If you wind the company down, you would/should try to make your investors 'as whole as possible'.
Debt implies that at some later date YC could come asking for their $375k back. A SAFE is not debt.
If your company is running and does not end up raising more money that SAFE should just sit there waiting for the day that you do (which may never come).
LendingHome | Software Engineers & Engineering Manager | Full-time | San Francisco, CA & Pittsburgh, PA | ONSITE REMOTE VISA
LendingHome is reimagining the mortgage process from the ground up based in technology as a simple, fast, transparent marketplace for borrowers and investors. We’re chasing the goal of being the best way to get a mortgage and the best way to invest in them.
I would also add, that over time hyper efficient public transit systems and large fleets of self driving cars doing transportation as a service converge into the same thing.
They are virtually indistinguishable from each other.
Combine that with the progress we are making with electric cars and we've got some REAL progress on multiple fronts that will make a serious difference to the lives of everyday people.
if there isn't a talent shortage and there are workers in the bay area without jobs that work in engineering I would appreciate an intro to said workers.
also to clarify, if you mean there isn't a shortage and that i just have to offer higher salaries to poach from other companies I would categorize that as a shortage since it will just results in the equivalent of music chairs for jobs.
i don't mind paying top dollar for the best engineers but if the permanent state is music chairs for engineers that to me implies a shortage. Irrespective of the salaries you have to pay, there should be enough engineers to fill all job openings otherwise I would say there is a shortage.
not advocating excessive numbers of workers to drop salaries, ideally it would (job openings -1) number of engineers.
You should probably state what time period you are referring to when you recall hearing about Stripe..
I do not recall Stripe being positioned as a PayPal alternative really ever, but certainly not when it launched.
I also believe that Sam was first made aware of Stripe much earlier than most people and it probably did seem like quite a black swan at the time.
I know the very first time that I heard the idea for Stripe it was definitely considered a "crazy" idea. I would easily categorize it as a black swan investment.
Dispassionate debate is a good way to find the truth, but does seem a bit odd to debate whether somebody is xenophobic when you can just go talk to them and see what they are like.
Debating theories and facts or interpretation of facts makes alot of sense for things like science experiments , it seems a bit like indirection when talking about what a certain person is like.
You can just go find out what that person is like, instead of relying on hearsay.
Regarding Slava, I wouldn't say that he is doing the name calling.
Accusing somebody of being xenophobic is much closer to name calling, I find that even the act of accusing to be pretty weak, why not just make a statement as opposed to an accusation.
I agree with Slava's statement, if anyone would make the statement that YC/PG is xenophobic after having met them I would say that is pretty laughable.
I don't need to debate this, it's merely my opinion based on factual experience.
(also, opinions don't need to be correct, they are just opinions. Facts on the other hand can be incorrect or correct)
If you think otherwise without meeting YC/PG, then you are making an opinion without any experience.
(a situation you can correct)
As an aside, you don't even need to walk on eggshells around PG.
You can just ask him if he is a xenophobe, he will answer no.
i still remember one of your rehearsal presentations for demo day,
it was something along the lines of
"this graph is bad"
"this graph is good"
i even thought you were playing up your accent for added comedic value.
(for context, he was showing a performance graph of rethinkDB vs. mySQL, and the graphs were practically inverted. rethinkDB was performing so much better it was comical how much throughput it was doing)
I would suggest that the best performers are internally motivated and not externally motivated.
So ultimately if you could motivate them to be better, then by definition they would be mediocre performers.
Based on my personal experience, I would not be surprised if you were to show me a study that found a strong correlation between being internally motivated and being considered a star performer.
the class of status (TN) is less important than the mindset of your new employer.
No visa class requires you to be paid under market (some even require that you are paid a wage comparable to an american)
If an employer is trying to "maximize profits" through non-american workers, they will do it regardless of what status you hold.
If an employer is simply trying to find the somebody to "do the job" regardless of status or citizenship then it is unlikely you will experience any difference in treatment.
On a personal note, I had been on a TN for 2.5 years and was paid at (or slightly above) market rate for the entirety of the time.
At no time did my employer seek to use my TN as a way of leveraging down my pay.
We hired quite a few americans as well (half a dozen or so, it was a small company).
If we could have found more qualified candidates, we probably would have hired more
(american or not, we scoured github for candidates as this tended to provide the best candidates. since github user profiles generally do not provide citizenship information, we had to be open to hiring local or possibly non local if we found somebody who looked promising).
The network of alum really helps.
Having access to so many startups that have already optimize the hell out of the steps needed to start a company is a big value add.
The reality is that if you want/need PG's time you can get at any point during YC.
I can see the reasoning to limit it to the first day, however I would argue that the link isn't that intrusive and should probably stick around until the first comment or some karma threshold.
I certainly did not post within the first few days (if not months) and a quick reference to the guidelines would be handy.
(actually i post so infrequently that having it always there would be handy)
Heading to SF for a short period seems like a good idea.
Since you don't seem to have a network there, it is probably a good idea to do a recon trip. This also works well with the visa situation.
It is probably considerably easier to meet people willing to sponsor you if you meet them in person, so just take a "vacation" to SF and plant your seeds.
This also gives you the chance to see if you really like SF, although i would be surprised if you didn't like it.
Good luck!
Dan Ingalls and Avi Bryant both look like great talks. Also I would like to see what discuss might occur between the two of them.
Leah's talk sounds interesting as well. I totally agree with the little paragraph about putting yourself in bad situations.
I once heard that the word for crisis and opportunity is the same word in chinese. I don't know if that is factually correct, but i like the way it sounds so i choose to believe it without doing any fact checking.
You gotta rock the boat, put yourself in impossible places and force yourself to become better than you are. When things are going well for too long, time to mess them up!
I miss CUSEC (wish i was in montreal now), what a great conference. I don't see Dr. Peter Grogono listed as a speaker, that's too bad as he is a great speaker and quite funny.
If you wind the company down, you would/should try to make your investors 'as whole as possible'.
Debt implies that at some later date YC could come asking for their $375k back. A SAFE is not debt.
If your company is running and does not end up raising more money that SAFE should just sit there waiting for the day that you do (which may never come).