corry

Fair, I should have said "tech founders" I suppose. I think it's reasonable to draw distinctions between tech, media, clothing, retail, etc startups.

Like, MrBeast seems like a media startup which is different than, say, a SaaS startup or an AI assistant startup. Fair enough?

MrBeast - an OG Founder Mode guy?

I'll leave it to you all to debate the ethics of MrBeast's videos, YouTube, and the questionable value of these videos.

Meanwhile, the most fascinating part of this is a glimpse into a new kind of media company, where he instituted a particular process and approach and scaled it up outside of the initial set of producers.

You get the sense he's flying by the seat of his pants into a whole new world, and he's creating the org and the processes on the fly based on what's been successful so far.

The energy, drive and enthusiasm required to create a new model of not only "product" (even one that solely exists to please the algorithm) and company is fascinating.

There are more parallels to startup founders than one might admit.

An interesting artifact of the information disparity between the startup executives (who have access to this benchmark data) and the employees (who don't) is that the employee is often wildly off the mark in their expectations, either too low or too high.

There are so many variables at play too that it turns into a negotiation like everything else. Say an employee wants a big raise because they are having their first child are heading towards a higher cost base at home. Say the employer simply says "the salary data shows that your current pay is at the market average".

Well, is the employee truly "average"? Perhaps they're a high performer. Does the average number take into account not only the company dynamics (stage, domain, funding, revenue level, etc)? Not perfectly.

But then on the other side, just because an employee wants a higher salary due to a higher cost structure at home doesn't mean they are automatically entitled to it, right?

Then on the startup side again, the manager is looking at the data and thinking about all the time and cost of replacing this person and realizing it's likely more than the cost of just granting the raise.

Then the HR person comes in and says the salary grid -- whose whole purpose is to provide in theory tight constraints on these conversations -- rules this all out, there's no budget or wiggle room. When the Manager suggests the grid hasn't been updated in a few years, HR takes it personally and tells the person to take it up with the CEO.

So then the CEO gets involved. She knows the employee has a unique view on the technology and market direction and considers them Tier 1 can't-lose-them. She knows the grid is out of date. She looks at the data and thinks that she can justify to herself and the financial plan that it'll be OK to do it, with fingers crossed that this doesn't happen across the board because then their runway will shorten considerably.

So the raise happens.

My point is just that the salary information asymmetry is just one relatively minor aspect to this whole negotiation and in the end I'm not sure it advantages the company all that much.

1) Salary surveys for local or national startup scenes have been a staple for decades. Here in Waterloo (Canada), there was a dominant local survey that all tech companies participated in annually with results being shared. Then, as you get bigger, you come across larger versions of the same thing.

2) VCs are often the vector by which this all happens. They ask their portfolio companies to pull together the info for their employees, presumably submit it into the companies aggregating everything, and then the startup gets a copy of the recent data.

3) Even done the old way (Excel), the data was incredibly detailed. You can slice and dice by startup stage (series A vs series B vs seed), employee count, region, sector, etc to determine if you're paying market rates or not. This is particularly useful for growing startups, where the founders have no idea what to pay, say, a VP Marketing at their pre-revenue mobile gaming startup in Helsinki.

4) Obviously whether or not this is bad for employees themselves is debatable, but I think people are missing the point that these surveys are ALWAYS skewed UPWARDS due to the much higher volume of data from the large tech companies (because they have far more employees and tend to be offering significantly higher comp). So in practice, the impact is likely to RAISE wages at earlier stage startups who are competing for the same talent as later stage tech.

Perhaps things aren't so binary on either side.

Some people using crypto are criminals, terrorists, and (perhaps less concerning albeit more numerous) tax-evaders. Some aren't.

And on the other side, some (much?) government spending is inefficient, highly-politicized, and perhaps contrary to someone's moral compass (e.g. the average American citizen sends $11.34 each year to Israel, or sends Uncle Sam a whopping $140/yr -- out of their own pockets -- to fund the 'War on Drugs' which disproportionately puts black men into prison for small amounts of personal cannabis possession). So yes, gov tax spending builds roads and defends property rights - but that doesn't mean it's all good. A reasonable person can take issue with both the size and targets of much of the spending.

Anyways, my point isn't to debate the pros/cons of particular government spending examples, but rather that the average person has not just reason but also a duty to assess how government spending happens, whether or not that aligns with their values, and to vote and organize appropriately to try to change that.

If you're already a bit more libertarian, skeptical of federal monetary policy, morally conflicted about how your tax dollars are spent, in tech with a love of technology, then ya you probably are going to like the fact that crypto is outside of the normal system.

Adding another interesting layer - my analysis doesn't hold true for angel investors, though. Maybe I was just really fortunate (or, 'of course I was!' in hindsight) but the Waterloo region angels who invested in us were so similar to YC themselves and angel investors from the valley. Founder-friendly, people who'd done it before, adventurous, etc. Almost the anti-pattern to Canadian VC.

So there's an interesting dynamic change between pre-seed and early seed angel climate and proper serious institutional VCs in Canada.

As a Canadian founder who's been through YC, Series A, to a solid exit -- and who knows lots of other Canadian founders who both went through YC and didn't -- my view on this is that you're just seeing a kind of 'capital ghetto'.

The best Canadian companies and founders typical raise from US VCs, full stop. They "escape the ghetto". The US VCs give them better terms, more aggressive, more knowledgable, just overall a higher class of investors. Plus far more choice. At each round I've fundraised, the Canadian VCs were at least 20% lower on important terms like valuation and generally much harder to work with. Yes, there are great Canadian VCs too. But the speed, optimism and 'knowledge of the game' that good US VCs typically bring is much higher.

So what happens? If the best Canadian startups fundraise primarily from US investors, what are Canadian VCs left with? The more conservative, slower growing, less ambitious ones. So the VCs approach that with caution. Which furthers the cycle.

Canadians are more conservative in general, and that conservatism bleeds over into startups and VCs too (not to mention B2B / B2G markets). However, the real issue is that when a company appears to break that stereotype, they just raise from US VCs.

At least this is how it's been for the last 10+ years. Now in the 'new normal' after the frothy period, it's anyone's guess how things will play out. Perhaps the conservatism of Canadian VCs and startups will help them produce more viable long-term businesses in this environment vs. what worked best in the cheap-capital era.

Ah good catch, I originally had heroin in my comment and edited it to fent.

I upvoted you, but also wanted to add:

Hopefully you also warn them about the opiates that their doctor will cheerfully prescribe.

Frankly, if the opiate epidemic taught us anything it's that there's probably lower risk in your teenagers taking an edible at a party than getting an overly aggressive codeine prescription from their doc after breaking their arm.

I'm not really arguing with you, education of kids is key. But legality is such a poor yardstick. See: opiates, tobacco, and alcohol - super damaging, extremely habit forming, yet completely legal and even culturally acceptable.

Meanwhile, LSD is treated like fentanyl (literally the same Control Substances Act schedule - the highest #1) and is pushed underground where it's adulterated by god knows what, even though a small gov-sanctioned lab could easily produce the entire country's supply of entirely pure substance in a few weeks.

I don't know what the answer is, but surely it's more nuanced than drugs=bad, legal=fine, doctor-perscribed=no-risk. (I'm not saying you're arguing these points, I'm just channelling the zeitgeist as I see it).

What an odd situation, where we can applaud "the transparency" (and I do, honestly) while the US is also simultaneously cheerfully delivering a public reminder that "we have more than enough to absolutely annihilate anyone and everyone... so don't fuck with us."

I'm curious why you think these employees -- who are getting the worst end of the deal -- are working for startups in the first place?

Either they have the skills to be a founder themselves or to work at BigTech... or they are financially ignorant/disinterested enough to not understand how equity in corporations work? Or is the charming and misleading founder who is to blame?

My point is that considering the high avg intelligence of the typical startup employee, there must be something else going on.

Clearly, people like working at smaller companies that have potential to grow - maybe that's because there's more interesting work, less bureaucracy, smaller teams, more of a sense of a journey, etc. Easy to devalue these things, but what else explains the fact that even when there's more risk and likely poorer financial outcomes these otherwise very intelligent people still choose to work at these companies?

My point is that the situation will vary.

Yes, if $500k doesn't move the needle on your life then the question is moot anyways. Most first-time founders will be closer to the poor end of the spectrum than the wealthy side.

There are people reading this for which $20k will change their life (which in my example was the 'shouldn't matter' amount instead of the $500k).

Regret is perhaps too strong of a word. But $5M is $5M even if you have $45M. Sure, it won't change your life since you have the $45M, but the incremental investing / philanthropy / estate / family help etc that it allows you is real in absolute terms.

The other thing I've noticed is that for people on the other side of this transaction, it's not like "smaller numbers" all of a sudden become immaterial. $1M is still $1M. $5M is still $5M.

Again, I'm with you, I don't think it's regret exactly. But post hoc you might choose differently, even if it's the rationale choice at the time.

I skimmed the suit itself [1] - apparently Calm put on some events together with a PE fund in a joint venture, then a guy left the PE fund... and Calm and the exited person continued to put on events under the same name while preventing the PE from participating. The PE then sued them since they feel entitled since they co-created the event.

I'm sure there's more to the story, this is just from the suit itself (so obviously from the POV of the plaintiff).

But ya, the impact of a PE lawsuit on a very small startup fund that's already trying something new/risky is going to be disastrous for their morale and future plans.

No VC fund wants to be sued, I imagine, but for the one that has a razor-thin business model and no expectations of a big exit for 10+ years I imagine the suit is a high-probability death-blow regardless of right and wrong.

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fauBdZ3Zm5m4VC9YQdyvDiIkllC...

Three interesting part of the discussion:

(1) The opportunity cost to the founder of taking early liquidity:

If a founder cashes out 10% of their position for $500k @ $25M Series A valuation, that de-risks a lot of their personal life. But when the startup ends up selling for $250M, that $500k of 'early' selling would have been worth $5M (less any dilution between rounds) - hard not to regret the choice in that case even if hedging is going to be the correct choice 99% of the time.

(2) Meaningful vs. not-meaningful amounts:

From my prev example, the founder sells 10% of their position for $500k. Well, if all employees were allowed to sell up to 10% of their positions too, would that even matter to them? If you were an employee and had $200k total value in your options, and you could sell 10%, you're getting $20k. Not really enough to de-risk your life although still might be welcome (and employees would appreciate having the choice).

(3) Sellers need buyers:

In order for there to be a seller of shares, there needs to be a buyer. The founder is effectively choosing his buyer and future business partner by taking investment and choosing to give that buyer more control over the corp by selling him even more shares (his personal shares). The buyer wants to make the founder happy and de-risk their downside so they can be more aggressive or big-picture or whatever, plus is happy to own more of the company assuming it's a hot round.

But what does the buyer want to achieve by purchasing the employees shares? Just to own a little bit more % of the corp? For amounts that might not even matter for the employees and may de-incentivize them?

It's all very complicated and perhaps there are nuances that make every situation unique.

Not OP but check out Closer to Truth on YouTube. PBS show hosted by a former neuroscience PhD, they have tons of recent interviews with leading thinkers on consciousness (among other fascinating topics).

In any sufficiently large tech company, the "risk mitigation" leadership (legal, procurement, IT, etc) have to operate in a kind of Overton window that balance the risks they are hired to protect the corp from vs. the need or desire of the senior leadership to play fast and loose when they want or feel they need to.

Either the risk-mitigator 'falls in line' after repeatedly seeing their increasingly strident exhortations are falling on deaf ears (or even outright contradicted)... or they leave because it violates their sense of ethics.

Perhaps "AGI" and potential extinction event level fears is giving this more drama than it should have. Replace AGI with "no BYOD policy" and I bet there's a startup somewhere where it turned out that safety guy was super intent on the policy, senior leadership wasn't, and eventually safety guy quits.

Or it could all be as serious and dire as it seems. Hard to tell from the outside.

Makes sense! For burpees, I think the jump part is perhaps 'just noise', in the sense that if you are accurately counting the push-up at the bottom (i.e. can ignore 'the noise' in-between push-ups) then it would work fine. Just a thought.

Two comments and 1 question for OP:

(1) Thanks for the writeup, this is classic HN content, a simple app that solves a person's problem with enough interesting technical detail to make it interesting.

(2) Definitely post this to the App Store! I'd happily pay a few $ for it even.

(3) How would it handle burpees? Would it just ignore the 'jump' phase? But still count the push-ups since it's zeroed in on the up/down motion of the push-up itself?

Sorry for the TikTok link [1], but worth seeing this animation of income to housing price since the 1980s. To make matters worse, what's not shown is also the rising tax on that income. Then factor in student debt, which is not as severe as the US but is a big drain. Then factor in the record levels of immigration of the last 5 years or so.

Of course offsetting all of this are other big improvements in QoL - better medicine, healthcare, etc. Also, while interest rates are high compared to last 10 years, historically they aren't crazy. But even 'not crazy' interest rates vs. this disparity in income vs housing prices.

So definite 'agreed' to you and the other posters who brought up it's not a single-variable issue.

But seeing this, and having a remote-friendly job, wouldn't you rather go live on a beach in Costa Rica for a few years?

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeautyofdata/video/73147673976243...

Haha, great point, my bad :)

'As the appeal of “solid” living is waning...'

Is it the appeal of it that's waning, or is it increasingly clear that there will be a generation or two for which 'solidity' is simply out of reach?

So what do you do? Grin and bear it? Hope for a quick improvement to a problem decades in the making?

A common view among Gen Z or younger Millennials I know is that not only will you have a lower quality of life than your parents (and your kids probably will too), you'll have a lower quality of life even to elder Millennials (who happened to enter the housing market 5 years earlier than you).

So, you can either have a severely hampered life here in Canada (due to cost of housing and general COL), where you just kind of scrape by and try to emulate everything you've seen growing up but without any flexibility or safety net... or you can roll the dice and do something more adventurous, like move out to a rural setting in the US, or go further abroad on an adventure.

The article mentions this dynamic but strangely seems to position it as a lifestyle 'choice' akin to whether or not you like riding bikes or rock climbing.

Also, you can't help but cringe at the conclusion saying this is an "opportunity" for "brands" to capitalize on. Great, what an important silver lining!

Do you manage your own money and finances in addition to having a day-job?

That's what he's doing, albeit in a more complex situation and likely higher wealth bracket given he sold his last company for $Bs. The only thing that strikes me as odd about it is calling oneself "CEO" of the family office. I don't know what title is customary but CEO seems out of place. If it said he was "Chair" of the Aquila Family Ventures family office or something it would stand out far less.

While I don't disagree with your reaction to the article in question...

"[The atrophic principle] tends to be invoked by theorists whenever they do not have a good enough theory to explain the observed facts." - Roger Penrose

Isn't the anthropic principle just the most recent god-of-the-gaps argument - i.e. a de facto mystery explanation of things we can't otherwise explain...?

I suppose that (to me) if or when the multi-verse theory becomes a falsifiable theory AND is empirically validated, then awesome we have the explanation pre-baked (the anthropic principle).

But until then, there doesn't seem to be grounds to say it's 'remedial'.

But curious for your thoughts, it's not my area of expertise beyond a layman's interest.

Before moving away from our previous neighbourhood (new high density suburb), we were seeing an increase in door-to-door 'selling' generally, whether it's charity or political or religious or telco.

We figured it was the higher density of newer neighbourhoods that was driving the boom, although this kind of data tech is obviously making it a better proposition too.

It's probably a good time to be a "No Soliciting" sign manufacturer. I wonder what other defensive 'tech' you could deploy to avoid this stuff entirely.

Curious if someone more familiar with this space could comment on what exactly is meant when it says the drug in question -- MM120 -- has been "pharmacologically optimized" from the base LSD?

I know the "real" vs "synthetic" distinction is kind of silly w.r.t. psychedelics in general (especially so with LSD since it's only ever been synthetic), but understanding exactly how the new crop of drugs actually differ from the usual suspects would be helpful in evaluating to what degree this is 'just' a business move to offer something proprietary and corner the market vs. it's legitimately better for patients.

That said, I believe the biggest drawback with using LSD in a clinical or therapeutic setting is the length of the experience (12+ hours), so a tweak around shorter duration would make more sense to me.

Nah, I disagree. If you ever work on a very large spreadsheet that spans several monitors' worth of space, both up and down, you quickly realize that multiple monitors are not it (the seams break everything).

Can't do it with today's Vision Pro (I believe) but massive spreadsheet windows is coming and IMO the Excel gang is going to love it.

Three interesting (I hope) comments:

1) There is so much cultural baggage around psychedelics at this point. We're still talking about the Marsh Chapel experiment? We're still writing articles that MUST include a Leary reference? There is a HUGE wave of psychedelic research coming to fruition now and in the coming 2 - 3 years that will hopefully help change the conversation from hippies, the 1960s, and even religious/spiritual metaphor.

2) Without a more concrete understanding of consciousness (and the 'hard problem' of it), our understanding of psychedelics is built on shaky foundations. Sure, psychedelic research may help us discover new insights that help solve the consciousness crisis... but that seems like a very speculative hope.

3) I'm curious why N,N-DMT isn't being studied as much as psilocybin in this current wave of research. Much of the challenge with contemporary psychedelic therapy has to do with logistics - trips take too long to fit a clinical setting. DMT is over in 20 minutes, and while (I've heard) extremely intense, people seem to anecdotally benefit in similar ways to longer-acting psychedelics.

Hey friend - you're wrong on this, although I understand how it might be comforting to think this is all some vast elite conspiracy.

The reality is that you "become chosen" by building a company that is growing very quickly in a big market. That's it.

Most successful startups didn't wait around for some name-brand VC to pick them (that's the most anti-entrepreneur mindset I can think of). The big funding happens much later than the initial traction and momentum.

Yes, you have to be personable enough to be able to talk to clients, investors, recruit top talent, etc -- but that's not the VC arbitrarily choosing whether they like you or not -- that's a cold reality of being a great founder.

Ummm. This seems like a huge overreaction. Do you think the founder of Figma -- which is still worth $B's, making him obscenely wealthy 'on paper' (but 'on paper' in a way that most wealth is counted) -- plus, he likely sold enough via secondaries during the later rounds to be set for life -- is bemoaning his career path?

Furthermore, there's something like 20k M&A deals / yr completed in North America alone, the majority that are still life-changing wealth creation events for the founders.

So don't despair - 1 problematic anti-competitive M&A deal blocked by the government does not signal the end of entrepreneurship in the US.