Ben's Blog

OCTOBER 6, 2011

Interestingly, one of the first things that you learn when you run an engineering organization is that a good Quality Assurance organization cannot build a high quality product, but it can tell you when the development team builds a low quality product. From hire to retire, how good is your company? How do you know?

Management 78

Management Development Team Review Stock Options Technical Review 78

Hunter Walker

OCTOBER 24, 2013

Once we’ve invested in a company, I find it easiest to talk about culture in terms of hiring because it’s (a) often the most important post-financing activity and (b) it’s an immediate use case with real tangible decisions. One which will make the successive hires and functioning of the team easier. Me : Got it.

Hiring 103

Hiring Advisory Board Ruby Stock Options 103

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

Two of my most senior hires were top women who were the best for the job. Early in my climb I was hyper-focused on title and pay, realizing later that good health was like a stock option that pays off later. So it’s more about a broad network. You are the first line of defense in a healthy ascent.

Switzerland 264

Switzerland Private Equity Stock Options Equity 264

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 31, 2017

I have spent a great deal of time studying the fundamentals of stocks, option trades, goal-setting, and public speaking. I’ve got to trust the team I’ve hired to do their job, so I can do the things that only I can do and not get caught up in minutiae. All my studying and hard work has resulted in a breakthrough.

Entrepreneur 63

Entrepreneur Stock Options Programming Washington 63

Reid Hoffman

DECEMBER 10, 2020

One one level, the design mindset is similar to the engineering mindset, in that it seeks to frame and understand a problem, and then solve that problem. In addition, the company redirected its recruiting team from hiring new employees to helping former employees find new jobs.

Hosting 69

Hosting Hockey Stick IPO Silicon Valley 69

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

To date, some 1,000 technology companies have hired 4,000 workers through the program. By being public, companies can better attract qualified employees with stock options, helping them buy into the long-term success of the business. These workers are recruited to work in international development offices. An added bonus?

Canada 127

Canada Government Venture Capital Early Stage 127

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 4, 2011

Stock options, if you get them, won’t help you pay the mortgage for a least a couple of years, and the value then is totally unpredictable. People hire people they know, so nurture your relationship with friends already active in startups. Working for a startup is not a career choice, but more of a lifestyle. Start networking.

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Silicon Valley Burn Rate Startup Stock Options 227

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

Whether a fundraising event, hiring, or sales/partnership opportunity- these can be especially useful to make all parties move faster. Candidate Forcing Functions – are hard because you want to hire the best people, hire them fast, and keep your OpEx low. In the end, time will kill all deals.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

Berkonomics

APRIL 4, 2024

Compensation’s charter is to approve stock option grants for any employee, no matter how small the grant, and all salary and benefits for at least the CEO if not the next level down, to avoid conflict of interest with the CEO. I engineered the extraction of the outside investors, even at a near total loss.

Covenant 48

Covenant Software Review Stock Options Vesting 48

chrischandler.name

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

All the engineers I trust to execute a project swiftly, professionally and with quality, especially under startup conditions, will not touch an upfront equity deal with a 10-foot pole. A common trait among these engineers is an understanding of their own entrepreneurial value. Proof of execution is what matters today, not ideas.

Equity 40

Equity Developer Entrepreneur Syndicate 40

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Now that I’ve mapped out key first steps that need to be taken and important cultural nuances to be aware of when expanding your business into Asia , many CEOs ask me if they can actually locate their engineering and product teams here and expect the same level of quality they get in the Valley. My simple answer is: absolutely.

Silicon Valley 121

Silicon Valley Asia Engineer Stock Options 121

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 24, 2011

Unfortunately, unless you have a horrible hiring process, those are probably not the reasons why you got to this point. Therefore, the first step to properly firing an executive is figuring out why you hired the wrong person for your company. It’s great to hire people who can run a large scale organization if you have one.

Hiring 78

Hiring Stock Options Conversion Employee 78

thestartuplawyer.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Who must be a co founder and who can remain a hired principal? Before I bring in any principals I will have the company all set up, some engineering done and patents pending. When I find, and hire on options, the three perfect CEs/directors must I consider them co founders and treat them accordingly?

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Founder Preferred Stock Startup 40

www.startupnorth.ca

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Being an early hire at a startup gives an individual the ability to make tremendous impact on an organization as it grows – and both the founders and those hires should know it.” This should force companies to think about building value with each early hire, and not just filling a position. Manager or Junior Engineer 0.2 – 0.33

Employee 41

Employee Founder Salary Equity 41

www.payne.org

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

2 Stock Classes: Common and Preferred. 5 Stock vs Options. 6 Founders / Restricted Stock. The re-heating of the venture funded tech market has pushed a heat up of the hiring market, and Im getting more calls from friends asking for help understanding startup stock (equity) offers. 3 Dilution. 4 Vesting.

Equity 56

Equity Employee Vesting Preferred Stock 56

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

Lead Engineer 0.5 - 1. 5+ years Experience Engineer 0.33 - 0.66. Manager or Junior Engineer 0.2 - 0.33. I was originally hired as a contractor, developing a SaaS app from scratch, including DB design and coding. You’d have to look at your stock options contract. Title Range (%). CEO 5 - 10.

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

Transformify

DECEMBER 6, 2021

What makes Transformify powerful is its Applicant Tracking System (ATS), which uses an AI-powered engine. It uses data analytics to provide insights on employee qualification, helping streamline your entire hiring process. Many businesses are small enterprises that hire a global workforce with differing needs.

Software Review 52

Software Review Software Employee Management 52

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

In other words, if I’m thinking about this just from a WP Engine perspective for a second as a potential customer, when you come up to me and say, “Meetings are awful because half of them don’t even have an agenda, and the ones that do, you don’t stick to it and they go long. Jason: Yeah. I already write agendas.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Compensation’s charter is to approve stock option grants for any employee, no matter how small the grant, and all salary and benefits for at least the CEO if not the next level down, to avoid conflict of interest with the CEO. I engineered the extraction of the outside investors, even at a near total loss.

Covenant 59

Covenant Software Review Stock Options Vesting 59

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers. is it really that the only people who can build great startups are engineers?

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

venturehacks.com

OCTOBER 21, 2010

SUPPORTED BY Products Archives @venturehacks Books AngelList About RSS The Option Pool Shuffle by Nivi on April 10th, 2007 “Follow the money card!&# – The Inside Man, Three-Card Shuffle Summary: Don’t let your investors determine the size of the option pool for you. Solution: Use a hiring plan to size the option pool.

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Option Pool Pre-Money Valuation Dilution Warrant 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Eric, I wrote up the outline for a government program to promote entrepreneurship I call the "Civilian Innovation Corps" This would be a program supported jointly by government and private investors and would immediately jumpstart the innovation engine in this country. You can see the design of the program here.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

Ifyour competitors offer employees stock options that might make themrich, while you make it clear you plan to stay private, yourcompetitors will get the best people. Now the group is looking for moremoney: they want enough to last for a year, and maybe to hire acouple friends. They find somejust as the prototype is demoable.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

Ben's Blog

MARCH 17, 2011

If an employee with a title of Junior Engineer believes that she is a far better programmer than her counterpart with the title Senior Architect, this will indicate to her that she may be under paid and undervalued. Andreessen argues that people ask for many things from a company: salary, bonus, stock options, span of control, and titles.

Employee 78

Employee Stock Options Engineer Management 78

Startup Company Lawyer

MAY 1, 2009

For example, below are the 2008 results for average equity granted at time of hire in IT companies: CEO 5.40%. Head of Engineering 1.32%. Tags: Stock options. The 2008 results are available on Altgate and are also embedded below. President/COO 2.58%. Head of Technology/CTO 1.19%. Head of Sales 1.20%.

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Stock Options CTO Hire Equity 31

Cracking the Code

JUNE 24, 2021

But the Valley in 1999 was a new world of startups, venture capital, and stock options. We used different playbooks to scale, either hiring someone local, sending someone from HQ to set up a country, or acqui-hiring. A platform will become more complex as it grows over time and will need to be re-engineered.

Global 62

Global Europe France Cofounder 62