If you feel this way, you should quit and start your own company, raise money, recruit a team, and be CEO yourself. You’ll never be happy in your current position, and you’ll never understand what your current CEO did and does until you do it yourself. Good luck.
We make simple products to help internet businesses connect with their customers. We're exploding by every metric right now and are hiring for a range of positions:
Nah, not at all. You just need to keep looking. It's certainly not easy. But I think that life is WAY too short to work anywhere you aren't entirely happy with.
I'm sure he's a very prolific Hacker News contributor. My point is that people who optimize for short-term financial compensation ahead of employment with a company they believe in which is generous with its stock are the least successful in this industry—particularly financially, ironically.
"If they can’t pay you what you’re worth, consider being paid in part in stock, but only if you truly believe in the product, the management, and the company as a whole."
Successful "techies" never work at companies they don't believe in.
It's quite telling that the author includes this "only if" clause.
Eoghan McCabe here, CEO of Intercom. Happy to answer any questions you might have. We're really excited to see what people do with this integration. It's already quite deep, but we've got a few more interesting features on the way.
Intercom is a simple, personal messaging service for businesses and their customers.
Our mission is to make web business personal. We believe that the future of customer communication requires not increasingly complex, impersonal point solutions, but rather a simple, seamless platform that feels a lot more like Facebook than Salesforce.
The company is about 2.5 years old. We've raised over $30MM to-date from Bessemer Venture Partners, and the Social+Capital Partnership.
The team is currently ~60, comprising people from Apple, Box, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yammer, Microsoft, and PayPal.
Intercom is installed in thousands of web products and is connected with many millions of end-users. The company has been experiencing double-digit monthly revenue growth from the start.
If you're in SF, LMK if you want a sounding board and someone to talk to in confidence. I'll buy you a beer. Help you get your head straight. [email protected]
I don't generally disagree that first-time founders should think carefully before raising venture capital, but the example used to back up this statement is misguided on two counts.
1. It implies that your VC partner(s) can decide to sell your company without your wish. For the size of business mentioned here, this is unlikely. E.g. Even after we raise our next round (Series B), an acquisition can't happen without the founders' concent.
2. 2x liquidation preferences are not standard these days. I don't know anyone who's raised on more than 1x.
I think the author has a relatively refreshingly fair view on raising capital vs. bootstrapping, but the misunderstandings I've highlighted are typical. For any aspiring entrepreneur, I can't more strongly recommend you do your homework before deciding that raising venture capital is not for you.
https://www.intercom.com/careers