I completely agree. It bothered me as well.
555 karma · joined August 14, 2014
Email: bingdai9 at gmail dot com
There's a similar plot in the Silicon Valley TV show (Piped Piper v.s. Hooli).
There are certainly women who adore diamonds, but not every woman does.
It is indeed an interesting coincidence that there is another story about parental leave at the front page.
Out of the top 20 movies of domestic grosses[0], only 4 are not sequels or reboots(Zootopia, Secrete Life of Pets, Central Intelligence, The Angry Birds Movie).
All of them hire many people who do not hold a Chinese passport, so they have mature system in place to handle some of the issues you may be concerned about (visa, healthcare, etc). The culture in those companies would also be more international than most Chinese companies of course.
You could also look into YC companies based in China. I saw a job posting on HN a few days ago from a Shanghai-based YC company (I cannot remember the name at this point).
Good luck! :-)
First of all, thank you very much for doing this.
My questions are about the USA Diversity Lottery (https://www.dvlottery.state.gov/), as I rarely see any discussions about it:
- Out of all the people you have seen who obtained a green card, roughly what is the percentage of them getting it through the lottery?
- Roughly how much time and money would the process cost? (I would assume it's similar to the ~2-4 years and ~$15K that a regular green card application cost?)
- Any other general comments you have about the lottery?
Thank you.
I would also add "yourself / your own saving" as a source of investment.
Pros:
- Non-dilutive
- No loss of control
- Quick to close the deal
- Putting in one's own money sends a strong signal to your investors and employees that you are committed to the company
- The investor's incentive is perfectly aligned with the entrepreneur :)
Cons:
- Risky
I somewhat empathise with VCs who put the clause in the term sheet, as VCs themselves have huge and constant time pressure to make money for their investors (LPs), which likely can only happens when their portfolio companies has a big liquidation event (IPO or acquisition).
Yes I agree that the Redemption Clause does not align with entrepreneurs' interest, but I understand the reason behind it.
Redemption Clause basically says "if the company does not IPO or get acquired in X years, the company has to pay the investors back their money, plus a hefty interest".
It is a relatively unusual term, but not rarely-seen.
(Source: I used to work for a VC.)
VCs often reserve a minor portion of the fund (~30%) for investing in future rounds of the fund's existing portfolio companies.
None of these firms that charge their portfolio companies are the typical valley top-tier funds, but I do not think it means that charging portfolio companies for professional services is a bad thing.
1. A portion of the profit that a16z made from previous exits.
2. This is a less likely option - asking portfolio companies to pay for those services. I know VCs that bill their portfolio companies for certain professional services.
As a rule of thumbs, VCs take 2% of the fund's totally funding every year as "management fee", to pay for salaries, office rentals, marketing etc.
Therefore a16z's management fee from this specific fund is about $30M a year ($1.5B * 0.02).
However, please note that this is just the management fee of ONE fund. A VC firm often raises additional funds before a previous one ends its cycle (that's why you see fund names such as a16z fund I, a16z fund II, etc). a16z therefore has additional annual management fee from the previous, unfinished fund as well. I would not be surprised if a16z has $50M management fee per year across its multiple funds.
Source: I used to work for a VC.
I worked at a VC firm for about 3 years. By far the most difficult situation to mediate was co-founder disputes.
The benefits are twofold: customers can get a flavour of what your platform can offer (say, for my case, I would think "oh hey that Star Wars wedding theme is listed here! My idea of such a wedding wasn't so crazy after all); vendors that specialise in certain niche themes can have a chance to be featured in your platform, which hopefully leads to more sales.
Well, best of luck to you! It's unusual to see couples building tech companies together :)
10,000 * $1M = $10B (per year). That is a very big number. It implies that the market you are addressing is at the very least $10B. Could you explain why the market is that big?
"The real news about Apple Pay is how painfully slow it's adoption (by merchants and consumers) is after so many years of release. In comparison, in China most people aged less than 70 and most merchants big (like Taobao) or small (someone selling a pile of oranges on the street) have been using mobile payment (Wechat Pay or Alipay) for many of their financial needs for years: paying money online / at a physical store, accepting payment, sending money to people, in-app purchase, borrowing money, buying financial products, paying bills, paying for parking ticket....there's no need to bring cash to stores or input the credit card info everytime someone buys things online. I highly recommend anyone wanting to see the future of North America's payment technology to have a trip to China. I believe there's lots of catch up to do here."
Here is the screenshot: http://logicalorange.com/mis/YCWeChat.jpg
Thanks for the AMA Sam!
On the other hand, I do wonder if one day a startup will be able to offer one-click business, residential, or tourist Visas. "Visa-as-a-Service".
For example: http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/leojia/deblurring.htm.