blizkreeg

As a naive person, I have a simple question - why would they even fly to an airport where there's 100mph winds? Wouldn't ATC know this and tell the flight way in advance to fly to a different destination?

This comment reminds me of the infamous Dropbox comment :)

The asymmetric reward is the _company_ having a liquidity event thereby enriching the founder, NOT a funding round enriching the founder.

Sells or shuts or goes public.

Those are the only three outcomes for a venture backed startup.

Founder liquidity is wrong -- and not because employees don't get the same deal.

It's wrong because it is NOT uncommon for a founder to take chips off the table sometimes enriching themselves to the tune of millions only for the startup to then "fail" -- either go bankrupt, sell for peanuts, or sell for only a modest multiple.

You're not done until you're done. But founder liquidity has now become a path to getting rich when the outcome of the company is still unknown and up in the air. If venture backed founders don't want that risk, they should start bootstrapped companies.

At a minimum, there should be a cap on it (not % but $), and yes, it should be extended to early employees too.

Interesting name! (probably get rid of the dashes if you can :) I liked the idea of a demo site. Very few take the pains to create one.

Is there a way to target individual users or a subset of users?

SEEKING WORK | Oakland | Remote

Looking for something a little different here: I'd like to help an early stage startup hire remote overseas talent and build a stellar dev team.

I'm an experienced engineering leader/early stage CTO who has led software teams of up to 10. I've built a number of products from the ground up. I've hired at least 35-40 engineers in my career thus far, and a number of them from outside the US in the past few years.

Here's how I see myself helping:

- help non technical founders source, vet, and interview developers

- help non technical founders as initial/interim CTO helping the hired team hit their stride and get productive shipping (by setting the right processes and culture)

- act as deputy VP of eng helping the VP of eng with interviews, resume screening, and anything else that helps them with hiring

Resume: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5flvdmfrxaq8ytipzqthc/Profile...

I previously led a team of 10 at a notable company to re-build its platform entirely. More recently, I've been leading a small team at a Series B startup in a fractional eng lead capacity. I have worked with engineers from diverse cultures and countries (I'm an immigrant myself) and know how to relate to and vet them.

React out if this interests you. I'm open to other interesting freelance consulting opportunities as well.

Email in my bio.

I feel like I'm in the same boat as you. I'd love to chat and exchange notes or just discuss challenges. My email is in my bio. Would love to hear from you if you're open to it. It's hard to meet agency owners who run small/solo agencies. fyi - i'm based in the bay area.

Why do you want to shut the dev shop? I run a dev shop myself and would love to hear your perspective.

Q for engineers on this thread: would you be more open to a "recruiter reach-out" if that person _is_ an engineer themselves but independently also helps startups build teams as a recruiter?

i meant a physical book

Take on freelance work on the side if your day job isn’t too taxing.

Does anyone have an opinion that's strongly in favor of Node/Express and why? May be once past the MVP stage, Node/Express was a better choice for xyz reasons - I'd love to hear what they are.

Has anyone here extensively worked with Rails and then gone on to work heavily with Node/Express, or vice versa? Would love to hear your overall experience and thoughts between the two.

Why aren’t companies going public sooner now? So much of the medium term upside is gone by the time they IPO and the stock then gets hammered in the markets.

So I suppose most people should not start a company for the next 50 years?

And what do you aim to accomplish with that negativity? We all know the risks in everything.

By educating me about the risk, you haven't accomplished anything. If you have ideas for how I can play the odds better and improve my success rate, I'm all ears. It's better to say look to each side of the road when you cross vs you're gonna die if you're not careful.

There is also something called dealing with the consequences. People figure it out. It's not a joy ride, but it's not the end of the world.

At least most people in tech have the skills to fall back on a career if their company fails. Needless caution advice coated in a cynical tone just creates negativity around the whole topic.

Can't we just celebrate that the founder of Webflow managed to rescue his company from the brink of fail (even if it was dumb luck - it wasn't) and has built a life for himself? This is the stuff that inspires human beings and makes everyone feel like they could do it too. Clouding it in _oh but what if you're in the other 9 out of 10 camp_ is just you know .. pointless.

It's fine to say, hey make yourself comfortable first, play small bets and free yourself from complete ruin before you go bet the farm, but, yolo so you do you. But no need to rain on the parade of the person who has crossed over to the other side.

What is it with every post on HN having an almost 50/50 split along the cynical line.

Of course 9/10 founders are going to fail, some people have more privilege to take risks, and people with families have to take measured risks.

What's the point? Should people not try, keep crying about it, keep complaining that it's easy to say this when you have privilege, keep looking at the negative side? We all recognize life's a lottery and the odds are stacked in favor of some and not others. So?

May be you are not their in their ideal customer profile anyway?

This is fantastic. Just downloaded.

Stripe

I'm an experienced dev/fmr eng leader and (disclaimer) run a small product dev shop now.

In the past, I've hired a dev shop/freelancer when the project could be worked on fairly independently with high level direction and has a strong business use case but it isn't worth wasting core team cycles. For eg, marketing team needs a dashboard, the reporting/ETL infra needs to setup or is broken, internal products, or even clearing the bug backlog. Ideally the dev shop also has someone who can do some product/design work if necessary.

If you're hiring a dev shop for higher velocity/shipping features quicker, you have to be careful. Reviewing their PRs, communication (if in different TZs), sharing context, poorly done work, and disconnect between team's best practices and theirs can eat into your core team's time and potentially lead to some frustration.

As much as possible, the key is to protect your team's time aside from critical inflection points -- initial scope, them sharing their approach, validating if it looks good, and the occasional review/check-in.

Hope this helps.

Camus, Kafka have a far broader reach worldwide than pu la. Forget the world, outside of Maharashtra pretty much no one knows who he is.

why is this front page hacker news? and believe me, I know who pu la is.

How is business? I created something similar but as an embedded widget just prior to Covid. Had to pause it when brick and mortar businesses took a major hit in March.

Just curious if you're seeing interest from them again.

Does anyone think this piece is actually a paid one to drive interest?

Good old times.

SEEKING WORK | Oakland | Remote

I'm looking to work with early stage teams and non-technical founders as the technical co-founder/early-stage CTO/CPO they don't currently have.

Resume: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sa8ro5qvb0n8ii2/Profile_1601567370...

I'm hands-on, have led software teams of up to 10, and built and launched complex products from scratch.

I previously led a team of 10 at a notable company to re-build its platform entirely. More recently, I helped get a B2B venture-backed startup off the ground as co-founder/head of product and eng. I built this product from scratch, hired a team of 5 and led development for 2 years, releasing nearly 500 iterations of the product. Through hard-earned experience, I've learned how to balance trade-offs between quality, speed, and resources to ship great software and lead/motivate a team while doing so.

React out if this interests you. I'm open to interim product/eng lead roles as well freelance consulting opportunities at early stage companies.

Location -- Oakland, CA

Remote -- Yes

Willing to relocate -- No

Expertise/Skills/Technologies -- Early-stage product development, seed-stage CTO/CPO, Technical Co-founder, Engineering/Product leader, Rails, React, Python, Node, Postgres

Resume -- https://www.dropbox.com/s/sa8ro5qvb0n8ii2/Profile_1601567370...

Email -- in resume

Looking for -- Interim/Freelance technical co-founder/early-stage CTO/CPO, Eng or Product leadership roles.

Bio -- I'm a hands-on (still code) product and engineering leader with sixteen+ years of experience solving problems with code, software, and design.

I previously led a team of 10 at a notable company to re-build its platform entirely. More recently, I helped get a B2B venture-backed startup off the ground as co-founder/head of product and eng. I built this product from scratch, hired a team of 5 and led development for 2 years, releasing nearly 500 iterations of the product.

I now work and consult with non-technical founders and early stage teams to own the first versions of their product (and often beyond). As someone who's trained as an engineer, I have a very strong sense for the product side of things. Through hard-earned experience, I've learned how to balance trade-offs between quality, speed, and resources to ship great software and lead/motivate a team while doing so.

React out if this interests you. I'm open to interim product/eng lead roles as well freelance consulting opportunities at early stage companies.