finsrud
Joined 8 years ago
Karma
20
Submissions
22
Member since
Nov 14
technophile @ flux.law
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Comment · 1 month ago
We'll see how it all shakes out, but yes, I would bet there are some sticky conflict of interest issues at play.
The ends often justify the means (i.e. if the company does well, it's easier to retroactively overlook the conflicts; if the company flounders, the scrutiny will be intense).
Comment · 7 months ago
A startup lawyer's honest take on founder mental health during company distress — with real science and real tools.
Comment · 6 years ago
Most startups on the venture track aren't profitable or reinvest any profits into growing the business. No profits = no tax. So double taxation usually isn't a problem.
Comment · 6 years ago
True. But the 5 year holding period
doesn't start until conversion to a c-corp. So, plan accordingly.
Comment · 6 years ago
I love Stripe. And I agree that Atlas makes incorporation process quite easy.
But when I hear about a SaaS startup being organized as an LLC, I wonder if the founders considered the potential benefits of "qualified small business stock" or QSBS, which is only available in a c-corp.
With QSBS, each founder and investor can supersize their exit proceeds by wiping out at least $10 million in U.S. taxes. (See https://www.businessinsider.com/qsbs-qualified-small-busines...).
Comment · 6 years ago
I know these situations can be painful, (and there may be concerns re: confidentiality), but I really wish more founders would share a bit more detail describing what went wrong.
This kind of candor would be hugely valuable to other founders who are still in the trenches.
Comment · 6 years ago
> It seems that Ad business is eating up all the talent over there...
Yes, and trying to catch up with Amazon on cloud services.
Comment · 6 years ago
Yes!
We've held off on adopting Slack because Hangouts Chat seemed promising. But here we are almost 3 years since it was introduced and there's still no integration with Gmail. Argh!
To add insult to injury, while we're stuck using crusty old Google Chat, (due to its integration with Gmail), Microsoft Teams is adding features regularly and has blown by Slack in terms of DAU.
Google Sites is even worse. "New" Google Sites was introduced in June of 2016. Since then, it's received very little attention in terms of ongoing development.
Meanwhile, companies like https://www.notion.so/ are completely eating their lunch (Notion has only 27 employees last time I checked). It's hard for me to believe that Google employees use Google Sites internally in its current state when there are so many better options out there.
I've lost all hope on Sites. I'm still hopeful that Google will make Hangouts Chat competitive with Slack and M$ Teams.
All that said, Gmail, Gcal, and Google Drive are still really really good. Even Hangouts Meet has improved significantly over the past year.
Comment · 6 years ago
Here's a plain English explanation from Joel Spolsky: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
Comment · 6 years ago
I've used https://simplenote.com/ for ~5 years because it's clean, fast, cross-platform, supports Markdown, has decent search and tagging features, and it's free & open source.
Every day I open a new note named #[YYMMDD] Scratch, and use it as my daily scratchpad. That makes it easy to search for notes by year, month, and day.
In my experience, simpler is better.
Comment · 6 years ago
If you happen to be in California...
Section 2872 of the California Labor Code prohibits your employer from taking ownership of anything that you develop entirely on your own time without using your employer's equipment, supplies, facilities or trade secret information, EXCEPT for those things that either:
(a) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice to your employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development; or
(b) Result from any work performed by you for your employer.
Comment · 6 years ago
The audiobook is excellent as several members of the cast make appearances.