nwenzel

Serious question even though as I read and reread it, I am aware it does sound like snark...

How is this a sustainable product/company? (AKA How do you make money?)

Is love to dig in to what looks like an awesome product. But to justify the time investment, it would be helpful to know how it will be around long term.

We're in Mountain View and we're hiring [0]. I've certainly noticed commercial real estate going from completely nuts to merely really expensive. Anecdotal sure. But eventually all the anecdotal points add up to a trend.

[0]We're 18 people, enterprise SaaS, started by 2 founders who have worked together for 15 years. https://www.simplelegal.com/careers

Also looking for Head of Engineering and devs (senior front end dev, lead API dev, Django dev).

Front + Intercom which gives us an email-based help desk, in-app chat and messaging, and a self-service FAQ help desk.

"The contracting companies pay likely about as much but take some 20% of their salary)."

Having worked as a contractor, I've seen that number typically between 33% and 50%. Staff Augmentation is a horrible, horrible business. The firms also end up stuffing the hiring managers inbox with a bunch of resumes of unqualified candidates to box out other competing firms. No one wins except the abusers of what could be a positive program.

Mountain View, CA | Full Time | Onsite

I'm the CEO and co-founder of SimpleLegal. We're enterprise SaaS for the Legal Department from the YC13 batch.

Sales has Salesforce. Marketing Has Hubspot/Marketo. Customer Success has Gainsight. Legal has SimpleLegal. We're a team of 16 and growing with a great list of customers.

Director of Customer Success - Lead the Support and CS team. Hire ahead of need. CS drives growth. You'll drive CS. https://www.simplelegal.com/careers/customer-success-directo...

SDR/BDR - Spend the first 1-3 months in support to learn about our customers and product. Then move into an outbound role to help us build our customer base. https://www.simplelegal.com/careers/sales-development-rep

Product Manager - Help manage the growth of our product between Developers, Customer Success, and Sales. (Not yet posted.)

Check the postings for more info, then email our careers inbox at SimpleLegal.com.

CaseText (https://CaseText.com) is pretty close to Google for law. They have a new tool that is aimed at lawyers doing legal research where they suggest other relevant cases based on the cases you're already citing.

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with CaseText but I do know the CEO as a result of being a legal operations software CEO and being in YC with them.

XM and Sirius got together. Not sure if it's working out or not but they're still an operating business which is better than where they were headed pre-merger.

If you're using a Linux VM, is there a difference between using a Mac vs Windows?

I worked at marchFirst back in the day. Even had the chance to meet Bob Bernard. That experience shaped how I run the company I co-founded 3 years ago. M1's number one problem was a culture of spending money without any thought of a return. Which was probably really odd for folks on the Whitman Hart side of the merger. It really was a merger of two opposite cultures.

SimpleLegal | Mountain View, CA | Onsite | Technical Ops Analyst

SimpleLegal is the dashboard for in-house legal departments. Salesforce -> Sales Ops. SimpleLegal -> Legal Ops.

We're looking for the right person to fill a varied role that supports our customers and our internal team. A QA Engineer looking to move into a more diversified role might be a good fit.

The right person is:

- Pretty Darn Good with Excel

- Experienced with scripting languages like Python or JavaScript

Day to Day Responsibilities

- Hands-on fixing data issues from customers

- Help build an internal application health dashboard

- Collaborate with developers to define application enhancements

About You

You get things done. You know when to automate and when to use brute force. You are detail oriented. You probably are an expert with Excel. You are technical enough to write short scripts. You definitely know some SQL.

You should want to genuinely help our customers. No one can succeed long-term in enterprise software without a genuine desire to make their customers' days better.

Email us at careers at simplelegal.com.

Honest question: Do any class or all classes of people (citizens, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, refugees, criminals, teachers, disabled, adults, children, or any other type of people) have a right to a home or some other minimum level of shelter?

Seems like discussion on homelessness would be slightly easier if we started from first principles or at least some place where there is closer to a consensus.

SimpleLegal | Mountain View, CA | full-time | onsite

SimpleLegal (https://www.simplelegal.com) is enterprise SaaS for in-house legal departments. We keep legal vendors, matters, and expenses organized. We're Salesforce for the Legal Dept. We're pre-Series A because our customers fund our growth by paying us.

ROLES:

- Senior Customer Support

- Implementation Manager

- Front-End Engineer

If you're interested, send me an email. It's my HN username at SimpleLegal.com.

* SENIOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT *

We are looking to fill a Senior Customer Support role. This person will work with our customers as well as with law firms to ensure that they are happy customers who refer us to more happy customers.

Bonus points if you're currently a paralegal or on the billing team at a law firm.

* IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER *

You're comfortable working with messy data. You might be an Excel guru or maybe you even write some basic scripts.

You have excellent project management skills and can track multiple stakeholders and multiple deadlines.

* FRONT-END DEVELOPER *

You believe that enterprise software can be great. You want to build software that people use every single day.

- Has a strong interest and at least some ability in designing and implementing great, consistent UX/UI.

- Comfortable with pushing us toward a single front-end framework

- Comfortable with a Django, Postgres, Redis, JQuery, and a mix of other JS libraries stack

- Experience working with older versions of popular frameworks (e.g. Bootstrap)

When companies want self-service BI, what they really want is, zero-code-required tools that a BI developer/analyst can use to build on-demand standard reports for business users with predefined click-through paths.

And yes, software makers exaggerate in their advertising.

As compared to the author's other posts, this one seems hurried and maybe a little grumpy. But, still makes an important point.

Given that a full repeal may be difficult politically, I wonder if Prop 13 could be limited to owner-occupied houses.

Seems like that would hold true to its original purpose of not taxing someone out of their home, make investment in property somewhat less appealing, and provide a more predictable funding source for schools.

Serious question given that "data" is sometimes released from the govt in tabular format in PDF:

How can you (or we) ensure your FOIA request for code isn't responded to with a PDF of code?

With dilution being .85/30, does it matter? If you could raise $850M with ~3% dilution, who would turn it down?

Also, you have to figure some of that money is going to early employees and investors who are looking to take a little off the table.

Could you imagine an API-only version of PACER where developers were free to build search, mobile, other front-ends on of it? Sure, that's basically a high school project using a MongoDB or CouchDB back-end. But legal tech is horribly antiquated and govt-legal tech has a long way to go. It seems like the best move would be API-only so that individuals and companies could build services on top.

BTW - check out www.casetext.com for an idea of what private enterprise can do in terms of making public records useful.

rms_returns - are you interested in discussing a project I'd like to have a freelancer work on? You can reach me at http://www.simplelegal.com and my HN username.

Yes. If you've ever tried to use a broker for benefits or another system for onboarding or another system for payroll... Night and day difference. Much easier to use. Much better to have it all in one place. Love the Zenefits + Zenpayroll combo.

> This means that a lot of angels are getting forced out of a lot of deals they might have been in before, or have to enter a deal through a syndicate and take a 20-30% haircut on the carry.

Or maybe the growth of these super-angel funds means "only" money isn't enough to get direct access to deals. "Only" money means you're going to pay the toll/carry. But money + advice/connections/intros/brand is your ticket to direct participation.

At a time when startups can start with relatively low capital requirements, the "strategic" part of "strategic investor" would seem to be the valuable part.

But, I wouldn't worry too much about angels getting cut out entirely. If "their margin is [your] opportunity" (Jeff Bezos), then founders should be able to get better terms from a direct angel investment. Or, maybe more accurately, an angel investing directly should be willing to pay a higher price given that there is no carry.

At least remove the Google part. Maybe just "How we grew to 4M users" since they didn't bootstrap. They got traction and raised money.

Also, their software is actually really helpful at thinking through ideas. I don't mean to knock them. But the title is wrong and takes away from their achievement.

+1 If anyone is looking for one weird trick to succeed in a startup, get rid of your TV. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have easy time waster options readily available.

SimpleLegal -- Mountain View, CA

1) SDR - Sales Development Rep -- $60k OTE

2) Marketing / Demand Gen -- $80k + bonus

About SimpleLegal:

SimpleLegal is enterprise SaaS for in-house legal departments. We are a YC-backed startup with founders who had previously bootstrapped a business for 10 years. Customers love our product so much they refer us to their colleagues before they've even fully deployed.

1) SDR - Sales Development Rep -- $60k OTE

- Execute on Outbound lead gen strategy

- Prospect for new leads via referrals, outbound, landing pages, SEO

- Meet or Exceed monthly targets for Sales Qualified Leads

We have product-market fit and a sales playbook to turn prospects into leads into customers.

2) Marketing / Demand Gen -- $80k OTE

- Increase Qualified Leads

- Plan, lead, and execute all marketing strategies

- Measure and report on performance of all marketing efforts

- 2 years experience in marketing/lead generation role

If you're looking for more responsibility and autonomy than you have at your current marketing role, we want to talk to you.

Ha! Funny that you should mention it. I used to run a consulting firm. We got up to 12 people. Of those employees, 2 got married (not to each other), 2 bought a new house (1 bought their first house), 2 moved in from a different state, 6 kids were born (I'm pretty sure it was 6) to 3 different employees, 1 came back to work after a 2 year leave to raise her kids.

Your idea about building, then destroying a company is intriguing. But it would really suck to hurt those people. Or my customers who count on the great work those people do.

I like to think I'm not a sociopath. Posting on HN is probably not a great way to be told what you want to hear. :)

It's hard to get a non-bullshit answer. I qualify my question and spend time explaining that I am serious about the question and that I do realize that it will sound strange. In part, I make sure they know who Reid Hoffman is or that he founded LinkedIn and wrote a book that covers the employee-employer relationship and that the concept of lifetime employment is outdated... I point out that they're out interviewing and looking to leave their current job.

But yes, I do encounter some disbelief that I am asking a real question and am hoping for a real answer.

I'm certainly curious what the community thinks is the right way to discuss a candidate's career after this job. We all know there will be a job after this job and an employee after this employee. Transparency... something that seems to be valued by people on this forum... would seem to require that we talk about it.

I have a bias toward smaller companies. I try to contain it, but I don't always succeed.

As far as the learning part, I didn't mean to restrict "learning" to only mean coding/programming/developing. At a smaller company, if there's something you want to do, you often have more freedom to take it on. There's very little "not my job" allowed or "not your job" enforced.

I realize there are several counter-examples of sociopathic micro-managing, ultra-secretive founders out there. Avoid those people whether at a big company or a small company.

At any rate, if you prefer larger companies, I think it's awesome that you know that. When I interview candidates, I always try to help them figure out their preference. It's not always easy for that person to know. Sometimes their desire for "a" job or a "new" job makes it hard for them to figure out if they want "this" job.

In any case, sorry for making a blanket statement about lack of learning at larger companies. I unintentionally commented on all large companies based only on my own experiences with large companies.

I do spend a fair amount of time letting the person know why I ask the question, where it comes from (Reid Hoffman's book), and why I'm asking. I also position the question as being about a time pretty far in the future (and leave that vague so that it's far enough out for either of us to not make it one of "those" questions).

As far as what I want to hear... I don't have some "right" answer in mind. The question also helps me understand the person a little better than a typical interview question might. If I know their long-term goals, I can have a better idea if they'll be happy with us and we'll be happy with them.

When I interview candidates I always bring up his book and ask: "If all this goes well and you come work for us, what's next for you after that? Where do you want to be positioned to go after you move on from here?"

It's a weird question. But it's how I know whether or not I can deliver value to that potential employee. At big companies, salary and benefits is usually the main "value" that they provide. So, in essence, they provide the higher comp package necessary to make up for the fact that an employee is not going to learn as much as they would at a smaller company. A small company or an early stage startup is full of opportunities to learn. If your goal is to start your own company someday, I can make sure you're leaning the things that will help you get there. If you want to be a race car driver, I don't have much for you.

Employment is a two-way agreement. It's true that employers have the upper hand because they typically represent 100% of that person's income. The employee, on the other hand, is 1/N of the workforce. Switching costs are also likely higher for the employee.

For many people, I would imagine that a transparent and honest assessment is preferred to a pretend make-believe world where we imagine that an employee will spend their entire career in one place.

But it is a look at the process that eventually impacts users. It explains why upset has taken so long. A bit of chaos and a bit of politics.

Nothing quite like seeing the sausage get made. But, the open discussion, while perhaps unnerving, is certainly preferred (IMHO) to a closed source development process happening behind closed doors. A bit of chaos is the price to pay for the open process.

Command-and-control does have some advantages. And maybe as Postgres grows, the advantages related to a more orderly process become more visible. (For the record, I think Postgres is a fantastic RDBMS + JSON store)