geoburke

I live in SF but moving away next month. I've got a pretty sweet 2016 428i xDrive Gran Coupe that I will need to part with.

Instead of selling it, let's trade the car for equity or a SAFE note in your YC-backed company.

Details on the car here: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/cto/d/san-francisco-trade-f...

-George

Can you link to the service? I haven’t seen it

Are you thinking $100 can’t support 60-90 minutes of a cook’s time and turn a profit?

San Francisco. US.

What’s the best way to creatively write with this? Auto-generate a couple sentences and then delete and replace?

I'm not a poker player, but today a friend analogized SIDE POTS; opt-in diversification with 3 more opportunities per hand. De-risks every player participating in the side pot.

Agreed. Avoid the need for Founderpool by avoiding becoming a founder =P

Misdirected blame to preserve ego does not excuse the fact that the founders are the ones with the biggest impact on their own success. Access to a network incentivized to provide resources, fundraising, introductions, hiring, etc, can only bolster success probability.

Well said. This safety net is meant to help founders make better long term success decisions.

Why?

This is secondary market liquidity, yes? If so, there's unfortunately no demand till series C, and the board needs to allow secondary sales, which competes with the company's own ability to raise capital. We're seeing VCs at later rounds include cash payouts to founders to dissuade secondary market activity.

Also it's not either/or. Participating in a pool does not block the founder from liquidating shares on the open market.

It's something we're looking into. Would be a great market But for clarity, it's generally understood the employees do not bear the same risk as the founders, who contributed months/years of sweat equity as well as actual capital. Oh and risk of lawsuits.

An employee is paid day 1 and the risk beared does not surpass opportunity cost of a paid job at a successful startup vs a failed startup.

Here, walking away doesn't leave the entrepreneur wealthy, but we hope, covers some opportunity cost. A safety net. This can provide a source of strength in VC negotiations as well as a foundation for the founder to make calm, rational decisions rooted in long term success.

Interesting take. Makes sense if the timeframe for startup success (profitable exit) was as truncated as startup death. Startups either die, show signs of dying, or get acqui-hired much more quickly than the startups that guarantee's (practically speaking) successful exit.

Much of our research has been with founders at YC & 500 (cohorts who represent the Beyond Meats of the world). The majority we spoke to, including the breakout unicorns, stated they would have have participated in equity pooling with their batchmates during the batch. We also learned the darlings of their batch were often not the breakout successes, and later upstaged by others in the batch.

These are great points. Someone else addressed much of it but one thing to add is founders can actually sniff out each others' BS, sometimes better than career VCs. Seems to be common knowledge in SV that builders make the best investors: https://www.fastcompany.com/90266921/alexis-ohanian-on-why-f...

Not only that, Erik has done a good job cheerleading the concept of risk pooling for founders: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg/status/1123331923466522624

We wondered the same. Can't speak for YC but we do understand that most funds would have trouble running this internally due to fiduciary conflicts of interest and management concerns.

This comes out of the founder's vested shares -- not the company stock -- transferrable only if there's ever an exit event. It's arguably more desirable for investors, the board, and acquirers than if the founder sold shares on the secondary market.

As the first pool forms we'll collect the members' desired requirements for vesting rules, and write those into the legal docs.

You could consider the other members of the pool as an extension of your advisory board. They are incentivized to share their resources, wisdom, network, strategy, and 1-1 help on specific needs like this.

While we go through a vetting process for all applicants, pools are ultimately formed through a peer-selection process based on ranking. The presence of top tier VC backers is one of several major factors a founder will rank with.

Yes, we see that as most frictionless way to accomplish this at scale

If you can sell shares on the open market, that's certainly a win, but it's likely to occur until series C and many boards may block secondary market sales as it competes with the company's own ability to raise capital.

I agree. Just because someone's opinion is in the minority doesn't mean well-articulated arguments like this should be downvoted, but rather praised for stating the contrarian viewpoint.

You may have missed the community aspect; the vested interest in mutual success among founders. Pooling is one of the most requested features by YC grads, including founders of unicorns. After demo day, mutual activity among the batch practically dies.

Contribution is done through a note. Not taxable until the transfer of shares upon some liquidity/exit event in the future.

Good way to get oneself kicked out of the pool before fully vesting.

There are obviously two schools of thought here, but IMO a founder who is at least financially comfortable will make better long term decisions and take actions influenced less by personal stress.

Yes, big concern here, so vesting happens over time.