bspear

How I got in: referral from friend who found the startup through another friend.

Why I joined: Was tired of big tech and wanted to learn faster. Founders were smart. Ran a surprisingly tight interview process.

Advice: if I were to reverse-engineer this, I would follow Seed-Series A investments from Tier 1 firms. These are the highest-signal companies.

Individual writers control their own email lists

Right, you'd think they have bigger fish to fry

+1 to your landing page design. Very fun and engaging.

Some feedback:

- Onboarding is too long: incentivizes fake sign-ups just to see the jobs

- None of the investors listed seem that impressive, which makes me think this is just limited supply rather than higher-quality supply

- Card design looks like Otta, made me wonder what makes this site unique?

Your site feels like a twist on https://topstartups.io/ except I prefer the open format of being able to see everything. Maybe it's instant gratification

http://angel.co/ is a common one, although some of the startups are a bit sketch, so you gotta do your research. https://topstartups.io/ filters for higher-quality startups

Yes, valuations have gone through the roof, but the equity grants have not kept pace. This is a huge disservice to candidates. Got especially bad in 2021. Really important for people to research startup pay before signing: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

To the OP: if you believe your comp bands are competitive, why not share in the posting itself?

Same!

The growing demand for currency not controlled by the government is undeniable. Only a matter of time. But this time, hopefully less irrational exuberance for alt-coins that serve no purpose besides speculation

dumpster fire sounds right. their support team is also basically non-existent, so if you ever have questions about your account, expect multiple days of waiting

Do you mean this: https://topstartups.io/

Diligence on the startup so you know what you're getting into. Also prevents early employee churn because people feel duped once they look under the hood.

The greatest frustration is usually around: 1. feeling like your equity cut is not enough once you know what other people are paid; 2. not knowing how much you pay in exercise cost / taxes / exercise window until it's too late

On 1, there's a growing DB of startup comp here: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

TBH, I've stopped believing that a job will give me meaning. I have to give meaning to the right job.

Learned that this is easier when: - company is small enough for me to be in direct contact with customers vs. seeing quotes from user research - time is spent mostly to help customers vs. show how smart we are to leadership - everyone can challenge each other to improve vs. stay stagnant - we have enough funding / cashflow to be able to look forward vs. worry about surviving today

Also a growing number of companies focused on sustainability, which is easier to project meaning onto: https://topstartups.io/?industries=Sustainability

I'm usually skeptical of corporate BS, but I imagine they did have a strong relationship. 14-year stints are very rare, esp. for people that have plenty of options knocking on the door

Think OP meant $70M not $70B if they just raised $17M in funding.

To calculate your gross $ value today, you need to know your # of shares (10K) divided by total fully diluted outstanding shares (607,500,000) multiplied by the valuation (probably $70M).

Strike price is your cost to exercise the options, which should be deducted from your gross value. You will likely also incur taxes unless you exercise right away via 83B election

Is it just me or does Stripe ship something big every week

Fascinating

Paypal is basically a poor man's Stripe

The first product every candidate experiences is the interview loop. If they have a sloppy and redundant loop, it directly impacts the quality of talent they get. People who have lots of options aren't going to put up with BS. Usually also shows they have no idea what they're looking for.

Another challenge with hiring, esp. at a startup is that many candidates who "qualify" will not be comfortable joining a startup, so you have to find both high quality and high intent people. There are some solutions that address this like https://topstartups.io/ and https://angel.co/ to some extent.

In general, there needs to be clearer signaling of preferences. Too much time wasted.

Employee sized quantities should be much bigger at a Mittelstand company vs. VC-funded. You don't need thousands of people when you're going after 7-8 figure outcomes, which means each employee should be able to get better profit-sharing. You also are not diluted big-time by investors that can bully the cap table

> Promote employee stock ownership for American Mittelstands

This is crucial. Many bootstrapped companies don't offer much stock ownership from employees. Yes, they can pay a good salary, but these employees are laying down the business brick by brick, but never see a dime of the upside. Mailchimp comes to mind. I'm sure there are others.

This basically leaves stock ownership in VC-backed startups as a way to get rich quick (albeit with low odds): https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

In fact, Mittelstands will probably perform even better if they can figure out how to attract the kinds of talent well-funded startups do. And from there, it'll be a virtuous cycle.

Sadly all the news around UST and its associated dramas precipitates more people to try to liquidate

In the early days, recommendations worked the best (people I knew, other people on the team knew). Cold outbound had lower conversion rate, but quality is high because you select the profiles, so it's worth trying.

Once you get more traction, would get listed on startup-focused job sites like: https://topstartups.io/ - quality is high from what I've seen