employeeNumbaOne (140)
Medium
A blogging platform to announce your Incredible Journey.
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employeeNumbaOne almost 8 years agoDoes anyone make money around here?
This question means different things depending on who's asking it and when.
1. When customers start asking this, the company is Pre-Revenue.
2. When investors start asking this, it's about to be a Down Round.
3. When the founders start asking this, it's been an Awesome Journey.
1: http://svdictionary.com/words/pre-revenue
2: http://svdictionary.com/words/down-round
3: http://svdictionary.com/words/awesome-journey
employeeNumbaOne almost 8 years agoDown Round
When you spend a borrowed $20, hit your pal up for $10 more, then wonder why your friends stop financing you.
After this, you can become a Zombie Startup [1] or write a Medium post about your Awesome Journey [2]. [1] http://svdictionary.com/words/zombie-startup
[2] http://svdictionary.com/words/awesome-journey
employeeNumbaOne almost 8 years agoResting and vesting
What you do after your Incredible Journey.
Accelerator -> Pre-Revenue -> Down Round -> Incredible Journey -> Resting and Vesting
employeeNumbaOne almost 8 years agoIncredible Journey
Game over.
We have some exciting news to share! Parse has joined forces with Facebook. It's been an incredible journey, and together we'll be able to offer -- -- lol jk, we're winding down the Parse service, and Parse will be fully retired after a year-long period ending on January 28, 2017. We're proud that we've been able to help so many of you build great mobile apps, but Facebook bought us to kill us. We're just sticking around until we're fully vested. After that, we're out. Fuck those guys.
employeeNumbaOne almost 8 years agoAgile
In a medium-sized and growing company, Agile can be a learning experience for everyone.
BigCo managers learn what it's like to ship tiny things instead of meeting about big things.
Software engineers learn what it's like to have parental supervision.
Early employees learn how to quit while they're ahead.
Manager: "We will remove obstacles from your workflow and refrain from micromanagement."
Engineer: "We will regularly estimate our stories and log our work."
Engineer: "Wait a minute, where's Early Employee?"
employeeNumbaOne almost 8 years agoTechnical Debt
A silly but effective analogy to explain refactoring to business people.
Developer: "We need to refactor the legacy auth module, which is a dependency for most of our new modules."
Business Guy: "... wat."
Developer: "Some of our early code was debt-financed. That senior debt has preference until we pay it off."
Business Guy: "Oh, I totally get it now. Why didn't you just say that?"
employeeNumbaOne over 8 years agoEarly Employee
A founder who will take 1% of the company instead of 25%. This is a polite way of saying "sucker."
CEO: "We couldn't have done it without a few great early employees."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years ago@silconobserver Zach Holman.
This is total and utter bullshit. The founder risks his entire savings, family/friend relationships and pours his life into his startup. When things finally begin to work he goes out and hires the first few employees. In return the "early employees" get paid market rate or slightly below market rate and get equity and the founder gets painted as a greedy bastard? Who is the real sucker here
10x Engineer
A developer who incurs technical debt so fast he appears more productive than the ten developers tasked with cleaning his mess up.
Founder: "We are only looking for 10x Engineers."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoNoncompete Agreement
Any agreement by which:
- The employee pretends they won't go work for the competition.
- The employer pretends it's enforceable in the State of California.
Engineer #1: "They wanted me to sign a noncompete."
Engineers: "AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoOn Demand
Another way of saying "for lazy people."
Meals on demand. That's right, we're revolutionizing the way you get pizza.
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoStartup Dinner
4 contractors working evenings
$1800
Pizza for 4 full time engineers
$15
"Yes, you can -definitely- expense dinner."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoMVP
The "minimum viable product" is exactly like the product you had in mind, except with fewer features and more bugs.
Founder: "We're going to validate the market with our MVP."
Engineer: "Sweet!"
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoand not scalable
CRUD App
An app that can create, read, update, and destroy information.
The proverbial hammer, and every single one of your brilliant startup ideas is a nail.
You are looking at a CRUD app right now.
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoFederal
See http://svdictionary.com/words/enterprise, but way, way worse.
This word magically redirects investor attention elsewhere.
Founder: "Our ideal customer is the federal government."
VCs: "We are looking for more immediate ROI at this stage. It's been -really- nice talking to you."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoEnterprise
Adj. -- a synonym for "takes longer, but for way more money"
Sales: "The enterprise sales cycle takes months, but we're talking about whales here."
Manager: "All right, we've IPO'd now. It's time to adhere to enterprise process standards."
Engineer: "The enterprise module is going to be a huge effort, but if you're sure it'll be worth it..."
Sales & Engineering: "Does that mean we get raises?"
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoLiquidity Event
Founders start off owning the entire company.
Then they convince VCs to buy some of it, and they use that money to pay themselves salaries.
Then the VCs convince either retail investors or a megacorporation to buy the company, and that's a liquidity event.
This sounds like a pyramid scheme, but trust me, it isn't.
Employees can't do anything with their stock options until a liquidity event.
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoPG
I want to say Paul Graham, but I also want to know whether you're totally clueless and out of the loop.
"I finally met pg in person.
SENPAI NOTICED ME."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoHackathon
A team of sweaty engineers in a cramped coworking space building a product that will never see the light of day. Business and marketing types can assist this effort by bringing caffeinated drinks. Brought to you by Amazon.
At the end, the most vaguely marketable product might get investor attention. If so, it will use AWS forever.
Engineer (excitedly): "I'm going to a hackathon this weekend!" Engineer (exhaustedly): "I went to a hackathon this weekend."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years agoNet 30
I hope this fly-by-night startup pays me before my rent check is due.
Founder: "And how fast do I need to pay you?"
Freelancer crosses fingers for luck.
Freelancer: "Oh, it's Net 30."
employeeNumbaOne almost 9 years ago
I still wouldn't minded having been an early employee at Facebook or Uber.