Newcomb

The idea that valuations can be affected by staff numbers is one I have heard numerous times. While I wouldn't refer to employees as assets, it seems like a mistake to completely discount the idea that increasing the number of engineers won't affect valuation. The best I can come up with at the moment are some comments in the wake of Powerset's acquisition: "At that time we knew that a talented engineer in a tough to get tech was worth about $1.5 million per head. Thus, I knew with relative assurance that since we were going to hire at least 70 people with our Series A money, that our worst case scenario was about a $100 million exit." -[http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-creation.htm…

$1.5 million, according to Steve Newcomb (co-founder of Powerset): "At that time we knew that a talented engineer in a tough to get tech was worth about $1.5 million per head. Thus, I knew with relative assurance that since we were going to hire at least 70 people with our Series A money, that our worst case scenario was about a $100 million exit. If anyone is paying attention, you are now saying, wait a minute! Didn't Powerset sell for $100 million to MSFT? .... Yup, we nailed our worse case scenario!" (from http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-creation.htm…

San Francisco, Full-time. No remote work. famo.us - we are the company making HTML5 web apps performant. Go to http://famo.us/ in a modern browser on desktop and mobile devices to try out our stress test demo built on our JavaScript engine. We are all engineers. Our CEO, Steve Newcomb, is a founder and the former CEO of Powerset (which became Microsoft Bing). Om Malik recently called us his current favorite startup: https://twitter.com/om/status/273081831014952961 All positions, except PR/Marketing require very solid HTML, CSS and JavaScript experience, but even for that position it is a huge plus. We're looking for: Senior front-end engineer $100k—$175k 0.25—1.0% Mid front-end engineer $90k—$125k 0.1—0.5% Junior front-end engineer $75k—$100k 0.1—0.25% Famo.us Template Design Engineer $90k—$150k 0.1—0.5% 3D and/or Physics Game Engine Engineer $100k—$175k 0.25—1.0% Documentation Writer $75k—$125k 0.1—0.3% PR/Marketing/Social Media $60k—$90k 0.1—0.5% If you don't know JavaScript like the back of your hand, but are an excellent polyglot programmer that believes web apps are the future and you have skills that you believe would be valuable to us, please apply. Our new office will be at 3rd and King St in SoMa, right across the street from AT&T park and one block from the CalTrain station. Please read Steve's essay "Cult Creation" if you are serious…

[Interviewers] ask simple coding questions like the fizzbuzz, but [their] applicants still fail – even ones that shouldn't. [...] [Y]ou're using the wrong medium for what you're trying to achieve (e.g. coding over the phone). Clap clap clap. The same people that insist that the minimum development station is a tricked out computer with two (three?) big monitors, SSDs, the best IDE money can buy, etc. don't understand why someone is uncomfortable writing a program on a whiteboard or, even worse, over the phone. Unfortunately, I don't have the solution. Perhaps pg can add "Interviewing that doesn't suck" to his list http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html - obviously this is included in "7. Something your company needs that doesn't exist." and is the company version of "8. Dating." Personally, I think Steve Newcomb has a 90% (maybe better) solution. http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-creation.htm… (discussed here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1793095).

working for a corporate cult. Much like the modern (wrong) meme of "every company should try to be an abusive monopoly," every company should also try to be a cult unto themselves. You want your employees willing to die for the chance at helping you become a billionaire while they get much much much less. They should wake up every morning wondering how they can win your approval, even if it requires sacrificing their own wellbeing. A good SV-viewpoint sociopathic writeup of why your company should be a cult is (pdf) http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/storage/essay_pdfs/cult.pdf

"Engineers suck at negotiating, so don't negotiate, be fair." From http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-creation.htm…

I think the whole language around 'cults' is shifting in large part because of startups and in particular the work of Peter Thiel and Steve Newcomb: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/run-startup-like-cult-heres/ http://blognewcomb.squarespace.com/essays/2010/10/14/cult-creation.htm… Steve Jobs obviously stands in a class all his own. I'd think of it this way, startups and tech disrupt easy things first then harder things. The Newspaper industry was easy pickings, tech devoured it. Now it's working on eating the taxi industry[Uber,Lyft], the auto Industry[Tesla], and the monetary & financial system[Bitcoin]. Once it devours money, which has been the traditional exclusive comport of governments, government itself will be next. After that . . . Religion. This pattern makes sense, pioneering West was often driven by a religious sentimentality. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe we will start calling them NRE's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_religious_movement