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To be clear, I'm making a distinction between a great tech lead vs. a great manager. Both those roles are often confused with each other.
A tech lead will lead the project to launch by managing resources, unblocking team members, making tough decisions, writing productive code, etc.
A manager will ensure smooth operation of their team by making sure their reports are motivated, encouraged, challenged, etc. They will actively seek to recruit new team members, solve resource issues, have tough talks with underperforming reports, navigate politics and negotiate with other teams, etc.
You cannot simultaneously do both. They require very different skill sets to be good and even higher skill to be great. If you are looking to keep coding and do some of the leadership work, then being a tech lead is better for you.
She is stagnating at Google. She had high ranking high influence positions at Google but over the years has been relegated to a position that has little visibility and control, mostly due to her non execution. This is a great opportunity for her to make some serious cash and be the "top dog" in a kennel of average dogs, rather than the opposite at Google.
Also, even if she crashes and burns at Yahoo, she will get many more opportunities simply due to the brand recognition she has due to her tenure at Google.
I just can't get over how hilarious this situation is.
In your specific case, it sounds like you want users to look at content that you pick as relevant. In most cases that Google is targeting, they want to give authors the ability to have their readers pick what to read based on social signals and past reading/+1 behavior.
Basically, Google is enabling you to keep your readers on your site by giving you recommended links to your site for free.
Even if they don't "win", they are greatly superior than a normal resume pusher.
As an investor, these sorts of omissions make me doubt if your team is detail oriented (not just in the design sense) and will be able to make a product that is truly intuitive and easy-to-use (because honestly that's all that you're pitching).
Let's make custom TLDs for .py, .java, .c, .h, .php... really? Really?
Yes, Facebook has wildly exceeded what most people expected. But to build a social honey pot isn't to inspire other hackers/entrepreneurs.
I don't wish them ill but I also don't take any inspiration from Zuckerberg/Facebook. In fact, I learnt many things not to do (i.e. screwing your founders, doing shady deals, making immature decisions, etc.). Interestingly, Facebook has succeeded so far in spite of doing those things. And I give more credit to Sheryl Sandberg than Zuckerberg.
So excuse me if I don't agree that the top-voted comment on this thread should be words of praise for Zuckerberg.
Most companies that have this agreement in place also have a similar agreement when joining the company that if you forego signing the exit agreement, you forego any outstanding debts owed to you by the company.
As I explained in another comment, most companies (don't know about Miso) make you sign an agreement during your exit interview that the company does not owe you anything except X, Y, Z items that are enumerated clearly (these usually include your last paycheck and check for unpaid vacation days).
I can't speak for the paperwork involved when leaving Miso, but most companies make you sign an agreement (often in the exit interview) that you are not entitled to/owed anything more than X, Y, Z items that are explicitly stated (which usually included the last paycheck and any unpaid vacation days).
As an employee, I wholeheartedly agree that he should have been paid if he had some written form of agreement (email counts).
As a sensible logical person, I think he should have gotten paid when he was an employee especially since this was an employee perk.
I don't need to be a founder to know that he's not entitled to anything from the company when he's no longer an employee. What's the limit here? Can any past employee in the history of the company suddenly realize he's entitled to some perk, come back and demand it? And if he doesn't get said perk, publicly shame the company?
There is no "service to the SV community" that this guy is doing by airing dirty laundry. If you've been wronged by your former company, handle it on your own. Shaming the company is not going to help you, the company, or anyone else. What you're effectively suggesting is that your "service" is to warn everyone to stay away from Miso.
Unfortunately, as a hiring manager, I'm going to stay away from you. While I wholeheartedly agree that you should have gotten your $10K referral bonus, I also believe it should have been while you were still an employee there. Once you leave, you're not entitled to anything more from the company.
But my salient point is that average consumers cannot and usually will not do their due diligence on whether the people who are raising the money have a good chance of succeess.
I hope you're not suggesting all a business needs to be successful is capital and customers. Because that's just plain dangerous.
VC's have to judge if there's a market and Kickstarter helps with that. But VC's also try to judge whether the founders have the ability to succeed, whether their business plan (costs vs. revenues) are sensible, etc. How does one do that through Kickstarter? I'm sure you'll agree more than 50% of the people who've funded the project on Kickstarter didn't even bother to figure out whether the startup is set up to succeed. (For additional evidence, see "Diaspora")
Btw, when you say Kickstarter campaigns can be 100x smaller, I'm assuming you meant to exclude ones raising upwards of $3.8 million right?
It's the fashionable thing to joke about VC's making wrong investments, investments at bubble prices, not knowing what they are doing, etc. But let's face it, it's their job to make sound investments. Sure, they may not get it 100% right, or even 50% but their job is to continually improve this success metric.
It's great that companies like Kickstarter are giving average consumers the capability to fund these sorts of companies but let's not equate the consumers' endorsement of the startup as the potential for value or ability to succeed. VC's do their due diligence for a reason, they want to back successful companies. Average consumers funding on Kickstarter are not doing their due diligence, they're looking at the marketing pitch and handing over their hard earned dollars. I fear this is bad for both the startup ecosystem as well as for consumers.
There will be companies on Kickstarter that take money and fail. My prediction is that it will be higher than the startup space. So before we get caught up on buying exclusivity with this fundraising, let's do our due diligence.
Stop thinking like an engineer and think like a non-technical common user.