201 karma · joined February 8, 2011
Of course, I ignore him 80% of the time because I can't stand to step away from a problem before it's solved, but he's always right.
We're taught to be polite, warm, and deferential, and to thank someone effusively when they do something for us. I've seen men work the same angle, though.
First, I had to come up with cash to pay someone. A painful thing to do when you're bootstrapping with no real income.
Second, I had to spend copious amounts of time not only writing a technical spec for someone who didn't grok the app but also carefully crafting a contract that would assure that I kept the IP.
Third, maintenance has been a bitch. Iterations take weeks instead of days, and I'm never a contractor's top priority.
In contrast, my partners are (like me) working for equity, have a deep, intuitive grasp of the product and what it does, and are engaged enough to not only turn around changes quickly, but also suggest improvements themselves.
Obviously, there are situations where renting a coder will be one's only option. My experience has been that it's an awkward, painful process.
In the future, I would choose to cobble together a non-functional prototype (I'm a UX designer who writes display layer markup) to help me attract a technical co-founder or an investor rather than hire another contractor.
I recently saw that pud is a year younger than me, and we entered the job market at almost the same time with similar skill sets. Why did it take me so goddamn long to pull my head out of my ass and finally start my own company (at 35)?
Perhaps pud's acceptance of risk has a genetic component, or at the very least he was brought up in an environment where he learned to adjust to uncertainty.
He credits laziness - but we all know that lazy + smart = effective. I wonder if that's part of entrepreneurial DNA as well...
That said, I'm stupidly well-placed to be working on my own idea, unpaid - I'm using the self-employment assistance program through my state's unemployment department to get UI checks without having to job hunt (I do, however, have to submit business plans and the like). I also have enough in the bank to cushion me when the government cheese runs out.
My colleagues who ran into problems with Uncle Sugar are the ones who bought and held their stock for less than a year (but long enough for it to tank in value), didn't make estimated tax payments and were fined by the IRS, or otherwise made decisions based on irrational exuberance, like borrowing against their options to buy jet-skis and crap.
Hope this answers your question.
Anyway, I was an early rank and file employee at a startup that was acquired by WebMD. When WebMD merged with Healtheon in '99 - which I'm counting as an exit, since our office was shut down shortly thereafter - we were able to exercise our options. I cashed out a third of my vested ISOs to the tune of about $50K. Not FU money, but a nice boost to a 25 year old, and enough to put a substantial down payment on a house.
What I learned:
• Some of my coworkers thought I was loony for cashing out when I did - they thought the stock price would keep going up. And it did - for a while. Remember, this was 2000. We were all out of a job in six months. A bird in the hand, etc.
• Some people cashed out 100%, seeing dollar signs, and didn't get counseled on the tax ramifications. That ended poorly. These were young engineering types who chose not to listen to our awesome CFO/office manager/HR person back when we were a tiny startup. It's amazing how someone can grok Python, and not compound interest.
• The house I put 25% down on in 2000 sold in 2006 for more than twice what I paid for it, while the "nostalgia shares" I kept from WebMD aren't worth one-tenth of what they were in 2000. This was a valuable lesson in the benefits of diversification.
Finally, what I learned was that the only difference between gambling in Vegas and gambling with tech startup stock options is that in Vegas, you get free drinks.
That said, as a woman in tech, the concept of "erotic capital" resonates with me. I'm wildly ambivalent about it, though - the risk seems to outweigh any potential reward.
I'll definitely stick to the simple description, thanks.
Don't get me wrong - from what I've seen, Groove looks beautiful and well-thought-out from the user's perspective. But a beautiful and intuitive user interface won't get covered by anyone if it's in a market that no one's interested in.
Keep killing it, guys!
My takeaway? These are things that only a founder could pull off. I've heard "the best person to pitch your idea is you" canard dozens of times, but this is a tangible demonstration of such.
A hired PR gun or early bizdev hire probably wouldn't think to go the controversial route. And if he did, it would come off as inauthentic and spammy.