founders give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup) while employees give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup). Did you notice any significant difference? I mean there may be difference between megacoprs and numbers of years at the startup, yet does it warrant like 100x and larger (like div by 0) difference in the outcomes?
Founders usually give up their family lives, social lives, leisure time, and sometimes their reputation, sanity, initial investment in the startup and self-esteem on top of what you list, depending on the outcome. The stress level for a founder is usually quite high, and the success rate is quite low.
When you are the person worrying about making your number on a monthly basis, so you can pay your team ... whom aren't worried about this, because they get a salary ... and you sometimes/often can't pay yourself, so that you make sure that everyone else gets paid ...
... yeah.
When you do that, you are putting real skin, real risk into this game. Your reward should be commensurate with that risk if it pays out.
In my case, it didn't.
I got all the stress, pain, heartache, overdue bills, while dealing with skittish customers, people who demanded free things, etc.
All the while, growing a business from nothing to millions in revenue, with no VC involvement (not for lack of trying). To watch it shot in the head by the bank after sinking my entire worth into it.
I understand why founders/CEOs should expect excellent return upon a positive event. If they don't, then why, exactly, should the bust their behind as hard as they do?
> growing a business from nothing to millions in revenue, with no VC involvement (not for lack of trying). To watch it shot in the head by the bank after sinking my entire worth into it.
I'd be interested to hear more of the story if you're willing
Early startup employees are risking almost the exact same set of things. The moral of the story is that even as an employee, you're playing the lottery with a startup and you should only join on that will reward you as such if everything works out.
Depends a lot on the startup, especially outside the Bay. In other parts of the country, you usually don't get substantial stock grants from corporate employers, and you usually do get market salary or close to it from a startup. There's a relatively small difference between working for a startup and working for a corp, but there's a huge difference between founding a startup and working for a corp.
What i see around, ie. friends & acquaintances, is at some point, usually after a good stint at one or a couple places a midlevel manager/executive decides "time to make next level of money", and together with several like minded guys and established good connections they pick up some investors from a line up of the investors eager to get in, and the rest is a well defined process. There is no risk, no giving up of any live, reputation, etc. There is only improvement on all of these fronts. If their venture doesn't make it big, it will be acquired with a nice premium and they would end up somewhere at the same or higher positions anyway. One such is already a unicorn in a pretty short, even by SV standards, time. List of the advisers/investors and other involved people of another such venture, started pretty recently, is impossible to read while maintaining steady breath :)
It sounds like you're complaining, but if it is really so easy, just become a founder. In a way, it is impossible for there to be an unfair distribution of wealth between people who do A and people who do B if everyone has the choice whether to do A or B.
you've missed the important point. It isn't for everybody. I specifically mentioned that it is already successful people with a lot of good connections. Thus such a startup is just the next step in the career progression. For a plain engineer, like me for example, who can't make even a CTO/VP of engineering of a small company or a Director/division Chief Architect/etc. at a BigCo creating a startup would be exactly or even worse than described by grand-grand-parent. There is a reason that early stage VCs, for example YC, invest in people, not ideas/business. One of the friends got invested with "just name the number" amount right on the spot the moment he mentioned that he got his own startup even without telling what his startup is intended to do (of course there were due diligence done by small people afterwards before things formalized on paper) Where is couple other friends, engineers more like me, who went through a very harsh interviews at those few VCs who agreed to listen to them and got, unsurprisingly, nothing, and still sitting as engineers.
>It sounds like you're complaining,
there is huge difference between recognizing reality and saying that the reality is unfair (which it just can't be by virtue of being the reality)
Starting a business isn't for everybody, but not for the reason you stated. You're making the mistake of believing the VC hype. You don't need and probably shouldn't seek funding until you can articulate a need. So suggesting that you can't start a business because you won't get funded when you don't actually have any need for funding is absurd.
Starting a business isn't for everybody because it's a lot of stressful work. You have to wake up early and stay up late laying the foundation while your friends or spouse or kids or work are vying for your attention. You have to scrape together your savings or max out a couple credit cards to actually launch your product. Once you start hiring you are responsible for putting food on other people's tables. And even once you start making money, you have no idea what you're doing pretty much every step of the way.
If you actually do want to start a business, just fucking sit down and do it. There are a ton of profitable, bootstraped SaaS companies out there. Build a product, pay for the first couple months of hosting out of pocket, bill yearly, profit. (Notice "get funded" isn't a required step.) Complaining that VCs probably won't love you is just an excuse to take the path of least resistance and stay mediocre.
OK, sorry that I misunderstood you. But for what it's worth, lots of people with no connections have bootstrapped or gotten into incubators and then gotten funded or just hustled and got funded. For instance, just yesterday I talked to a woman with no connections or track record who got seed funding for her startup, but it took her over a year of "making friends with investors". Obviously it is a lot easier if you are well connected though.
founders give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup) while employees give up ((potential salary + RSU at a megacorp - salary at the startup) multiplied by number of years at the startup). Did you notice any significant difference? I mean there may be difference between megacoprs and numbers of years at the startup, yet does it warrant like 100x and larger (like div by 0) difference in the outcomes?