jseeff

Any feedback? :)

Thanks- looks good but unless i'm missing something, doesn't seem to really do what I was looking for (clocks to keep time of different task)?

Yes. I believe it to be a civic privilege and duty. My mother comes from a country where (for her gender and religion) her civil freedoms were severely restricted and I think it is important to engage in the process even if you don't like the options. I believe a void vote is better than no vote at all and I think real engagement to change the system is the best (although a difficult) solution to the "no one represents me" argument.

In addition to the suggestions already given to contact Google / Apple / Microsoft / servers / payment processors etc., here are a couple more tips:

First, many lawyers will be willing to enter into fee arrangements e.g. based on success or with deferred payments. It is worth getting the right lawyer as slightly greater expensive short term may save you a ton more money long term.

Second, preparing a cease and desist letter should not be too timely and therefore costly (particularly if you do the background of getting details of the breaching party and provide clear evidence of the breach etc). It will not require you to take further action if they ignore it (the letter should be sent without prejudice to your rights) but you should consider that if you don't follow-through, they may be emboldened.

Good luck!

Brilliant. Well done!

A few thoughts of mine on how to excel in the work place... what do you guys think? Anything to add or change?

That's right but doesn't take into account lead time. Finding a good employee, especially early in the life of the company can take months. There is therefore a significant risk element involved in looking and planning ahead.

1) NDA may stop someone from disclosing information.... it may not, but it may. That has a degree of value and the document is generally pretty short and simple to understand so not too problematic.

2) for the same reason many people will not sign an NDA (trust, hassle) you may want them to- trust, commitment.

3) even if an NDA only serves to regulate "the aftermath", that too can have value, especially in the rare but possible cases of mis-use of information e.g. by a competitor...

E.g. issues in founders' agreements? Or information rights for investors? Or terms of contracts you'd never agree to in retrospect....

you have only been there 7 months. Unless you agreed, when joining, to review salary after X months, I would probably avoid asking for a raise right now. What I WOULD do, is ask for a chat with your boss or bosses and explain to them: 1) you feel you have performed well and exceeded expectations by X, Y and Z; 2) you know lots of people are leaving and you want to take on more responsibility; 3) you know you have only been there 7 months; and 4) you want them to think about giving you a significant raise in 5 months' time.

Then ask them for their thoughts and what you need to do in order to make that happen.

It shows them you are committed, not trying to squeeze every penny just when they are hurting because of departures and makes it VERY hard for them not to give you a raise at the 1 year mark.

At that point if you don't get what you are looking for, you move away.

Good luck!

Incorporation is not a straight-forward question. Depending on what kind of IP you have (if any), what kind of costs and when you anticipate revenues, can all affect your position (notably in respect of future tax issues). Also assuming in all this that we are talking about US jurisdictions of some kind. Generally speaking, you probably want to incorporate before you start incurring significant costs and liabilities or before you start accumulating significant assets (including IP). There are a ton of resources online about this kind of thing so I'd recommend doing a basic google search and going from there but ultimately it is worth speaking to a lawyer or accountant about this.

As for legal docs, this is often a catch 22 for start-ups and again, will depend a lot on your circumstances. What are your risks (i.e. what does your app actually do)? By looking at many different examples online, you can probably get a good idea of the kinds of things you need to cover, but a lot of it will be specific to your business. Many law firms offer start-ups deferred fee structures so even getting a lawyer to help doesn't necessarily have to cost you an arm and a leg....

Interesting article and some of the comments are interesting too. Generally, I think any right-minded person would agree that so long as your work gets done and that you volunteer to help out with extra tasks, especially when everyone around you is busy, "face time" is stupid and ultimately harmful.

That being said, this is a start up with 6 people so each person has a huge effect on the company (cf: 2 lectures on culture in Sam Altman's Stanford lecture series for example) and if it is consistently the case that one person leaves when all others stay, there is clearly a need to re-balance the work-load (even if it is e.g. to say that one or two nights a week, you make work for yourself until later)....

Once the company is bigger, this issue changes/ goes away I think....

A related article with a bit more detail:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33166383

I can't believe I had not heard about this before today! That is really crazy, all the more so in an era (thanks USA and FATCA) of increased internationalisation of bank regulation....

1) if you were in my position, what questions would you ask? (I think this helps to show what might be important to the founder). 2) what can I do to make sure I'm a key employee?

Sure- good luck with it! If it helps a lot, feel free to thank me with equity hahaha

It sounds like you may be looking for more than just an advisory board agreement no? What exactly is it that you want the agreement to deal with?

On a slightly related albeit not quite exactly the same type of note: can usernames be changed? I see a very large number of non-name related usernames and am curious as to why that is and if they can be changed to a real name or away from one....?

How about an "ask a question" feature.... presumably newsletters will be sent on a topic which the sender is interested in / an expert in and at least partially with the aim of drumming up business.... so e.g. if I send a link about what to do or not do when applying for a job (subtle link - previously posted, I admit - : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shoe-in-booted-out-3-tips-you...) then the customer could link straight to a question slot like: "Hey Jer, I'm applying for a job and your article was really interesting, what about XYZ?" - direct user engagement and possible client!

I'm still quite new around here so don't fully understand how all this Karma thing works - sorry if I somehow caused you to lose something! (Incidentally, I would love to understand it better, know how to search and track replies to comments etc without having to re-read the whole thread, but I digress...)

I think the point you make is different to "choosing".... and is the main reason I prefer to give something that a truly needy person will definitely appreciate (e.g. food, shelter) rather than something that could be spent on alcohol, drugs or be taken by someone who isn't really needy.

In sum though, I think as long as someone is trying to help, each can choose his or her own preferred way to do that :)

I think offering to buy someone a meal is pretty dignified, especially (but not only) if you have time to eat with them.

I generally avoid giving money as I don't know where it ends up and don't want to support substance abuse in any way. I tend to give to charities helping the homeless. When I used to live in London and worked for a huge organisation, I also organised a "buy a lunch" campaign once every few months whereby anyone buying in the staff canteen could either add a set amount of money or duplicate the cost of their meal and all the funds (matched by my organisation) then went towards providing meals and shelter for the homeless....

I agree that it is not always the best solution to give money (rather than say food etc) but "because they like to live like that" is (as far as I am able to ascertain) a huge over-simplification and in many cases probably an outright falacy. It is well documented that (as with the prison population) there is a high occurrence of mental disorder in homeless people.

Thanks... I get that, but they aren't my "clients" in the sense of a client of my firm.... it is less formal than that (at the moment).... hence the question and it's about balancing a "way in" with "learning" but also being compensated if appropriate.

Yeah - I think it is a combination of money and not strictly legal.... but what does 2/3 times mean? Reviewing an investor deck might take me 20/30 mins... it's not really a big deal. Advising on a contract is obviously a much bigger deal...

I should clarify: I am not being asked to offer help as the company lawyer per se (they have legal counsel and I am generally familiar with the deferred payment model)... this is more of a "asking a friend for [free?] advice" situation

I should also ask, what qualifies as "help 2 or 3 times" and what kind of equity would you envisage? (I know it is highly dependent on multiple factors, but I am curious for people's experiences...)

Fair questions- I should have been more specific (and that will be part of my own thoughts once I have a few more replies). To be honest, I want to achieve all of those. 3) may not be that likely as they already have very well established legal counsel, though it is obviously still potentially there as an option and was how I started giving them a bit of help...

Also true that they weren't necessarily looking for strictly legal help but more analytical / advisory as you suggest.... so on that basis, what do you think?

Check out Pramp (pramp.com) - see also this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10002775

Good luck!

Good points already posted, especially about buy-out being a multiple of earnings not just based on one year. A few other things to think about: why is the founder trying to buy you out? No one just pays for equity buy-back without a reason. It might be as simple as "minimising shareholders" for administrative reasons, but it may also be something else. A $2160 check is a nice thing to have but it isn't a huge amount so it may be better to keep the equity. If you do agree to sell, I would recommend some "protections" for example, if the company gets sold in the next [X] months (or even years), you get paid the difference of value or even, if profits hit [Y] any time in the next [Z] years, you get an earn-out of some kind...