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suren

56 karma · joined April 28, 2010

Aug 2013 - Till data - Travelling 2012 to Aug 2013 - Co Founder at Markupwand - YC S12 - http://www.markupwand.com

2011 march to 2011 December - Early employee, lead dev at InterviewStreet YC (S11)

2009 June to 2011 March - Senior Systems Engineer, Hadoop Performance Engineer, Super star team member at Yahoo!

2005 to 2009 - NIT Trichy

submissionscomments
suren··on Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave
Clearly, you are not being valued in this company. At best they are looking at you as cheap labour for next 3-6 months. At worst, you are a founder and a founder leaving is going to raise questions during funding. (Thats why he wants you to leave after 3-6 months after you have raised and not before).

Did you have a launched product/customers when the CTO joined? From your post, I gather that is a no. If so, then your CTO feels you don't deserve your stock. Him and your CEO are trying to cut you off.

Your CEO has not supported you either. He should have been the one talking to you. Not someone you hired unless the CTO has more stake than you which seems unlikely.

If he really thinks you are no longer the right fit for the company, he should have offered to vest you for your money and the time you have put in. And if your work is "not good enough" they should be asking you to leave immediately and not when it is convenient for them. You can't be both needed desperately and not good enough at the same time. To that end, I feel your CTO's ask immature, short sighted and greedy to say the least.

Talk to a lawyer, figure out a deal you could be okay with, try and get that and leave. Them yet to raise another round is a good bargaining chip for you.

suren··on The Engineer Crunch
I have got the "We are not going to go forward with you but we are not going to give any reason for that either" more than few times now.

Happens one time, you think it was chance. Happens couple of times, you think you think there might not have been a cultural fit.

But you can't help but start questioning your skills as a developer sometimes. Times like those I could really use a reason why I am not a good fit. That includes "We don't think you are a good developer" because knowing the problem, I could try and fix it.

suren··on Show HN: Turn Photoshop styles into CSS3 in the browser
Should work for almost all PSD's and layer effects. We have worked extensively on making it work for layer effects. There could be few rough edges when there is a something we didn't encounter.
suren··on Show HN: Turn Photoshop styles into CSS3 in the browser
Have fixed it scrappily for now! Hope thats alright!
suren··on Show HN: Turn Photoshop styles into CSS3 in the browser
Hey daok, sorry I didn't understand your request right the first time. I have uploaded a screenshot along with better explanation of what the product does!
suren··on Show HN: Turn Photoshop styles into CSS3 in the browser
Hey nspeller, thanks very much for the feedback! Added a scrappy version to the page. Must be there in a couple of minutes or so!
suren··on Show HN: Turn Photoshop styles into CSS3 in the browser
Ah! Sorry about that! Let me add an example to the front page!
suren··on Show HN: Turn Photoshop styles into CSS3 in the browser
Hey daok, there is a sample design as soon as you sign up for the free account!

And you can upload two more before opting to upgrade!

suren··on Plivo (YC S12) raises 1.75 million from Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, others
Congrats Venky. Awesome progress since demo day!
suren··on I did the scariest thing I can imagine: I resigned
To the contrary, I think startup experiences brings profound changes in the way you live. At least that happened to me in the following ways

1. Your free time is limited. You try to make the most of it. Something like work hard and play harder

2. Your emotions go through a sine curve. You can deal with stress better than most others. That could also mean you get numb to common day problems. You stop working yourself up for small issues. And on the other extreme, you start to think anything is possible if you start applying yourself. Almost everything looks like an optimization problem with 2 or 3 variables.

3. You can no longer say things like "Oh, I don't do that, a sales/PR/designer person does that". You get to do other stuff and realize you might like doing them too.

4. People fail you or you fail people - deals don't go through, you miss dinners/meetups etc etc. It hurts you in the beginning but you get used to that.

May be most of it applies only to young startup people like myself but I sure did learn and change a lot over my time at startups.

suren··on Show HN: Simplest chat for platforms and marketplaces
How is this different from Olark?
suren··on Show HN: Everyday.me - a mobile app to record your life and store it forever
Slick looking app. Kudos!
suren··on Show HN: Markupwand, magically convert your photoshop files to HTML & CSS
hey bosky101, That is exactly what we plan to do. This is just the starting point :)
suren··on Show HN: Markupwand, magically convert your photoshop files to HTML & CSS
Not just you. We see that too. Not sure why though!
suren··on Show HN: Markupwand, magically convert your photoshop files to HTML & CSS
The issue has been fixed now. Really sorry for this bug though. You could check now and let us know!
suren··on Show HN: Markupwand, magically convert your photoshop files to HTML & CSS
This is a cool suggestion. We haven't done that yet though!
suren··on Tell HN: Frustrated and feeling pretty useless at this point.
I could relate to how you feel.

I think your original idea to find new people is novel and not yet clearly solved.

I think failures are part of a startup.

There should be no reason why you should feel "frustrated" and "pretty useless". If not for anything else you would be in a very good position who could solve the problem of meeting new people with all the learnings that you have now from grooovy.

Its only your approach to the idea that failed. Not you.

suren··on Show HN: Move your Flickr photos to Facebook (with privacy)
Hi Jace, We preserve the original photos as long as we have access to them. It is available in Facebook as well and could be downloaded from the photo page - https://skitch.com/alagu/gwgny/download-highres
suren··on Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers
Done now!
suren··on Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers
Of course it does !
suren··on Interview Street (YC S11) streamlines the search for great programmers
Coming soon !
suren··on Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)
Byte of Vim is one of the Best technical writings for newbies and pros alike. I had a wonderful time reading it and the way I use vim after that has changed a lots!