kevingao1

agreed -- there's no uniformity in how companies fill out these apps; for example, as I briefly mentioned in the post but didn't look far into, even the company name "Google" was typed in 3 or 4 ways

one piece which i tried to mention here is that salar.ly and LCA don't incorporate equity, incentive bonuses, and other pieces of compensation; this is just the base salary submitted in the application. for example ex-Google friend immediately felt like Google was too low, since a significant % of their comp is tied to incentive bonuses; and for startups, you'd have to consider the dollar value of equity

that's really interesting; there are so many caveats with the data that i almost thought it wasn't worth sharing, but we can let people draw conclusions themselves (and hopefully follow-up with other analyses, comments, etc)

if you don't mind, %-wise, how much more were you paid than your LCA? and do you think this is representative of others?

i agree, despite industry complaints about how "high" they are and how quickly they've risen; having been on multiple sides of this, i think the value that a good engineer adds is still not reflected in compensation, especially in smaller companies (eg, less than a few hundred people); it's part information asymmetry, part culture

agreed -- it varies significantly based on company culture, size

interesting to me to see the parallels between music and books. seems that music has always been a bit ahead on the innovation curve for a variety of reasons and we're just getting to the itunes for books (eg, kindle), now...

amazing what wikiHow has done to tackle the problem of creating quality content at scale. go jack and team!!

Hi guys, we recently published a book with Mixergy about PG, and we got a ton of great feedback from this community. We've been working hard to fix all of the mentioned issues, in particular that it was unclear exactly what was in the book, the formatting issues on Kindle, and so forth

We'd like to make it up to you guys and let you decide what our next book will be - leave a comment with any topic(s) that you would love to read a book on, and we'll find a great author and publish the book that receives the most comments.

Also, we'll offer the whole book for free to download here when its published

You can reach us via email too: kevin@hyperinkpress.com

Thanks!

Also, thanks a ton for the feedback - we're updating the product description on Nook and Kindle so that it's clear that the content is from Andrew's interview.

All - just want to re-affirm Andrew's points and provide some more clarification - we're the publisher behind the eBook, and we did partnered with Andrew/Mixergy to do it.

In short, we work with domain/subject-matter experts to publish high-quality eBooks. Some we create ourselves, some we work with publishers who already have great content (eg, Mixergy).

Since we're a startup there's still a lot that we need to improve, but one thing we're doing is making the books more interactive, and for PG's book we'll be adding video clips from the interview. Unfortunately Kindle doesn't have an easy way to provide existing customers an update, but if you did buy the book, please email me (kevin@hyperinkpress.com) and I'll share it with you.

Also, if you have knowledge on any topic that people would pay to learn more about, and want to create a beautiful, high-quality eBook to share that knowledge, please reach out to me - we're actively recruiting authors. A big thing of ours is sharing a lot of the content for free, it's not purely altruistic since that's great for building loyalty and traffic too. Thanks!

Kevin, Founder of Hyperink

PS Right now hyperink.com has almost nothing on it, we'll be launching a marketplace for our eBooks and our authors in the next 2 weeks

great article, elad. i actually prefer working for a longer period of time together, like a week, pay for their time and have a specific goal/project in mind, to get a mutually better sense of what the day to day is like.

another great quote along these line (who knows if rumor or not): "we never would've invented the ipod with a/b testing"

think there's a good balance between customer development/research and your own instinct/vision

Thanks PG. Could not agree more on getting users as early as possible, and getting as much feedback as you possibly can from them.

In our example, we produce and sell incomplete ebooks, knowing full well we may get a few refund requests, precisely because it's invaluable for us to know how to convert a paying customer, and to ask those customers for feedback.

Agreed on all above. Think it's important for them to know you've thought deeply about your space and the problem you're solving/product you're building. All of this comes naturally if you love, and are committed to, what you're doing.

Absolutely. As paul buccheit likes to say, limited life experience + overgeneralization = advice. Take what I'm saying with several grains of salt, and recognize that every interview will be VERY different in tone, style, and content

yes, absolutely important. something we really struggled with early - both the one sentence and the 30 second that people instantly GET. this is not just for investors, but for anyone - potential partners, hires, your mom, etc. and keep in mind this is def a work in progress - you'll improve on it and often change it substantially over time!

Sorry guys but it appears our site is down right now. Feel free to comment here though, and I'll respond. Thanks for your patience!

All great questions. Think ours are more targeted at YC/similar extremely early stage investor conversations, where the answer to some of those questions (and this is 100% ok) can be "I simply don't know right now", especially how many people you'll need to hire (just a core team to build the first product) and a detailed view on feature set (just a few features that you think people will really LOVE).

nhashem, great point. i think its important to get users as fast as possible, and what investors really care about is what you LEARNED from those users (what they like, don't like, data that supports your hypotheses). better a poor product + hundreds of early users than a polished product that hasn't been launched, imo

thanks. absolutely - user/cust acq is extremely important and saying friends & family + viral is not the answer!

Absolutely! Sorry the site is down right now, we'll get it up asap :)

"Even if you feel unsure about your current idea, just apply. Ideas change, awesome teams don't."

Don't think you can say it better than that. Nice article crowdboosters

Very interesting...

Congrats Chris!

Congrats guys!! Def a much needed solution in an inefficient market

Congrats guys - huge moment and just a sign of bigger things to come

Going places :)

Congrats guys - huge!

Having done just this in the last few months, just a few (short) words of advice:

#1. Network like crazy. Some people think networking is a bad word. Who cares about them. What you're really trying to do is build real relationships and a name for yourself amongst people that you care about - in this case, the startup community. NYC is not as great as Silicon Valley for recruiting technical people. Not saying the community isn't strong, it's just not as deep. Consider moving here to SV. If you decide to stay in NYC, go to all the events you can find like Meetups, visit coworking/hacker spaces, etc. You say that your own personal network is tapped out - but have you asked everyone know to plug you into THEIR network? If you have 100 friends, and they have 100 friends...you get the point

#2. Demonstrate real commitment. Ideally, you'll already have a track record of building successful products. If not, at least you'll have a working prototype. If not, at least you'll have some thorough mocks and a clearly thought through biz plan. Doesn't matter if all that changes in 3 months, but the very fact that you have one demonstrates commitment and tenacity. Everyone appreciates that - particularly people you're trying to convince to join your team. Get started today

#3. If the above 2 fail, consider joining an existing startup or company in your vertical to build domain expertise and a broad set of contacts (basically, #1 and #2). If you really believe in your idea, you can still work on it on nights/weekends (never a great idea but if all else fails...) Many successful entrepreneurs got their first start at an existing startup that way (think ex-PayPal, ex-Google)

I don't know enough about your situation but those are my initial thoughts.