As a startup you don't have Google's money. You don't have Google's employer brand. You don't have Google's work environment.
in fact as a (hopefully) fast-growing startup the only thing you really have to offer is growth. So make it clear how you are going to help the candidate grow their career and experience faster at your startup than at the established company, and offer the best you can do on comp and work environment.
This doesn't mean fresh grads, but more like someone with a bit of experience who's ready to jump into a team lead or architectural lead role.
I upvoted you despite entirely disagreeing with your premise. Yes - negotiate with the county to take over management of the playgrounds and lawn mowing. Yes - make the clubhouse and parking lots open, fee-based and voluntary, and controlled by a private corporation rather than an imposed, taxed service. Yes - return the excess money to the current homeowners, or use some of it to effectuate these conversions.
Honestly, the amount of money you have in reserve, plus the list of amenities you list, makes it sound like the HOA has been sitting on a spigot of endless cash for a very long time and finding nice-to-have things to justify the continued fees.
We have a reserve study completed by a professional company that requires us to hold this much. For example, we are replacing two AC units for $50k total. Pool needs to be resurfaced for $100k. We have roof repairs that will need to be done eventually, gym equipment replacements, various beautification repairs, weir repair ($250k), fish guards/blockers, pond maintenance etc
Sure - I understand these roofing, HVAC and landscaping expenses are associated to the common amenities? So if you spin out the clubhouse into a country club that members can opt to join, you can allocate the clubhouse an appropriate amount of cash. When you negotiate with the county to take over management of the grounds including the pond, you can negotiate to give them some of the reserve money for the future pond fixes.
I understand it wouldn't be easy to change all these management responsibilities, but in principle everything the HOA does can be devolved to either voluntary associations, or to public authorities (as happens in most of the rest of the world). Unlike a condo association, it's not a completely unimaginable shift what this lawmaker is proposing.
Right agree and I think I have tried to articulate that here and below. Florida law says what to do when HOAs are dissolved. Point is it will be extremely messy to suddenly dissolve hundreds or thousands of HOAs. Windfall for the State too because the money by default needs to go somewhere and it won’t go back to the homeowners (which ones btw current or past, law doesn’t speak to it). So it goes to the State based on the sale of the land and properties.
I don’t think homeowners will be universally pleased with this.
Doesn’t that mean the budget at the county level will have to increase to cover all the new maintenance, and thus taxes raised? I’d rather have some say in what my money goes towards in the HOA than have taxes raised to maintain neighborhoods all over that I never visit. We end up paying either way.
Cities or counties suddenly having to take over lots of road, playgrounds, sidewalks, street lights, and etc is going to be a big drain on their budget. Sure they could run with the HOA's money for a while but eventually they're going to have to pay.
That is the best possible solution. That's how it works in my neighborhood and it is the best answer.
This neighborhood has a few amenities like soccer fields, tennis courts, bike/walk trails and exercise stations. In the early days of construction there was some debate about a HOA but that was fortunately shot down pretty quickly as far too toxic.
Instead, there is a property tax assessment on all houses in the area that covers for the city to maintain these common areas. Sure we pay for that, which is fair. The areas are maintained, they are open to all which is great, and there is no nasty HOA meddling in how people paint their houses or what flowers they plant or what car they buy. Best of all worlds.
The major problem I see in this group is that they have constructed a self-identity of being intelligent. This means that by being part of a Rationalist group, a person can claim to have insight into things that "the rest of the world doesn't understand."
Which, because (1) self-identifying as intelligent/insightful does not mean you are actually so; (2) you are following the "brain reprogramming" processes of some kind of comvincing leader; is a straight shot to NXIVM style apocalyptic cultism.
Personally, I prefer more of both. You have to actually do things - as in, develop the engineering, test things, see what works and what doesn't - to advance the state of the art. We need robots for science, humans for engineering.
Robots completely replacing humans cannot occur in a capitalist system without complete economic collapse.
If robots are developed to be able to perform the most undesirable jobs, then they will also be developed to perform the most desirable jobs. If humans don’t work, they have no money. Humans without money cannot buy things. Humans can’t buy things, companies can’t exist.
I think your read is right on the money. There is an overall plot to the games, but the reason to play is in all of the ridiculous side quests, which are decidedly not serious: "Help this naked guy who forgot his clothes", "Help this guy make baby formula", "Stop the roomba gone rogue", etc
The games are a mashup of genres, but it is only the latest one which leans so heavily into the RPG aspects. Prior installments are more "fist fight dudes" core gameplay.
Like a dragon is different than the rest of the series. It's turn based, focused on Ichiban, and it's meant to be ridiculous.
The main character essentially hallucinates that he's a character in dragon quest and the bad guys you encounter at first look normal but transform into "sujimon"/monsters during encounters.
The core gameplay is really fun, the writing is top notch (first like a dragon > infinite wealth tho), character classes/"jobs" picked out at an unemployment center are fun/funny, your "mage" is a homeless guy who summons pigeons to attack and uses a bottle of alcohol which he spews into a lighter to cast flames, and the mini games are just there if you want to play them and many are fun.
Just speaking of genres and starting points: if you're looking at the series from the perspective of wanting a JRPG (and here I'm assuming you mean that you want something turn-based), then you'd want to start with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which is the first turn-based game in the series and one that introduces a new protagonist. The sequel, Infinite Wealth, is the same style of game.
Pretty much any other Yakuza game you're going to see will be more action-focused and have real-time battles, but still with RPG elements. Yakuza 0 is a commonly-suggested starting point for the action-based entries or the series as a whole; it's a prequel but one that still works well as a place to start.
Yet Tesla market cap is four times that of Toyota's.
Unbelievable.
I had to stay out of TSLA after the first year or so because the valuation made no sense to me. Other than a FOMO / YOLO play like BTC.
I'm shocked that the valuation continues to remain so high after so many lies and mediocre results. Was the Cybertruck a success? There definitely are not a million Tesla robotaxis on the road as Elon suggested there would be by 2020.
Well, I heard Cathie Wood refer to Tesla as the largest AI project in the world. So if you think of it that way maybe the sky's the limit. She seems 100% certain that people will be earning money renting out their Teslas as robotaxis in the next few years. But it's a car company. Or not. Maybe. Whatever. I put it in the "too hard" pile.
I'm not saying this doesn't hold, but this includes every first-run first-model car from Tesla (5-10 years old cohort), and decade+ old refined models from every other brand.
Admittedly just a hunch, but I suspect the data for the more recent cohorts and Tesla models is much better than this data shows
It might be hard to believe, but on the inside, people like this are pretty easy to spot. Crypto people are weirdly bad at scamming, compared to other con artists, but because the amount of damage is so fast and liquidity so easy, incompetent people can do a lot of damage.
The scammers also the most vocal. Partially because they aren’t building something novel or valuable, and make up for it in marketing and flash. It’s also faster to build a con than to build a real product, so you see more of them
But yes. It is exhausting. Honest parties in the industry need to build against a large and growing negative reputation. It may be insurmountable. And the industry, generally, does nothing to punish these bad parties or self-regulate. The industry likely has to die, and be reborn after the token/blockchain era
Look, this is a losing argument. It’s ok if you prefer stuff like Zemeckis (who I might add, made a lot of melodramatic films himself) over international films, but that doesn’t them objectively better or more watchable for everybody.
> Look at all those top non-American films on that list:
That’s not a list of non-American films, it’s a list of non-American directors.
To answer what I assume is your every so snarkily delivered point: Yes, about a third of the directors on that list ended up successful in Hollywood. Does that mean international films are bad? Probably not! Does it maybe mean even Hollywood recognizes that there is a lot of international talent, and very good international films being made? Probably yes?
Not trolling. Having lived in many countries and had the TV on, this happens to be my unpopular opinion.
American movies are popular globally not because they're American but because they're so damn watchable/enjoyable/varied.
Granted that becomes less true every year, since Hollywood appears to be broken. Other countries haven't figured out how to pick up the slack though. 1994 Hollywood will likely never come again.
With much love for my angel investors, angel investing is absolutely a mug's game.
If the company doesn't get off the ground (vast majority of investments) you lose all your money.
If the company does get off the ground, you are the lowest on the pref stack, and you have no ability to follow on to protect your position.
You're not a contributing employee or meaningful future source of capital so your piece of the pie is just dead weight on the cap table. This means every single subsequent investor (and the founders, if they care more about money than their relationship with you) has an incentive to cram you down.
So net net the chances of success from passive angel investing are only slightly better than playing the lottery.
Best approach would be to make very few investments, where you're able to build a special relationship with the founder, and ideally get a board seat to defend your stake.
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Edit - to be clear, I don't think startups should be giving board seats to angel investors. It does happen in exceptional cases where the angel is uniquely valuable to the company, and those are the cases where the angel can defend themselves. But they are rare, which is why it's mainly a bad game to play.
>Best approach would be to make very few investments
Top VCs—who see the best deals and run deep diligence—still only have a 1–5% hit rate. As an angel, you don’t have that level of access or time. Even if you get strong referrals, you’d need to be 10–15x better than elite VCs to pick winners in a small portfolio. Unless you’re investing in at least 10 companies, it’s statistically a losing game.
My experience: I invested in ~200 companies early stage (with some winners like HuggingFace, Checkr & more).
I've not seen that much but what I've seen is "Let's ask a few buddies and google a bit".
The takeaway that I agree with is the parent's and OP's point that you will need to invest in a lot of companies, perhaps 30-50, and you will nee to be in for the long term.
You don't need to sell your stake for it to be a winner. It's a winner because his stake in the company is worth significantly more than when he bought it.
A lot of angel investors are not investing particularly large sums, and a lot of what they're doing is buying someone that's going to use services other people they're connected to are selling.
When you're multiples are 10,000x revenue, a lot of people will shell out $10k to get you onto a few startup services...
That's the investment itself. Not getting paid back.
Developing a network of people who do favors for each other and learning about other people’s businesses and industry. Angel investing usually isn’t that capital intensive, so it’s sometimes worth pursuing. I don’t do it to get rich.
At my last startup, I think our board and observers liked hanging out more than they liked talking about the company. It wasn't perfect, but it's their money so I wasn't going to complain.
As an angel you do have a few advantages over VCs. There is no pressure to invest a certain amount within a certain time frame, so you can wait as long as you like until something comes along you really like. You can also do very small tickets, whereas a VC cannot afford to waste time on small stuff.
But I agree making money should not be the focus. I like to think of it as a "giving back to society" hobby. I enjoy supporting entrepreneurs, society needs more of them. I enjoy talking with the other investors, most of them other entrepreneurs like me. By contrast, other people my age buy a boat or a Porsche, angel investing makes me feel more useful.
For reference: I've only made 6 investments as an angel over the last decade, mostly SaaS, one exited at 12x, one died, four are still going at various levels of success but all healthy. So making money is possible, even if it's not the goal.
I'm not sure I'm following how anyone can target the angel investors specifically? Aren't all common share holders have the same fate? So if they screw the common share holders, early employees will get the same treatment as the angels? (dilution for example impacts all share holders). I understand that key employees can receive extra shares along the way, but most probably don't in their first 4 years.
The way I've heard it is that later investors collude (descriptive, academic term, not value judgment) with founders via liquidation preferences, dilution, etc., and effectively wipe out all common shareholders (particularly employees) and all earlier rounds, and then give the founders some additional terms to compensate them specifically. How exactly that works, what they're giving the founders, and how this isn't hugely illegal are all details that I don't understand. I put a top-level comment asking exactly that.
That's exactly the approach. Seen many deals where the (remaining) founders get a big slice of new vesting options or reverse vesting shares as part of a recap or semi-distressed round.
Nothing illegal about it when the company needs the money, just one investor can write the terms they want, and the founders are on board with the plan.
I understand that, particularly in a down round, investors can push to get more. What I don't understand is what allows founders to get a side deal. It seems like that would go against fiduciary duty to common shareholders and earlier rounds.
Yea the founders also have majority common stock. So there's not a normal scenario where the founders and other investors get paid out in an exit, but the angels don't.
The bigger fear is a non-exit scenario, where the company becomes profitable, possibly pays out large investors to maintain the relationship, and founders just take massive salaries. So no liquidation event that benefits angel investors.
This, and I'd add that one underrated upside of angel investing (and being LP of funds) is access to real, unfiltered information about the startup and the market. That's often far more insightful than the "everyone is crushing it" narrative you see in the media. In the article, the author mentions that she found other ways to get that info.
Is it a thing for angels to exit in the early rounds?
Instead of being shoved down the cap table by a giant tranche of series A preferred stock, might it not be appropriate to give the angel a payday instead?
I guess some angels want to keep their fingers in the pie? And, more likely, it’s just not a reasonable expectation to see an exit like that way before anyone else does?
It’s just the same thing as a take profit in the stock market. Intellectually it seems reasonable but because a lot of the bets go straight down (never raise another round for that take profit opportunity) you need a higher multiple of the ones that win.
You end up taking profit at a 1.1 return and in 10 years it ends up being uber.
Positive skew strategies (lose a little on a lot of bets and win big on a few) are impossible to use take profits on because you need those big winners.
early exits probably won't get the type of return that an angel investor would be interested in monetarily, since you need more than fu-money to motivate them.
Same author talks about Angel investors getting screwed by later rounds.
Here’s an example of a portfolio company that not only converted angel investor ownership to common stock, but also drastically decreased the number of shares.
I started asking for pro-rata side letters in 2017. But I recently found out (the hard way) that it’s common for follow-on investors to completely disregard any pro-rata rights of angel investors.
Founders, like entry-level workers, are closer to an option than a stock. There's a good chance that the payoff will be negative (in the sense that sometimes a company going to zero is a significant time-consuming process to investors). Someone who continuously buys out-of-the-money options will bleed money over time,
A general rule of thumb is that you have 3 board members at the seed (1 non-CEO founder, the CEO which is typically another founder, and the lead investor). So you have 1 seat available for investors, whereas you may take 5-20 checks. Not everyone is getting a seat.
At the A you usually expand to 5, adding the lead of the A round and an independent board member. Beyond that, it’s common for the earlier investors to get replaced on the board in future rounds and maintain observer rights.
If you are taking truly no institutional capital, it's a party round -- and unless you have a repeat founder that knows exactly what they're doing (and often even then!), it's a huge red flag.
> So net net the chances of success from passive angel investing are only slightly better than playing the lottery.
Is this right? An organization running a lottery—their whole job is to run a lottery, they’ve staked their reputation on the fact that they pay out to winners. The one with a reputation to defend is the one paying out.
The company angel investor is dealing with a company that, ultimately, wants to either get into position to sell some service, or wants to get bought. Their raison d'etre isn’t being a reliable payer-out of winners. I’d expect the lottery to be much more honest.
Eh, this is a site for chit-chatting, so I don’t expect perfect proofs generally. Assertions that are backed only by personal experience and hard-to-verify anecdotes are fine IMO.
> Eh, this is a site for chit-chatting, so I don’t expect perfect proofs generally. Assertions that are backed only by personal experience and hard-to-verify anecdotes are fine IMO.
Getting away from the original posts, but: The reflex to ask for sources probably comes from a good place. But, it has become too immediate nowadays online, to the point where (in my opinion) it gets in the way of discussion.
The request for a source should generally include a note on how the fact being questioned will impact the overall argument. Friendly conversations shouldn’t become asymmetrical homework generating exercises.
Take a couple years to learn how the industry works, make connections, maybe even get lucky with some bets. Then use all that to either start your own fund or get a job at a big Silicon Valley VC firm.
Hell, investing in general is a "mug"'s game (never heard this phrase before) if you go by per-capita return. It's the exceptionsl performers that make an outsized contribution to revenue that floats the whole boat.
>Four others that raised money but with painful recapitalizations that effectively wiped out early shareholders
I think its the recapitalizations that make the investments unfair. To buy a stake in a company then have it diluted by the bigger fish once a lot of the risk has been mitigated is BS if you ask me.
As a startup you don't have Google's money. You don't have Google's employer brand. You don't have Google's work environment.
in fact as a (hopefully) fast-growing startup the only thing you really have to offer is growth. So make it clear how you are going to help the candidate grow their career and experience faster at your startup than at the established company, and offer the best you can do on comp and work environment.
This doesn't mean fresh grads, but more like someone with a bit of experience who's ready to jump into a team lead or architectural lead role.
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