LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

Re:LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now W... by eropple on Thursday February 21, 2013 @02:07AM (#5255949)

I think that's pretty unfair. The guys who get screwed the hardest and have the fewest places to land are, quite often, the guys on the bottom. What of his post is poor advice for those guys?

(Yes, founders take more risk--though "fuck, out of a job" is not a risk to be minimized. Founders do also get much more exposure and have a better chance of finding somewhere to land immediately if things go south, as well as foreknowledge of the southerly state of things and a head start on finding that escape route.)

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Re:LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now W... by fleitz on Thursday February 21, 2013 @02:41AM (#5256053)

What risk?

Did they forget to incorporate and will be personally liable for the debts?

They took the risk of renting out a couple $5 a month servers, and buying a domain?

The last startup I was at I had 33 times the equity a guy hired a month later did. I didn't take anymore risk, I just negotiated better and first.

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Re:LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now W... by eropple on Thursday February 21, 2013 @02:51AM (#5256083)

Were your founders taking a salary from the jump? I suspect not; maybe your situation was out of the ordinary, but most founder types I know work pretty long hours well before seeing a dollar out of it.

Opportunity costs are a form of risk; being paid a salary reduces (or eliminates) those opportunity costs and thus reduces risk.

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