Good points except for the last one about keeping shut. Being tight lipped and paranoid is not how winners operate. Share your success and lessons. Be open.
Thank you- great feedback! I've found that being quiet about your successes gives you a longer runway to build a moat that makes it more difficult to compete with you
My belief in startups is that the only IP is execution. Ideas are cheap.
When running a business you are making hundreds of decisions a month (maybe thousands). Unless they know and can make the same ones roughly, they can't replicate your success.
Do you have an example of how not being quiet hurt your/someone else's moat?
I'm not saying they shouldn't be doing that. It's actually the opposite—they got the VC money, they might as well do something actually useful with it.
That's definitely the gameplan. We believe very sincerely that developers deserve more choice when it comes to payments than they currently have. It's a central reason why we started building this.
It just takes longer to make progress on that problem because of all the institutions involved.
Regarding equity, I was set on this being a bootstrapped business, so I offered 8% at 50h/week over 2 years, vested monthly (unconventional ik). And a few extra % if they stayed 2 years (depends on how many remain). I didn't require full-time, and allowed 20h/week, and equity was proportional to time put in. My stake would was 16%.
I eventually hired 3 full time devs offshore after realizing almost no one has the risk appetite. $500/mo avg. 2 were duds who I removed after a month each, but the last one was great. Learned my hiring lessons.
Consulting would have been difficult because I spent day and night on the startup.
Letting people work 1/2 time on my project and consult the other is smart. I would just have to secure the clients. I will consider that in the future.
I gave people the option to work 20-50h/week, but no one took up that offer. The only people who joined were 5 people:
- 3 friends I knew from online and did projects with before.
- 1 person I met from reddit and also a unemployed 2024 grad (but she was still money hungry, left 2mo after while being only part-time).
- 1 person from YC combinator. Great guy and former founder, but he had to leave 3w in due to a lawsuit abroad.
software/product engineer. I'm also open to being a product manager.
Startup will go into life support on mid feb after MVP launch. Word of mouth takes a lot of time to grow, so growth is a slow burn.
I haven't been able to write code at my startup for most of my time here. It's split between reviewing code, sales, or product work. I do mention some technical work, but I'm wearing many hats, so it's a bit hard to show mainly technical exp.
You should have several resumes. Your SWE resume should focus heavily on your technical abilities. Your PM resume can talk more about this other stuff (not an expert).
As it stands, I’m not sure who would be hiring somebody with a founder/manager profile like yours.
I think you do have enough technical experience. You just have to sell it.
