by jakey_bakey on 4/28/25, 5:05 PM with 143 comments
by constantcrying on 4/28/25, 7:05 PM
If you thought the idea was great, there was an obvious golden opportunity for you, none of the people there are going to make this into a product, but you can. If the idea was bad, getting paid in equity means getting paid in something worthless.
The only situation where it is reasonable to deal with such a totally defunct organization is if they pay you a lot of money. And if there is a single missed payment you stop any work until you are paid.
by juliansimioni on 4/28/25, 5:54 PM
I got lucky, and spent only a few months while not working that hard.
But at the same time, this quote hits home:
>I was doing a startup. I was executing, and for the first time in my professional life I wasn’t insulated from the results. I didn’t achieve my destiny of great things, but I’d built something.
by wibbily on 4/28/25, 6:02 PM
If I find another startup whose product is an app, and they can't find a local developer to write that app, I'm running. Why outsource your core product!?
by dabinat on 4/28/25, 7:38 PM
So all he would tell me is that it was “the next Twitter”, and from what I could gather, he would retain the majority of the equity and I would do all of the work, while he lobbed ideas at me from on high.
I passed on it, but only because the red flags were extremely obvious. I could certainly see a situation where I might have been sucked into something more subtly exploitative.
by vessenes on 4/28/25, 6:05 PM
There are of course some fantastic startups launched out of the UK and Europe. Spotify, Deepmind and Raspberry Pi come to mind. But, as a rule on the investment side, I'm always super skeptical. Inevitably cap tables are worse, investors have a very different view of their roles than they do in US or Asia, and there's so much less startup infrastructure than in SV or say Singapore or Shanghai that it's a very different world. Ironically, it's self-feeding -- investors think startups are shitty business, they charge more, high quality founders head for greener pastures -- rinse and repeat.
by kikimora on 4/28/25, 8:54 PM
Success stories I’ve seen always involved extremely active customer. They become part of the team, helping devs to build good product. Also it always took much more time and money. If you think you can build marketable product with fix-cost-scope contract - think twice.
by pizzathyme on 4/28/25, 7:42 PM
by OtherShrezzing on 4/28/25, 6:52 PM
by jkaptur on 4/28/25, 8:59 PM
That's good advice to not lose your HEAD.
by PeterStuer on 4/29/25, 8:32 AM
2 sided markets get started by buying one side of the market. This is why this model is very expensive to bootstrap. You typically start by offering free or very discounted services to the consumers and pay the difference to the producers until you have captured the consumers and the producers pay you for transactions. All the while you have to mitigate disintermediation, so that producers can't bypass you to access the consumers outside of your market platform.
by scarface_74 on 4/29/25, 1:19 AM
My motto is “FYPM”: https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48?si=zSXRVQibvli1QTk1
Cash not illiquid equity at my market rate:
“You’re getting in on the ground floor of something huge.”
“We can’t offer big salaries yet, but the upside potential is enormous.”
“You’ll have massive impact here — way more than at a big company.”
“We’re looking for people who are mission-driven, not just here for the money.”
“Everyone is making sacrifices right now.”
“Once we close the next funding round, we’ll revisit compensation.”
“The real reward is in the equity, not the salary.”
by ChuckMcM on 4/28/25, 6:10 PM
At the other end of my career and looking back it becomes possible to see things that you missed on the journey, the role of luck, the difference between talking hard and working hard, and the critical importance of the people involved. A million monkeys with a million typewriters won't eventually create Shakespeare's works, they will waste a lot of resources and create a bunch trash. I also discovered that there are people who, when they speak, you really want to believe what they are saying. Being able to step back and say "what's the foundation here? Why should I believe this?" can be very difficult.
by Aurornis on 4/28/25, 5:57 PM
- 3 non-technical cofounders
- Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers
- Attempt to outsource development followed by disappointment
- Relentless scope creep
- Zero go to market plan, just an incessant belief that more features in the app will solve all problems
There is also one less obvious point that is buried in the article:
> Simultaneously, my underpaid mid-level consultancy role passed me up for promotion again. I wanted out, double-time.
I did volunteer mentoring for a while. Few people went all-in on unpaid startup jobs as their primary role, but many were tempted to do it as side projects. They always believe it’s less risky. The risk they don’t see is that it distracts them from their main job, either slowing career growth or risking a PIP or layoff.
The common thread I kept coming back to was this: Ignore the side projects. Focus on career growth at your day job. Put your primary energy into growing your career or finding a job where you can.
Something about the side hustle continues to lure people into thinking it’s a way out, until they burn themselves out and sabotage their day job while doing it.
by xivzgrev on 4/28/25, 5:50 PM
Sometimes you just need to make your own mistakes to learn, even if you read / hear from others that you shouldn't do that thing.
C'est la vie.
by eqmvii on 4/28/25, 7:11 PM
by VWWHFSfQ on 4/28/25, 6:04 PM
They're investing in people, not some singular half-baked idea that very likely goes nowhere.
In this case it sounds like both the idea was bad, and the team was bad.
by photochemsyn on 4/28/25, 6:01 PM
This is one of the best use cases for LLMs by the way - they can often explain contracts to you, or find flaws in contracts. Try pasting one of those long-winded click-through contracts from Apple etc. into any LLM and see if they can help you decipher the terms - then do this with your startup's hiring contract. Also, watch 'The Social Network' and pay attention to things like stock-split clauses and so on.
Some claim the world is split between those who understand compound interest and those who don't but I think it's understanding contract law that matters more.
by harshaw on 4/28/25, 9:31 PM
The reason the company existed is the rich founder was upset that a shop wanted to charge him a fortune to get his BMW M5 repaired. He wanted better quotes. So we built a marketplace to get better quotes. But that's not what real customers want (because most people have Toyotas not M5s). And also we didn't do the customer development / research to understand how repair shops work. You want to know how my repair shop manages their repair schedule? They have a paper calendar and write down your phone number and the job. sure there are better ways to manage the work - but this paper mechanism has worked for them for years and why change it? And you know what - I go back to the shop all the time because I trust them. Ultimately people tend to have a fairly personal relationship with their local mechanic. You can build a leadgen product but the ultimate relationship is between the customer and the repair provider.
TLDR - everyone should understand the lean startup. /working backwards model and relentlessly focus on the customer.
by WaitWaitWha on 4/29/25, 12:29 AM
Invented a few things, implemented in product, CEO & CFO sold company from under us. Ended up with nothing.
by joshdavham on 4/28/25, 6:24 PM
by aorloff on 4/28/25, 6:05 PM
Bitches, owning something is doing the hard part !
by indoorcat on 4/28/25, 10:17 PM
by paulorlando on 4/28/25, 7:55 PM
by generationP on 4/28/25, 7:25 PM
by bitbasher on 4/28/25, 7:53 PM
by readthenotes1 on 4/28/25, 9:07 PM
I wonder how many outsourcing firms are going to be replaced by vibe coding. This response is pretty on par with many of the horror stories responses I've seen over the decades...
by firesteelrain on 4/28/25, 5:49 PM
by buzzerbetrayed on 4/28/25, 8:20 PM
by bgschulman31 on 4/29/25, 2:58 AM
by ugh123 on 4/28/25, 6:32 PM
MY MAN!
by koonsolo on 4/29/25, 11:21 AM
"The guy whipped out a rudimentary financial model in a few hours. Turns out it’s not that important—it’s for illustrating your runway and spending plan, not to justify an imaginary revenue number."
by cortesoft on 4/28/25, 5:46 PM
by pavel_lishin on 4/28/25, 11:59 PM
by superconduct123 on 4/28/25, 7:05 PM
That gave me enough info to know I'd prefer working for a big company
by gavmor on 4/28/25, 7:36 PM
Get the fuck outta here. I couldn't read past that. I'm done. Thanks for the writeup. Godspeed.
by Havoc on 4/28/25, 6:42 PM
by htrp on 4/28/25, 8:11 PM
by leflambeur on 4/29/25, 2:43 PM
by andrewstuart on 4/28/25, 8:29 PM
by nyarlathotep_ on 4/28/25, 9:47 PM
Even companies that had staff of developers would often outsource work that should be part of their core competency. Without fail, every time, they ended up with a bill ~an order of magnitude higher than they'd pay if they were just hiring competent staff to deliver the project.
In many of these cases, these same firms would then hire another (lower quality) company to maintain it for them. This typically went as expected.
I could never understand the rationale for a lot of these cases.
"The existing staff is busy"--but they could have two hours of meetings with us daily?
"They don't have competence in those areas"--they're already using $CLOUD and $THAT_STUFF? It often was working with existing systems?
"Costs"--again, see above.
I really could not understand the motivation. I get it for clients that had no experience in what we were sent to do or got sold on something they didn't need, but a majority surely had or could get the resources to do the projects that were done, but opted not to, for whatever reason.
I've seen this kind of thing fail on many occasions.
If it's critical for your business, (ya know, not some LLM demo or something), you need ownership, otherwise you end up with a far larger cost of ownership and piles of logistical and quality problems.
I genuinely can't imagine a start-up doing this. Everything I've seen is private sector companies, most ~competent companies.
I'll say this, the cases where I have seen success in consulting (from the perspective of the 'buyer' is those that were intimately involved with the process from the start, providing feedback and pushing back when needed and taking initiative deliberately to "on board" so they could maintain and use whatever it was they got, and typically working alongside consultants)
You also have to basically avoid most consulting companies. I won't name them, but it's not hard to guess.
by TrackerFF on 4/28/25, 6:00 PM