The best way to prove to yourself, potential investors and to any potential future employees that you have a killer idea, is to get a number of A-level engineers to join full-time with equity-only deals.
Um... given all the advice to never work for equity only, can anyone here actually claim to have pulled this off?
As far as I can tell, this statement is about employees and doesn't cover co-founders.
I think he's talking about "late founders" -- early engineering hires who have enough personal wealth from early exits (or spousal income, savings, etc.) to potentially be founders on their own, who end up joining. In a lot of cases you give them 83b stock too, instead of options.
Most of what he described is just best practice/common wisdom, although well presented -- the A-A, B-C thing especially, perks like monitors, etc.
The "unique" points he raised, which I agree with, are salary/budget transparency within the organization, not trying to pay engineers as little as possible (but instead having fair compensation ranges without negotiation required), and minimizing commutes.
Um... given all the advice to never work for equity only, can anyone here actually claim to have pulled this off?
As far as I can tell, this statement is about employees and doesn't cover co-founders.