I read this as pg being focused on justifying post-acquisition wealth. It seemed to be a justification for the founders receiving 100s if not 1,000s of times the level of compensation as the workers.
I would be curious to hear more justifications from him for this. Founders really take far less risk than employees. I say this as someone who missed out on about $75 million from a YC start-up when an unnamed higher-up told them to fire me two weeks before my first vesting, because I had the most amount of non-founder stock in the company (a compensation for which I took a 66% salary cut).
(edit, typos and turned 100s into 1,00s)
When founders start, unless they're hands-off directors, they'll be CEO/CTO/etc, which are employee positions. They'll get a salary, because they're employees.
> I read this as pg being focused on justifying post-acquisition wealth.
I don't see why. It makes more sense to focus on founders if he's talking early stage, where you can string a load of systems together to produce a business process. As you get bigger you'll probably regress to the mean of driving processes through admin and management staff, unless you stay laser-focused on keep automation around.
Not sure I understand you. Why do post-acquisition wealth need an justification at all?
> Founders really take far less risk than employees.
If it would be true, why aren't you a founder? You know, blaming other people for wealth/startup/marriage or government/party/boss/partner is easy. But when it comes to actual execution, most of these people come up blank.
You have worked for a startup. Well, you was aware of the risks. But I'm pretty sure the founder had more risks than you. I say this as someone who founded a company recently.
Did you read the tweets, or just the headline?
> You have worked for a startup. Well, you was aware of the risks. But I'm pretty sure the founder had more risks than you. I say this as someone who founded a company recently.
I have helped start 4 companies with 1 gracefully neutral exits, 1 sold, 1 gracefully neutral, and 2 nose dives. After every exit I walked into a job making more $$ than at the job I worked at before the previous startup. The only "risk" a startup founder takes is the potential for a below-market salary for a short period of time.
~20 years ago I failed at a music start-up, royally failed. We burned through $2.5m in about 11 months with nothing of value having been produced, then the dot bomb exploded while we were raising our A round. The same investors funded my next failed startup and offered to fund the one after that.
Once you get to say "I'm a founder and names you might know from vc insider have given me amounts of $$" you have a golden ticket.
That's like saying anyone who thinks hammers are a good idea is really saying a hammer makes a builder successful, not the builder. It's just a tool, and he's saying tools mean one person can do more. You don't need to straw man a philosophy on to it to then have something to argue against.
> employees do the automation, not the founders
Founders normally are employees. For the phase or type of company pg is talking about, they may be the only employees.