> "About 90% of startups fail. 10% of startups fail within the first year.
Yeah but often this is not due to quality issues alone. There could be more fundamental problems with product-market fit (unless you are defining quality so expansively and calling lack of demand as always stemming from poor quality product). As a QA guy, that seems to be your axe though tbh…
Any outside financing, even if pre-seed from friends and family? What about vesting schedules (for both you and him)? Get yourself an experienced VC lawyer (not just any lawyer). Yeah it will cost you, but a few thousand is totally worth it if you consider how much time and effort you’ll be putting into it. And experienced VC lawyer will have gone through this dozens of times and can anticipate problems that you (and your co-founder) likely cannot.
Ideally need some successful exits to get these roles. Not always but definitely helps, especially for plum roles on boards and VC firms.
> Can I even find a job with three short three short term roles on my resume over the past 2 years?
I don’t see why not. You seem to be able to line up new positions quite easily. One thing that you might not be doing right is demanding more information about the company and its funding status before signing on. At your level you need to start insisting on getting enough solid (documented) information to do your due diligence. Good luck!
OpenAi was founded basically to stop ai from taking over the world.
That was the clear idea. The objective was pretty clear even if exact what they were dealing with and how to go about doing it weren’t. Also the original reasoning is in line with creating a non-profit more than a startup. Finally, there was the specific rational of getting a team of people together. Given all that I think, it’s not really a great comparison to a single person noodling around for some profitable startup idea.
What doesn’t make sense is you even accepting their check without having a pretty good idea what you will try first. Sure there could be pivots and iterations but close to zero starting point and racing to reddit? I think that what people find a bit odd. Maybe things work differently in your local VC market.
What country OP?
You need to fight back! Do research on what the best approach is. Can you get your town to ban her bus? Or park your own car and those of your friends in front of your store to block her access? Maybe have the town install a time limit on parking along that street. The first step before do you any of this though is to ask her directly to not do this as it’s hurting your business. See what she says.
How many paying customers do you have currently?
Time to get some financing and expand your team! Particularly for the betting business.
It’s not at all like “Learn to sell” or “Learn to do taxes”. More like “Learn to perform a surgery”.
Idk. I’m not sure I’d put us devs at the same level as surgeons, as least not for major surgeries. Of course, they don’t do operations solo either in most cases.
It’s only $5k and a bit of time so ask yourself if it’s really worth getting a lawyer and suing him. Your rights totally depend on the contract you signed so nobody here can really say without looking at that. Definitely don’t work with him again. And next time do proper due diligence about any partner or startup (including requesting docs and financials if appropriate). Consider it a lesson learned.
You can’t really separate space and idea that much. A great idea in a non-viable space with tiny market is not really great. You also will not have expertise across all possible spaces so are generally better off sticking with what you or your co-founders know.
Bottom line, I think don’t you really have two orthogonal dimensions here. Just choose your most promising concept given your background and knowledge, considering both space and idea.
No it is not.
Any of the usual suspects for top b-schools and engineering/science/CS departments. MIT and Stanford as you mentioned are obvious choices, but just expand the list to include CMU, Harvard, Berkeley, UPenn, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, U of Illinois, maybe to lesser degree Princeton and Caltech (no b-school of course). UCLA/USC might also merit a look as startup activity has expanded to LA from SV in past 10 years. I’m sure I’ve missed some others.
Start looking now so that you’ll have outside options when your startup runs out of cash. Just keep an active job search process going so you can quickly jump ship. You say that the salaries you are finding are too low. Perhaps you need to reach a bit and apply for more senior roles even if you don’t feel fully qualified??
> alpha round of capital
For starters, avoid saying things like this, especially if you are native English speaker…
> I have a lot of experience in creating and managing!
Can you elaborate a bit?? Roles, $M raised, size of team managed, successful exits?
Reach out personally to people that you know. Need to get users and providers onto the platform and that often means contacting people personally in the beginning.
There’s a pretty standard playbook to follow. Similar to how we all know to set up as a C corp in DE. Just consult your advisors. It’s not a big deal.