I'd think about the role as a role. Is there a job description? If so, what are the specific responsibilities. What would you pay for the role - comp it to market and company hiring practices. Then, determine if you need the role. Then, open the req and recruit for the role / encourage her to apply. Then, put her through the same interview process as everyone else.
You have to treat your business as a business. If you need the role, are paying a fair rate (salary, bonus, equity) and she's the best candidate, hire her. Then, you have a process that you can be transparent about and is fair.
Don't be bullied into something like this - it could be the beginning of the end.
> My first thought was snide / next level anti-Semitic trolling
Chomsky has been very critical of Israel, and as a result there are many pro-Israel people who strongly dislike him. So, while it isn’t impossible for Hebrew language trolling to be from an antisemite, my first thought would be it is from one of his pro-Israel critics
This article understates how big the content discovery problem was on the web, at those times. Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and a million others.
Reddit is the Craigslist of content discovery, in so many ways.
""A Securities and Exchange Commission filing said Huffman in 2023 got a salary of $341,346, which is relatively low for a CEO of a major public corporation. In February, this was raised to $550,000. He also got a $792,000 bonus last year based on Reddit's user numbers, revenue, and a type of profitability known as adjusted EBITDA that excludes certain expenses."
"The bulk of his compensation package is now in restricted stock units and stock options. A lot of this compensation is based on Huffman staying at Reddit through late 2028, and some is triggered by completing Reddit's initial public offering, the SEC filing said.
Half of the stock options vest at $25.29, a relatively easy bar to reach. The other half vest only if Reddit shares reach $45, $60, and $90 in public-market trading over 10 years, the SEC filing says — that's a higher bar and aligns the CEO's interests with shareholders."
And yet Craig Newmark is a billionaire and the owners of Reddit aren't. $900 million in revenue means nothing if you jettison it into the stratosphere.
Find an employment lawyer. The United States and Colorado have FMLA / FML laws to protect employees from losing their job. An attorney will be able to advise.
Except their legal fees. Whenever you close a round, make sure you negotiate a cap on the legal fees you are willing to cover. The company pays for VC legal fees - SURPRISE.
It's a faulty premise. Very few people actual want to discover startups, for the sake of discovering startups. The reason no one has heard of your startup is because the people who have heard about it don't care. Startups grow when customers / users care about the startup.
Every startup "just needs more eyeballs." So startups will sign up for the promise of free / low cost users. But, they won't get them. And even if you get the exposure, the users won't stick.
I understand why you want to build this product, but you can't scale getting startups large numbers of sticky users like this.
thank you very much for your insight, i appreciate it!
but i think you misunderstood my premise. we don't promise you customers or have anything to do with customers.
we are building a social network that would make startups "more visible" (in your words - 'more eyeballs'). today every startup launches on every social media in the hope of getting noticed, but gets lost as there are contents from other grown brands and content creators. whereas at our platform only startups can create contents and, in a way, show how have they grown and how their product has evolved. and all the data that we generate from user-content interaction would be processed and presented to startups to help them understand their customers (they can use this to their advantage - we DO NOT intervene)
just that's it! i say it again WE DO NOT PROMISE CUSTOMERS!!
You are arguing against a straw man. He’s just asking: why would anyone want to just “explore startups”? People are interested in content that entertains them, educates them or from family and friends. Why would they explore your platform?
oh no, i am not arguing with anyone! damn these text don't capture any emotions!
yes, i agree with your statement as well! we "hypothesize" that not the entire population would be looking to get to know more startups but with passing time the number of people who want to check out new startups is rising. and to support it we can see the success Product Hunt has had. moreover, we have had some (not great) but some positive reactions toward the idea.
just that's all. i am almost done building the MVP so why just stop? well even if i fail, what i gotta lose here.
There is a lot of patting themselves on the back and no acknowledgement of wrongdoing. They got caught violating trust for an inconsequential revenue stream, at the expense of their biggest revenue stream's customer - so, we'll shut down the conflict.
Also, 409a is a conflict of interest, but since it doesn't negatively impact our biggest revenue streams, we'll keep doing it (at the expense of tax revenue).
I do a fair bit of investing and advising (both for startups and venture funds). If you are the founding CEO and you are looking to leave, the most likely outcome for a company that's early, and without any sort of product market fit, is the company will die.
If you don't tell investors you want out, raise money, and leave shortly thereafter, you will burn all of those relationships and damage your reputation - it's a small world. It's also very disingenuous. Investors are betting on a committed team, that will go through hell and high-water to try to make this venture work - you already know you aren't that committed. And no one can be more committed than the CEO.
If you can't get behind the pivot, the only other thing you can do is work with existing investors (at the seed stage this isn't really an option) or find a founder with previous exit, an EIR looking to step into a company, our an early employee / non CEO cofounder who exited and wants to do it again - and see if they'd be interested in the CEO role - It's a find your own replacement scenario.
As far as your equity goes - you'll get diluted a bunch, but that's okay. It's going to be hard to hear, but no real investors will allow a non-participating, former founder, of a company that doesn't have a product or any traction (in your case your starting over with a pivot) to keep 10%. That's just too much of the cap table for not enough of a business / individual contribution. It's sucks, but if you stuck around and made it to a priced round, all of your equity would get clawed back and be subject to vesting again anyway (most likely). It's just the way it goes. You deserve something for your troubles and work, but it's not going to be 10%, not going to be anywhere close.
It's a hard reality, but imagine you are the one re-capitalizing this venture. They have a team, no customer, no product, but a new idea they want to pursue. There are a lot of early teams with ideas in search of money that you could invest in. This particular team comes with 10% dead weight on the cap table, which essentially means everyone else is getting diluted out of the gate, by someone that will bring no future value.
That makes this investment worse than anything else you could invest in, by a factor of that non active founder.
Folding and restarting makes more sense in this situation. The fact that one founder wants to keep the existing structure because of the legitimacy the co-founder provided means there is value still being provided by the co-founder.
You have to treat your business as a business. If you need the role, are paying a fair rate (salary, bonus, equity) and she's the best candidate, hire her. Then, you have a process that you can be transparent about and is fair.
Don't be bullied into something like this - it could be the beginning of the end.