gl338

That's definitely not true. There are only a few dozen unicorns, and hundreds of self-sustained businesses that "print" small amounts of money. If you join any large city's small business CEO groups (in NYC, SF, Toronto, London, etc.) you'll find a lot of one-person, bootstrapped companies that just run themselves.

It's not easy, but there are dozens or hundreds in many large cities.

One of the things I find fascinating about this article is how cyber warfare deterrence requires that you publicly show force (and thus, your cyber capabilities), which also puts you at a disadvantage against your adversary since they can learn your secrets/capabilities as a result. Very fascinating!

It also depends a lot on the company's strategy. If you are building a complex product then a small, highly qualified team makes sense. If your product is basic and requires a lot of customer success, you might want to hire junior devs or non-devs to do basic work (thus growing your team, but saving the senior dev time for more complex tasks).

Oh boy, that sprint to the bank sounds absolutely devastating. :(

haha, good point! But I'm not sure if that's how other people would see it, but touche. :)

I'm the CEO of a 20-person startup and we've been on the brink of failure twice. Both times, our employees were never aware of it from the symptoms other people might expect (e.g., late payroll, some senior folks leaving); in fact, during such times we paid everyone ON TIME so that we wouldn't be on the hook later if things went to hell.

I would flip the question back to you: (1) Do you trust your CEO? (2) If you DO trust the CEO, then the only time your startup is failing is when the CEO tells you they're close to failure, running out of money.

If you DON'T trust your CEO, then your startup is also failing and #2 doesn't apply.

That's how I would think about it.

I think every startup employee has the right to ask me about runway, cash on hand, etc. I would be open with that info and have shared these metrics in the past with them.

I say this because we (a) hire MBAs, (b) hire less qualified developers for roles that do not require deep technical knowledge, (c) have motivational posters, etc... And as we grow, become profitable, and scale to 50+ people, we require these things simply to survive and thrive.

How could someone mistake that for a startup on the brink of failure is beyond me, but that's what some people seem to be writing in these comments.

Interesting; and that's a shame. I guess I just mean to say that a mistake like that could legitimately be a mistake. I'd be horrified if our employees thought we were going bankrupt because our payroll system had a bug in it!

I'll be writing a longer response in a few minutes. I am the CEO of a 20-person startup and there were a few scenarios we've had where payroll was truly late because of bank issues.

Just want to bring this up so people aren't paranoid when such things happens. They DO happen, especially now that so many startups use "cool" and "hip" startup payroll providers that also make mistakes.

Hi Devon, thanks for writing this. Have you spent much time reading Jane Jacobs or "Seeing Like a State"? Both talk a bit about the lack of ability to truly plan cities (and even make references to chaos theory), leading them both to the conclusion that grassroots-oriented planning (i.e., making cities walkable, focusing on localized communities, etc.) will lead to healthier and better experiences for citizens.

Barcelona's superblocks[1] might be a good example of this, but we'll know in a couple of years.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...

I really want to be respectful here but your comment shows a large level of ignorance around the difference between public monopolies, public UTILITIES, public (regulated) goods, and the economics thereof. A lot of public utilities were created specifically to enforce a level of quality and compliance and protect the citizen. In situations where the quality of goods is reduced below a safe level, you should not blame lack of competition, but call it what it is: incompetence at best, corruption at worst.

Good book on the topic that HN readers will appreciate is "The Master Switch": https://www.amazon.ca/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires...

Completely agree. It took us to 15 people before we hired an Office Manager. Silly in hindsight, but not obvious at all, and we debated it quite a bit.

Curious if anyone is aware of usage stats for Office365 (and Excel + Excel API) in the workplace?

This sounds "neat" but nearly all of our customers do not use Office365 and I'm curious if it'll get any traction. Would be great to move away from VPA Macros or to promote Zapier in the workplace.