Will Kramer

@NicholasKatz @t_blom You expect a startup selling to Fortune 500s, raising a seed round, to already have Series A level revenue? I suspect some startups are claiming Series A metrics while hoping investors are doing seed level diligence.

Crazy how negative the comments are on your post Tom. Thanks for sharing. I’m working with a lot of founders in their capacity raises and also investing separately. Ridiculous how many founders don’t realise that the former revenue hurdles for Series A are now at Seed. Even in UK/EU where scalable growth seems a little slower than US, the bar for a £2-3m seed round seems to be ~£1m. Anything less and the round is really quite tricky. - Does this make sense to you for UK / EU? - How close are these same numbers on West Coast vs East Coast from your vantage?

Two years ago, a good YC demo day target was $150k of annualized revenue. In my group office hour today, the lowest demo day target was $800k, and most companies were aiming for $1-2m.

@MarcJSchmidt Look into self-hosting. I’d recommend forgejo, it’s the non-commercial, truly open sourced hard fork of Gitea.

I have a few projects in the pipeline and are looking for a git hosting service: - GitHub - I won't use it anymore, too corporate, uses code to train their AI. - Gitlab - to slow UI - Gitea - to slow service (upload is like 300Kb/s) What else is there?

That’s why you hire experienced M&A attorneys. Your contract should have an identification + fee shifting clause so it’s low risk to sue for breach of contract. They won’t pull these shenanigans if they are on the hook for their legal bills, your legal bills, and still potentially have to pay the earn out.

Three ways acquirers don’t pay founders their earn outs post sale: - Restructure your business unit right before earnout payments hit - Fire your team and claim “strategic pivot” to avoid milestone payouts - Change accounting methods so your performance “misses” targets you already hit Quality of acquirer matters more than deal terms. But founders only negotiate the latter. This happens constantly.

@TheIshanGoswami As is: - Eric Schmidt, the former non-founder CEO of Google - Sheryl Sandberg, the former non-founder COO of Facebook Both became billionaires through their employment. The real lesson is make sure you are in the right time, the right place, and working with the right people.

Nvidia employees laughing at this right now

@chamath If only we could have predicted that uncontrolled inflation would be bad for capitalism 🤷‍♂️ these issues were magnified by both Democrats AND Republicans over the last 30 years.

Here is Peter Thiel’s email to Zuck and Andreessen in Jan-2020 predicting socialism. Tl;dr too much student debt and lack of affordable housing keeps young people with negative capital for too long. And without a stake in the capitalist system, they will turn against it.

@OussamaSoussani @aryanlabde That argument only holds if you’re building non-consequential products. Doesn’t matter how good your marketing is if you’re an aerospace company and your plane can’t fly or pass regulations.

@aryanlabde Doesn’t matter if its perfectly engineered if no one sees it. Marketing wins!

You’re a solo founder. You can only hire one: – Killer marketer – Rockstar engineer Who gets the job?

@aryanlabde What’s the company? Are you building rocket ships or are you selling t-shirts that are manufactured in China? Pretty obvious who you should hire for which company.

@thekevinqi @GergelyOrosz And these are things you can actually test for: 1. IQ for cognitive ability 2. Big Five for conscientiousness level (diligence) Grades and course rigor can proxy IQ. Getting honest self-assessment on personality is harder.

@GergelyOrosz At it's core, you need to figure out only 2 things about who you are hiring. 1. Are they smart? (At least as smart as yourself) 2. Are they diligent? (Cannot be hiring freeloaders) Simple as that.

Founder of an AI startup in SF: “We tried to stop algorithmic interviews, and change to asking ‘bigger’ real-world problems where candidates are expected to use whatever AI tool they want to solve it int he stop. We’re stopping this: because the only signal we got was how hands-on candidate were with AI coding tools.”

@Nero Wow, a new pair of plastic shoes every single day 🙄 someone should’ve told him that a nice pair of Italian shoes last longer.

No one cares about this crap any more. In fact it’s embarrassing.

@Nlflint @yanabantai That takes me back. I remember my Dad taking me to CompUSA so I could buy Redhat to install on my Packard Bell Pentium 166 with 16mb of RAM. Simpler times though MUCH harder installs.

@yanabantai It was Redhat on a CD, maybe this version

Did everyone start their Linux journey with Ubuntu?

@GergelyOrosz Taking a little money off the table to de-risk all the hard work and risk you’ve already taken makes sense. There was no guarantee in 2011 that Airbnb was going to be the breakout success that it is today.

Airbnb founders famously took a $21M secondary from the $112M Series B in 2011, which valued it at $1.2B. VCs said back then what they say today: secondaries terrible for innovation… I don’t buy it Airbnb went on to be a smashing success. Founders: take secondaries if you can

That’s a fair question. The key is to balance salary with equity. In the early days, every dollar you take in salary reduces your personal risk, so it should also reduce your equity compared to cofounders who aren’t taking pay. My formula ranges from 2x to 10x depending on stage and risk. For example, if you take a $50,000 salary, you might reduce your equity by $500,000 worth of shares (which can mean a lot of shares early on, since each one’s worth so little). Early cash is precious, so the more you draw, the more it de-risks your position and shifts the balance of ownership. That said, investors don’t want to see you living off food stamps either. They want founders set up for success: financially stable, focused, and aligned with the company’s goals. Salary isn’t a bad topic for investors; it just needs to be reasonable. Cover your needs, not luxuries. It’s always a conversation and your salary and equity should align with everyone’s best interests and the outcomes you’re working toward.

@ankurnagpal Seeing lots of responses that revolve around founder salary. Genuine questions: I turned down funding and a significant role in the same year at startups because I have a family with 6 kids and couldn't make it on investor perceived salary. Whats the solution there?

We need a word for a very specific type of founder fraud that's slowly starting to pop up: Startup raises a lot of money far ahead of their valuation Founders effectively "give up" but keep paying themselves generously with the cash raised versus returning money to investors

@trentjhughes Or airlines could go back to how they used to board first class, separate entries. Or you could put the main door right after first class and people in first go to the left and people in coach go to the right.

Wouldn't first class be better if you boarded last instead of first? Sitting there as literally everyone else walks past you isn't fun

@jasonlk Sounds like a clear violation of their fiduciary duty to their investors if not outright fraud. That stain on their reputation will follow them.

So far I've watched 3 VC seed deals this year where the founders just decided to keep the money for themselves and not build the product. All were on SAFEs, and they took the position they owed investors nothing and that in fact they were not even investors. Just SAFE holders. One eventually returned cash after keeping a large chunk for themselves. Another hired an attorney who said plainly nothing was owed to the investors and the founders could pay themselves whatever they wanted. I did not personally invest in these deals but I might have, they had a lot going for them (or so it seemed). This is going to happen in the Age of AI. It's the flip side of so many things also exploding so quickly and growing at insane rates. It's just a risk to be more aware of perhaps than in the past.

@OldGloryClub Nothing screams “serious scholarship” like shelving by Pantone color 💀

Nothing says “middle-of-the-bell-curve” like color coordinating a bookshelf.

@hthieblot That’s why founders shouldn’t chase the valuation. 10xing a company valued at $20M vs $200M is much easier.

When you see massive fundraising announcements, remember that FanDuel sold for $450M, and the founders/employees made $0. How? Investors had a liquidation preference that entitled them to the first $559M of proceeds. The more you raise, the bigger the preferences.

@TheMingjie @hthieblot @facelessbuilds SAFEs typically include a most-favored-nation clause, which means the SAFE adopts the best terms when a priced round happens. So it might be 1x, or something different, depending on how your SAFE and the price round is structured.

@hthieblot @facelessbuilds most SAFEs convert into 1x pref no?

@youkhna @minimalcompany Love the concept but the lack of a 5g modem means I can’t use the phone to usefully tether my laptop while on the go. Unfortunately, that’s a deal breaker and I’m not going back to a MiFi for this phone.

Disconnect to connect. Stay human. The reminder we all need in 2025.

@johnxdoed @GergelyOrosz True and very sad. That’s why the American people have lost faith in many of our once-storied institutions. America needs a 21st-century Eliot Ness to go after all this corruption.

When I worked at Microsoft, it was mandatory for all employees to watch this video about how a former employee made $400K trading company stock w indsider info. Got 2 years of jail. The message was to never inside trade company stock. Crypto is not company stock though, is it?

@ZenFuturist That’s basically what Hired did. No longer around, sold for a fraction of what they raised. That business model, unfortunately, doesn’t work.

Bumble but for jobs The companies reach out first