have engaged in, and the fact that every single thing they claim gamer gate does, they are doing (while I've not really seen gamer gate do it) and the rape threats I got... I think the harassers are the SJWs.

Audio can go both ways over lightening.

The funny thing is, when I was 20, and working for startups, I saw so many startups shoot themselves in the foot with the idea that "we need to hire a grey hair, or the investors won't take us seriously". And then they would hire a non-technical CEO.

Apple keeps gatekeeper and another process up to date, effectively scanning for this kind of stuff is built into the OS.

I've been interviewing a lot of people over the past 5 years, some are good some are bad, but I've seen no correlation between age and complacency in software developers.

I'm an excellent manager[1]. Alas, what I see is that startups start out with a CTO (the guy who actually built the thing) and there aren't a lot of manager jobs advertised.

The few that were, I got discriminated against because of my age.

Doh!

[1] They tell me. I can't get too far from the code or its no fun, but I prefer to build teams and work at a high level than to be constantly coding all the time.

The only way I'm not like the "Us" in silicon valley (if we're talking about 20-30 year olds as represented on HN) is that I have more current skills (takes time to learn languages, knowing 5 currently popular languages takes more time than the person just out of college has invested.) I also have experience building things at scale. Projects that take 5 years to do you can't have done too many by the time you're 23. But I've done several.

My code is being used by probably a billion people right now (how many people are using windows?) How many people play on the playstation network? I'm currently working in a blockchain startup. Is that an out of date skill?

I don't mean for this to sound arrogant- as I said elsewhere wisdom and enthusiasm are very useful.

I think the correct mix for any engineering team I build is a range from junior, or even interns, to senior people.

And of course the funny thing is, I'm an "old fart", I have been levelling up for the past 20 years. I put the first Elixir app into production before Elixir hit 1.0- I'm staying current. I work long hours, for startups, I can handle that intensity.

The assumption that we're slower, out dated and unwilling to put the hours in is kinda prejudicial. Some of us may be, but TBH I see a lot of foolishness, wasted time and nonsense from some younger people too. Enthusiasm and Wisdom are BOTH valuable. A trait that might be more common in one age group is not justification for rejecting the entire age group.

But the hiring processes are totally discriminatory. I've been on the other side of it too often, seen bosses reject people younger than me as "too old" without even realizing it (or that they are creating cause for a discrimination lawsuit.)

Last time I interviewed with bay area startups I had a %100 correllation-- visual interviews (eg: skype video etc) would not progress, even past the HR initial contact (eg: no technical interview at all) while ones done via audio (no visual) would progress. (I guess I don't look as young as I think I do!) We're talking well known companies like Digital Ocean and Stripe engaged in straight up age discrimination.

After being discriminated against by Pebble a few years ago, I figured they were the exception (The guy who interviewed me was so young and so incompetent the he had the wrong answers for his trick questions and couldn't grasp my explanations, which the HR lady reported to me as "you need to get stronger on these things")... but the most recent round convinced me that it really is discrimination.

I've got a lot of really valuable talents and relevant as I've stayed current. I interview very well- typically I can get a better job than I deserve by interviewing. I've been rejected lots over my career, sometimes just arbitrarily. I never would have thought that I was being discriminated against except that I noticed the correlation between visual interviews (and I'm certain that 5 years ago when I was rejected I was not being discriminated against.)

Further, as a sexual minority, I had to deal with the possibility years ago that I would be fired if people found out. I decided that this was fine-- I don't want to work for a place that discriminates against me. I can make money on my own if I need to, I don't need a job.

So it's no big deal. I'm just surprised at how poorly so many companies do it. And of course, I do tend to stop being a customer of companies that engage in discrimination. (That's me discriminating against them. :-)

Apple jumped the shark in 2001 with the iPod. People have been saying that for decades.

There is no use case for the headphone jack that can't be better handled by the lightening connector or bluetooth. Seriously. Want to integrate something from sparkfun? Bluetooth is what you want.

I think it's kinda funny how Apple haters / android zealots always talk about how Apple has lost its way, every time they do something new and significant.

iPod: complaints iPhone: complaints Mac Pro: complaints iPad: complaints and jokes Apple Watch: complaints. All of these have been hugely successful products.

But the day of their announcement people complained about how much they obviously sucked.

I'm a longtime Apple watcher. Apple is pretty predictable in some things-- and they have a rhythm.

If they had minor Mac introductions they would have just appeared on the store a week ago (they wait until event time to decide what makes the cut in case something has production delays, then they push out the stuff that didn't make the cut the week before the event.)

That they made no mention of the Mac means that they will have another event in early October (they need to be on the market by November and December so early October gives enough breathing room from this event and enough timing to have another event.)

I think if they just had the new Macbook it would have been mentioned today.

That they didn't makes me think that at least three major product announcements will be made in October.

-- Macbook Pro new model I expect. -- Display with built in GPU I think is a distinct possibility -- New Mac of some other kind if they have something significant (eg: not just a revision with the latest intel processor) -- They might have something genuinely new (it still happens.)

I'm certain enough about this that if I could predict Apple's stock movement based on an event, I would be buying options with an early October expiration.

It's not. There was a black woman at WWDC who gave a great presentation just a few months ago. Apple has had female presenters at a large number of their events, as far back as the 2001 time frame.

Don't believe the BS Spin TechCrunch writes-- they are about as credible as the weekly world news.

You're being silly. They have spent the past decade making iWorks better, and in fact, the whole app was revamped from the ground up about 2 years ago, to bring perfect compatibility across platforms from mac to ios.

It's a far better application than anything Microsoft or Google is giving. Google's only run in the browser, and poorly compared to Apple's browser choice, and Microsofts is expensive, buggy and while it has immense numbers of features it has terrible UI.

I worked on Microsoft Works back when Apple Works was kicking their butt. Eventually that got cancelled in favor of just "Office".

Apple's works apps are vastly better than microsofts. Yes, Microsofts do have 30+ years of features shellacked on like so many layers of paint, but I've never needed to do something in Works that I haven't been able to do. And the hassle of dealing with the terrible UI, and terrible experience of microsoft products effectively renders their (presumed I don't really know at this point) additional features useless.

I regularly use Pages, Numbers and Keynote. All three are great and I value my macs that much more because they are there.

Recently I tried downloading LibreOffice because I wanted A visio like drawing program. I've been looking for one of these for years and they all suck- Omnigraffle, visio, etc.

MacDraw was perfect, it's exactly what I need.

Only drawback in Works is there's no Macdraw replacement. (eg: a sorta object oriented drawing program- the drawing capabilities of keynote are very close and so that's what I use.)

Google docs apps are far less capable than the Works apps. Calling them toys seems silly. Google's apps are clumsy yes, but they don't do much at all, nothing more than Works as far as the areas I care about... and they run in the browser poorly. Even Works apps work better in the browser.

What are "DK2/CC"? I've not heard of them.

I'm one of those people who hits multiple diversity/minority characteristics for various reasons, which means in any group where we are all minorities, I'm the minority of that group for one reason or another.

All groups of people selected for some characteristic - whether it's "works for this company" or "wants hillary elected to office" or "was persecuted historically by X" have their own reflexes that exclude "outsiders" or "anyone who is associated with X".

Often at contradictory directions to their stated intent. For example, gay people supporting a candidate who has spent their entire career opposing gay marriage, over candidates and a party that has supported gay marriage for their entire career (and back to the founding of the party.)

Your argument is kinda like pouring brown paint into a can of white paint, pointing to its tan color and then saying that white paint is a fantasy.

Yes there are various degrees of purity in capitalism across the world and one of the interestingly consistent things across history is that prosperity follows relative economic freedom, even if there is no purely free economy.

Any potential profit must be balanced against the highly political question of whether the fix (assuming one was needed) would get thru the FDA, and at what cost, how many bribes, or more politically correctly put, campaign contributions would be needed and whether even doing so would be sufficient to make it onto the market with a revised version.

It's not like these decisions are being made purely on a scientific basis.

It's worth noting that the "generic" got pulled, but there have subsequently been several attempts to bring competitive products to the market to compete with api-pens. It's not like they have a natural monopoly. The thing that is keeping competition out of the market is the FDA. This is a product that is not exactly at the cutting edge of science so either all the competition is really incompetent (I find that doubtful) or the FDA is basically creating an artificial monopoly by keeping competition out.

In my opinion, most cases where you see one company able to charge outsized prices for their products, if you scratch the surface you'll find a government created monopoly, or near monopoly (wireless spectrum is an example of this) or regulation created situation that protects one company from competition.

At the very least you will not find a free market. Because in a free market, people will compete if anyone gives them even a small pricing umbrella. Even for things that require very highly refined manufacturing techniques, like drugs and electronics. Look at the cellphone market, nothing is more precisely built than a smart phone yet we have huge numbers of them in a wide variety at low cost, because the market is mostly unregulated.

I love BSD and would like to use it, but we're kinda in a Linux world.

Question: If I am building a custom hardware device (and we will be in the future, I believe) can we run OpenBSD on it using the ARM port, but also invoke binaries created for linux?

It appears that support was removed.

In the near term I need to build for Linux, But eventually we'll be able to target our own hardware, and one of our toolchain items doesn't support BSD right now (and is closed source, though we are considering an open source alternative.)

Any thoughts?

But not the point of startups.

Also, not what's better for founders.

You're better off with a %50 chance of being worth $200M after 7 years than a %1 chance of being worth $1B after 3.

VCs place many bets, you only get to place one.

At this point if I were to ever take VC again, I might take it from A16Z. They would be top of my list. All those "top tier" guys would have to give me terms I believe they are not inclined to give me.

Fortunately things are radically different than they were even 10 years ago, and VCs have a lot less power.

Unless you're building another Uber. Don't build another Uber. Build a github.

I'm very fascinated by the phrase "disgruntled former employee". Obviously she's disgruntled, that simply means one is unhappy. But the implication is that because one is unhappy with their employment experience, one somehow loses credibility.

Where is it, and why is it, that people who one minute will rant against evil corporations on the other hand when reading about how an employee was mistreated will blame the victim? (I'm speaking generally, but for instance when Amazon's practices came to light there was a bit of victim blaming going on here.)

Why is the presumption of innocence for the employer so strong?

This goes further into hiring practices-- if you look at it objectively, hiring practices are very one sided. Employers make the demands take all of the time for questions, will rebuff questions they don't want to answer (like what's the cap table look like? how many shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis? - things you need to know to evaluate the offer) while simultaneously demanding to know your salary history- and recently I've seen reports of employers demanding poof of salary history with the threat of termination if you don't supply it.

Market forces can make one player have more power than the other, and in the great depression employers had a lot more power. but it's fascinating how the culture has enshrined that power, and people accept it.

If you complain about an employer, this is not taken as a sign the employer is bad, it's taken as a sign you are bad.

But if you complain about bad service at a restaurant, we don't assume you're a bad eater.

I once caught someone lying on a resume, but only because they mentioned a former employer that was also my former employer and while they worked there, they didn't work on the project they claimed (which I had worked on, it was a small team, and which happened before they got hired there.)

But that was a lucky catch in a relatively small town.

How did you decide not to move forward with a candidate? Are you sure you didn't make a decision based on uncorroborated data? (EG: One can say whatever one wants about someone online, and when you google their name it may come up, even though the source has an axe to grind.)

It has happened yet. You know what William Gibson says- the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.

There are several X that are the new "silicon valley". you just don't recognize them because your pattern recognition is tuned for the current silicon valley.

Several of those predictions, by the way, have come true. Of course if you define "silicon valley" narrow enough you'll never see it. And it seems to me the people in SV do so. (You can always come up with a difference between SV and what ever place and say "see that doesn't qualify")

Also, the attitude and smugness of silicon valley is grating, and its' getting worse as your decline deepens.

Wow, having been in Kansas City and the bay area recently, the bay area has a very low potential for high quality of life. Seattle has a very high potential, higher than Kansas City, but Kansas City beats the bay area.

The bay area is way overcrowded, poor infrastructure, way, way too expensive, and if you want to get out of town for the weekend you fight traffic for 4 hours.

I understand california dreaming... it's been the best marketed state for decades.

But its' just a dream.