alexdevkar

I believe your generalizations go too far. The "crazy" founder who succeeds despite all odds is only one archetype. There are others. Many outliers are successful by creating new markets.

This guy (T.A. McCann) has successfully built and sold a startup, so he doesn't lack the will -- he just lacks the will for this business.

Markets can be so tough that the time/cash/energy to succeed in them means the opportunity is not as attractive as others.

You're right. That's true the before the acquisition and after. Your employer can say you have to accept a reduced package or get fired.

The difference is the starting point of the negotiation. If the acquirer wants to keep you, the "right" language in the option plan means the starting point is your original comp package. You have to explicitly agree to a reduced package for it to change. If you have the "wrong" language, there is simply no deal in place to start the negotiation.

The author notes (a) ways Harvard could spend its money that might have more public benefit and (b) that other non-profits are more deserving of donations. Even if all true, that doesn't mean it should be stripped of its non-profit status. Perfect management to optimize public benefit isn't the standard for whether an organization gets non-profit status.

The more interesting argument is about what organizational traits our government should require in order to be blessed with special treatment.

Other Conspire founder here.

We will not spam your contacts, sell your or your contacts' email addresses or personal data, or otherwise sell data about you to third parties.

Down the road, we will offer premium plans with professional search tools. An example use case is if you want to reach CIOs in northern California at companies greater than 100 people, we will identify those people and tell you the best person in your network to ask for an intro. At the moment, we're focused on growing the size of the network and making it valuable for users.

One other subtle point I wanted to mention: We don't expose email addresses via the product. The only people you can email are those for which you already have an email address. The same is true for people trying to contact you. So you won't get a bunch of spam recruiter emails.

I'm a founder.

Re permissions: We use IMAP to access email data, so there is no granularity. It's all or nothing. We never move or delete messages and only send messages with your express permission. (Google offers a Gmail API that has slightly more granular permissions, but it is not peformant for our use case.)

Re deleting an account: Yes! You can delete your account and all of your data from our system with a couple of clicks. You can do that from your account page.

Please ping me with questions. [email protected].