It should be noted that they have not really raised any equity capital. The $1M are pre-orders for the iPod Nano watch, and hence is revenue. In this sense, Kickstarter is ingeniously being used as a platform for virally marketing the product (concept) and as a sales channel. Kudos to them for their success.
It should be noted that they have not really raised any equity capital. The $1M are pre-orders for the iPod Nano watch, and hence is revenue. In this sense, Kickstarter is ingeniously being used as a platform for virally marketing the product (concept) and as a sales channel. Kudos to them for their success.
If you own, try to rent out your house and then rent a cheaper place closer to work. If you rent, try to move closer to work. If you live in a city you might be able to do without a car. Also, if you have an extra room, you can try renting it out or listing on airbnb (no affiliation). The point is that sometimes you can find low-bandwidth opportunities to make or save a little extra cash on the side.
Man, I feel you, you are not alone. It seems to me that you are a "builder". An entrepreneur with the foresight and technical capacity to make great things. But both your superiors and peers are standing in your way. Turning the beautiful and fulfilling art of creating technology into a political battle and minefield. Leave, now. It is not your company, they don't own you, and you don't owe them anything. Build your war-chest. Only with your own resources will you be free to innovate.
Based on my observation, some heavy hitters are using Scala in production, but the learning curve is high and development time is slower that PHP, RoR or Python.
I think the op mentioned that the investor wants a majority stake. Otherwise, I agree assuming that you know your co-founder well enough that s/he dose not collude with the investor to oust you.
The only problem with this strategy is that 30% may leave you with nothing as the majority owner drives the company into the ground or fires you prior to vesting. You would be in a worse situation than 0 because you would have invested your time and energy. As entrepreneurs, we all know how demanding a start-up is. To be swindled is just not an acceptable result of effort.
Never give away control of your company for money. If the investor had your vision he would have built it without you. What is going to happen is you are going to fight over the direction of the company until it ultimately fails. The is especially true in equal partnerships. Disagreement quickly leads to stalemate.
The amount of money and valuation are extremely low. Show him examples of funded companies in your space (see CrunchBase) and talk about typical startup valuations based on your space and how far along you are (maybe $1M to $5M). Offer him an investment opportunity of a maximum of 20% of the company for the money he is putting in. That should bring your valuation to roughly $1.5M which is still fairly low and keep you in control of the company for this round and the next.
Although many cert providers tout wide browser acceptance, you may find discrepancies in production. Be careful. GeoTrust has excellent customer service, decently priced certs, and an automated/expedited process. No affiliation.
As a very senior (and hopefully talented) software engineer, you should be getting a fairly decent paycheck. Here two workable options, bound to get you the result you want, with a degree of risk: 1) Save money while working on "side-projects" at home. If and when one of them take off you should be able to fund through early growth 2) Join a very small, interesting start-up and take a relative pay cut for equity. If the start-up grows you will naturally assume a technical leadership role such as Director or CTO.
Dan can you elaborate? If the board is company leaning with say 3 of 4 seats for the founders and 1 investor, how can a founder be fired unless in the unlikely scenario that the other two vote against him/her?
An interesting (albeit fictional) movie to watch on this topic is "The First $20M is always the hardest". Yes, you have to give away equity to get funded. But if you are asked for a controlling stake early in the game, then you are being setup for a big letdown.
Also, although convertible notes are very fashionable these days, consider your position if and when you need another round of financing. You may very well be forced into a bad deal under the threat of liquidation to pay your creditors with the company IP. On the other side of the table your investors got you to pour your blood, sweat and tears into the company as well as the financing, and they ended up with 100%. This is not to say that all VCs are bad, or even most. Rather, that is the substantial risk of a convertible note.
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