jbryanscott

Valuation and Headcount are supposed to reflect the valuation and headcount of the company when the offer was received.

These offers with large equity grants (>1%) at very high valuation companies were likely received when the valuations were lower.

I message this on the Add page, and most people follow it. It looks like a few people didn't in the examples you cite.

I need to do a better job of messaging this on the Add page and add validation on the Add page to calculate Valuation * Equity = Dollar Value of Grant.

Let me know if you have other ideas.

"What's to stop you from making use of that data?"

The vision of Ackwire is to make startup compensation data transparent to prospective employees and employers.

Email addresses are encrypted and stored in a different database. It's true that they aren't hard to manually access, but this presents a reasonable barrier.

The same argument applies to any web service that stores personal information. I'm sure there are administrators at Facebook, Gmail, etc. who could read all your private messages, view your photos, etc. But we assume they don't, and most of us use these services anyway.

"A lot of this is actionable data. If the startup has IPOed, you might even fall under insider trading regulations and need to make sure you don't trade on it."

I'm not a securities lawyer, but this doesn't seem to pass the material non-public test. Significant shareholders in a public company already have to disclose their holdings, publicly.

"Finally, there is, of course, the possible issue that someone might offer you a tidy sum of money to buy that data off you, once there's enough of it."

I think this is jumping the gun a bit, but any buyer would have to keep the current user agreement intact (posts are confidential and anonymous) or explicitly ask users to opt into the new terms.

Good point. Generally, Senior is the most experienced title for an employee without direct reports, e.g. Senior Engineer. Lead, Director and VP usually entail direct reports, e.g. a Lead Engineer or "Engineering Lead"

The data is meaningless if it can't be trusted. Email addresses are stored encrypted and will always be kept confidential.

I try to capture this with the Headcount field. Don't want to get too specific though, in order to preserve anonymity.

Great idea! Makes it so easy to decide when, how and how much to donate. I love the concept that whenever I spend money I also contribute to a cause.

Check out NanoSolar. They have built solar cell printing technology that prints much faster and much cheaper than anything else on the market. The material installs somewhat like wallpaper.

http://www.nanosolar.com/

A recession impacts venture capital in two main ways:

1) Reducing exit potential 2) Reducing available capital for new funds

The first is simple. In a recession, capital is more scarce. Cash on Balance Sheets shrink. This makes it harder to find buyers (as in acquisitions - think YouTube by Google). IPOs are also less successful because of depressed stock market performance. PE ratios generally decline, making these exits less attractive.

The second is more complicated. Since capital is more scarce, finding investors for new funds becomes more difficult. Venture capital (and all of private equity) is viewed as a risky asset class. In a recession, portfolio managers usually cut back on riskier investments, favoring safer investments, such as stocks and bonds.

However, VC funds are committed funds, meaning that once a fund starts, that money is there whenever it needs to be "called down." In this respect, recessions don't impact startup funding because the money has already been earmarked. Since the last two years have seen LOTS of money poured into VC with LOTS of additional funds created, I don't expect to see a significant slowdown over the next 1-2 years. If the recession lasts longer, or if exit opportunities change substantially, this may change.

We are doing something very similar to this.

http://www.parkonthefly.com/

Email me: bryan@parkonthefly.com