re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes Mountplight_reading,
I can't believe that I'm defending VCs, but I have to make one point. I don't think it's unfair for the VCs to protect they investors. These guys are taking investors money and putting it at risk, and it IS their investors money being used to fund the company.
What is a crime is that people who would never spend a dime on a market option because it is too risky will invest 4 years of their life without understanding how this game is played. In fact, the game is rigged in favor of those who understand how to play it.
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes Mount> I'll bet that 99% of the readers of this board > are CLUELESS about the particulars of this > right of their VC investors.
Both clueless and cluefull employees stand chance to make some significant buck only if start-up is a really successful one - this is what capitalism is about.
Tha nexabits, netcores, cosines and corvises of this world were just a byproduct of "irrational exuberance" and it is over for good.
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes MountThat could explain why Riverdelta employees were rumored to have gotten just got $3/share when the company sold for $300 mil.
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes MountWhat you employees need to focus on is the common price (or option grant price) relative to the preferred stock price, relative to current market value. All three might be totally disconnected. Often options are granted at around 10% of the preferred price to provide the obvious recruiting incentives, etc. With regards to liquidation preference, no question common (option) holders take it in the shorts and you need to understand ALWAYS how much preference is ahead of your common. What many board boards are doing now is setting aside a chunk of any proceeds from a merger (8 to 12% of consideration usually) that gets paid out pari passu with the liquidation preference to employees. How that gets allocated is usually discretionary.
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes Mountmu-law wrote:
""It needs the space of two aisles and could prove to be a difficult box to deploy in older bay line ups."
I think everybody is used to this now, as it is hard to find any data gear that IS "NEBS depth" except for transmission equipment. Routers are by far the most egregious... Avici goes pretty darn deep too."
You should probably do a little more research in this area. There are many companies who are aware of the pain non-standard depths cause the customer (you know, the people with the checkbooks).
If Juniper is targetting the same depth as Avici, they may end up with the same rock-bottom valuation as Avici as well.
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes MountIsn't the M640 supposed to have 32 OC-192 ports in half a bay? I heard it is based on a completely different architecture. I guess it supports 40G line cards. What is happening to the M320? Is it cancelled?
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes MountMaybe there never was an M320. Doesn't seem like 160 -> 320 in 2 years would be a big jump anyway. I wonder when the 40G interfaces will ship.
Has anyone here actually seen a shipping 40G interface with their own eyes?
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes Mount the only people who have been forced out, so to speak, are weak links and empty suits. people who just can't keep up. yes, thatincludes some ex-cisco people. people who really rode the tidal wave of cisco and didn't actually contribute. i have several friends working for this company and everyone there is very excited about where they're going.
I love all this Malthusian talk. It's just so quaint at this juncture in the industry. How is your tune gonna change when your buddies are voted off the island (as they will inevitably be).
Honestly, some of these startup kids talk like they belong to some religious cult with darwinian logic as their supreme ethic: "the strong are virtuous and the weak must die because weakness is evil." Sheesh!
you're only as strong as your weakest link on a team that has ambitions like theirs.
ein volk, ein reich, ein fuehrer! Sheesh! Next you true believers will be practicing eugenics to get just the right skill set for a winning team.
you can say they aren't going to be the next cisco. maybe not. why don't we just watch and see.
Why don't you just watch and see. We've seen it all before. Hubris, followed by paranoia, followed by the search for weakest links so they can be eliminated before the drag the truly virtuous ones down with all the empty suits and non-contributors. Pretty scary world view some of you guys got.
re: Rumors Rampant as Startup Woes Mount There valuation is driven down by another DIRTY LITTLE SECRET the VCs likely negotiate before investing in your company. Many techies don't know or understand this.
Geez. How are the VCs gonna keep the engineers slaving away, doing those 80 hour weeks when they find out what the real "upside" is? Gonna be hard to use greed to motivate people to completely unbalance their life for the greater glory of the next Whizbang startup. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. . . " ;-)
I can't believe that I'm defending VCs, but I have to make one point. I don't think it's unfair for the VCs to protect they investors. These guys are taking investors money and putting it at risk, and it IS their investors money being used to fund the company.
What is a crime is that people who would never spend a dime on a market option because it is too risky will invest 4 years of their life without understanding how this game is played. In fact, the game is rigged in favor of those who understand how to play it.