Startup dick moves to competitors

What are some unethical thngs your funded company founders and core nepotism team.hve done?? Ex my ex company founder hired wife, sister, and friends as board of director giving 4 seats to the family itself + fancy designations like cfo, coo cmo and ceo. All took 5 lakhs per month each as salary which means 20 lakhs going home from VC funded money per month. 1 million fundraise goes home in about 3 - 4 years used to set up paralell businesses, etc and no money made in core business

The Startup that you had an offer from but did not join, and then it went big? (Let's take a word from VCs, how they like to use anti portfolio lists on their sites - cos they got an opportunity to enter but missed)

I have evaluated a lot of startups as part of my work. My approach has changed from being optimistic to being suspicious of a lot of founders, even before the process starts. The sheer number of founders that I come across that try to game metrics/play around with data to make the startup look good. Most commonly: 1) Completely changing the definition of margins, repeat rates, etc. and never clarifying that they are using different definition. 2) Often giving rebates/discounts to key stakeholders but finding ways to hide it from their P&L so that it’s not visible. THIS IS SO COMMON - lot’s of them start showing revenues, and then you will see another cost item rising at the same pace, and lot’s of times it will just be money moving around 3) Sometimes completely giving the wrong picture of how their product works on ground. You then speak with their customers, and they describe something completely else. Things like these are eating up the ecosystem. These founders also end up fooling some VCs, and then capital get’s kept away from actually good founders who have good intentions. There was a recent major investment in the commerce space, and that is another one such example of a startup doing this. Needs to stop.

Hi, Grapeviners Can anybody tell me where can I find /apply to remote jobs of startups based out of US. I'm an Ex-founder with 4+ years of experience, just closed down operations of my company , looking for a full time role in product roles If Anybody can help , suggest, guide, that would be great. Thank you so much

I've a great idea and it's validated after talking to more than 50 founders/head of sales. Questions - 1. What's the process of getting a domain/and checking if the domain/product name is not a brand name globally anywhere? 2. Wrt raising funding, any founders here who can throw some light on how much salaries you used to take? I am not very inclined towards bootstrapping rn. 3. What were the challenges wrt starting your website, getting it validated by running ads etc? Maybe some D2C founders can help me out here. 4. What tools did you use for your first MVP launch? Thanks

A lot of folks working at startups seem to be "passionate " about their job. Some of them possibly, truly are. Some foolishly reverse engineer this passion because they're paid really well and they've been doing a good job and it's good personal PR to say "passion". A few reality checks. 1. Your cool Bangalore lifestyle is a result of investment risks/bets taken by VC's . 2. Your salary is as much about the market demand as it is about your " passion " and talent. 3. Startups will generally lower the bar for hiring processes to meet their demand for talent. Why need so much talent? Because the startup needs to spend that 100M$ Series C that just made them a unicorn. That's how they convince the VC to give more money. "We are going to 2x revenue by 2xing our salesforce and buying 10M$ worth of Saas that will increase our productivity by 5x. " And boom ...100M$ transferred into you SVB bank account. 4. You are as replaceable as a garbage bag on your dustbin. The HR is probably flirting with 10 other like you over linkedin. 5. The "values" this startup apparently espouses are mostly nothing but a honey trap and positioning to lure talent. It's great to have a nice tech job that pays well and allows you to gloat on twitter like a techbro but don't let it fool you into getting an inflated sense of entitlement. You're probably living on borrowed time....and money. :)

Currently I’m in the stage of building the MVP of my idea. Idea is not something unique. Already has a lot of competitors. In that scenario what is the chance of somebody investing in my startup. And I am also not from any tier 1 colleges or not an ex employee of any unicorn startups. In fact I am a college drop out from a tier 3 college. What is chance of I’m getting funding?

Another one bites the dust. Alpha Wave is too big, and this is fucked up for the ecosystem. They were really one of the heavy weights. Another big wallet with growth funding ability, just gone...

Was looking for automation solutions for my startup, came across an early stage AI startup that had 3-4 meetings with us and showed us screenshots of their product, but delayed product demo and signup. Few days later said they're shutting down because they couldn't raise funds and had no MVP ready to use. But they didn't tell us that earlier, all they said was "we are in early stages, still working on product, need info from you"etc. While their vision seemed good enough, not having an MVP while pitching for clients is weird and a waste of time tbh. No one will know or learn anything unless they try using an actual product, including themselves. And it isn't hard to build one either, i think I have the gist of it and might already be in production by other startups in this space. Decent low hanging fruit in SaaS with good long term potential. Doing things that don't scale doesn't mean you don't put in the required amount of work before approaching clients. Don't want to name them, they probably learned as much by now.

Link for actual thread and comments - https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/15p8qrx/my_0100m0_in_5_years_story/