jwb119

> I do wish more young smart people were focused on making things

Yep, I'm with you! Thanks for writing the article, I enjoyed reading it. We may have even walked by each other on the third floor at 745 7th ave at some point. Ha.

Yes, exactly. This nails the fundamental problem with the street in my view: unlimited upside, limited downside. You risk everything and have a great year you are rolling in cash. You aim high and fail miserably you probably get fired and maybe even picked up at another bank. This doesn't even get started on the lack of criminal enforcement for fraud, etc. Right on.

> the financial sector has disproportionate lobbying power.

I'm not sure that's true. If Wall Street really had some super lobbying power Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley wouldn't have passed in their current forms. Regulating Wall Street is a pretty easy position to take if you're a politician.

I worked at Lehman from 2004-2008 in investment banking and on the bond trading floor and I think I have a little more balanced view.

Yes, there are people on wall street that hate their jobs. Yes, there are people obsessed with money. That's easy to point out. But there are also some people that are there because they like working with their friends and making big bets, and getting proven wrong or right. It's actually similar to the culture of being a contrarian that I see in SV. And as to the point where the guy felt shorted by a million dollar bonus, wouldn't you feel shorted if you made the company 10x that in profit on your trades, and all your friends at other firms that made 10x got a bigger check than you? That's human nature, not something specific to wall street, even if it's easy to throw up your hands and say how shocking it is because of the amounts involved.

Anyway, I don't mean to be overly harsh on the article. It's possible my additional time there put some blinders on, and I still have a lot of friends that work on the street (a good percentage of whom actually like their jobs). It was really interesting to get Nick's perspective, and it's especially awesome that it's from someone else who has jumped over to startups from wall street. Just throwing my 2 cents in.

Hey chad, I'll try to answer your questions briefly, assuming you're familiar with the terms you used... Yeah there will usually (more often than not) be a cap explicitly stated in the note. Sometimes notes are uncapped though. Discount will almost always be a term. Maximum dilution isn't a term I'm familiar with for Notes. For multiple angels you can set up a structure that allows multiple closings for the notes within a specified time frame (like 180 days). Hope that's helpful!

Not technically SF, but if you are down in the Valley you have to check out Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View at least once. Great spot.

Some very basic background from a famous patent case (Diamond v. Chakrabarty):

"Anything under the sun that is made by man [is patentable] . . . . [T]he laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable . . . a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are manifestations of nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none."

Yuri Milner and SV Angel pretty much do exactly that though the Start Fund.

Although I doubt it's that easy to buy in. Ha.

EB5 is the equivalent for those countries as I understand it (I'm not an immigration attorney though).

I'm biased, but I think Ting Ni is great (she's in Mountain View if you're in Silicon Valley, but I think remote is fine too). Usually very responsive on email as well: ting@tingnilaw.com. http://tingnilaw.com/profile.html

Hear your point, and agree generally, but parts of this are definitely critical. For example, you have a hard stop window of 30 days to file your 83(b) election. If you miss it once, it is gone. That can create millions in additional tax liability if you have a successful company on your hands. If you don't have someone watching for stuff like this, it can mess you up pretty bad down the line, regardless of if you roll into a new company. Fixing problems that could have easily been avoided often ends up being costly.

Speaking generally:

Your stock classes question is complex and depends on a lot of factors (sorry to give a typical lawyer answer but it's true here). If you just have founders and no investors, just common stock can be typical. If it's seed investors and founders, it usually breaks down into preferred for investors and common for everyone else. Authorized and issued shares varies depending on these factors too. Definitely critical to do this right the first time.

How are you guys avoiding having to register as a broker dealer before the JOBS act goes into place? (I'm assuming you're applying for Funding Portal status afterwards)

Any way for people who have already ordered to change colors?

Thanks for the compliments on the docs, breck. I helped get these up on GitHub and I think the existing document that would come closest to what you're looking for is the term sheet. That's essentially a one page summary of the key terms that are laid out in the other documents.

Regarding the "plug in" process you mention, that's actually a good analogy for what happens between these docs, which are used in a seed round, and the larger set of docs that are used in a next round like a Series A. Believe it or not, these Series Seed docs are significantly stripped down from what Series A docs look like.

Not sure if that entirely answers your question or not, but let me know if there's anything I can help out with.

Thanks Taylor! Completely agree with you on your points about lawyer workflow. I'm working on a few things at Fenwick (Series Seed on GitHub is just one) that will hopefully get some of these roadblocks out of the way in the future.

thanks!

Pro tip: find a professor at your school that will let you do this for independent study credit.

You're likely to be able to get the funding through the school for your materials for the drone, you'll still be getting credit towards graduation, and you won't be doing anything that might be illegal with financial aid money.

Close. Just signing the song doesn't violate copyright any more than reading a book out loud to yourself would. Singing it in a public place or making a public performance on YouTube for instance though, that's where this is more likely to come into play.

Still, your point on the absurdity of this is well taken.

> "[The video is] copyrighted so what we are doing technically is illegal"

> "We think we have an excellent argument for Fair Use since it is clearly part of political speech and we are not making any money off it."

So which one is it, guys? Not illegal if it's fair use.

First off, I love this idea and don't listen to the naysayers.

Second, I would strongly recommend getting a lawyer to draft up some sort of agreement that specifies what happens if the project isn't up to spec, etc. It would essentially be a basic contract. I know there's always the temptation to say "well the legal costs would be too much to enforce it" but that's not always the case. This is garden variety stuff here. You don't need to protect every scenario to provide some value to yourself.

I would tell him he is asking the wrong question. In my experience the vast majority of college classes will never have any significant value in the workplace. Instead, I would tell him to branch out, take courses he might never think of trying, and follow a line of courses that he finds most intellectually interesting. People that are passionate and engaged tend to excel at whatever they are doing. There is plenty of free time to learn practical skills.

This argument would make a lot more sense in terms of the First Amendment.

Conflating it with a media topic du jour (gun control) just weakens the argument, for me at least.

Can't help but think of that scene from Fight Club.

"It's just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need. Whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled."

> The regulations would allow vehicles to operate autonomously, but a licensed driver would still need to sit behind the wheel to serve as a backup operator in case of emergency.

That alone limits the potential "disruptiveness" quite a bit.

I think they print it just as extra ammunition to show that they are complying with federal law.

If you're interested in some applicable law, this is a good summary:

http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html

I'm sure it will. Will they fix anything, and if they do will the fixes be another produce better results, is another question.

> Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly.

anyone know why not?

... and it might still be a bad idea. the mere fact that sendhub has raised $2m does not mean that this is a good idea.

you're making some pretty big assumptions that: 1) you can actually tell who is worth helping 2) even if the golden rule does enable sociopaths, that the overall benefits don't outweigh that downside