42Floors Blog

This post is highly reminiscent of a previous post... http://42floors.com/blog/posts/be-yourself-abnormal-people-create-abnormal-returns

The recurring theme is..."Don't be a faker. Don't be a poser."

My two cents is that most of us feel like we got to where we are by "Paying Our Dues" and resent others who seem to jump to the top without making the sacrifices we made.

The real truth is...we all have stories playing in our heads of who we are, and what we accomplished. It is very easy to look across the street and wonder why you had to work so hard, and other seem to just have life handed to them on a silver platter.

The reality is though, we have no idea what challenges they faced and overcame, and more importantly they have no control of how we perceive them.

Seeing a programmer in a suit, upsets you cuz its fake, but it really upsets you because you know it took a heck of a lot more than a suit to get funding. Boy would it suck if he got funding just for wearing a suit.

Seeing a non-coder claim to be a technical founder must suck because you are a real founder, who knows what it really takes, and you feel you have no right to claim you are a technical founder.

The truth is, we can write whatever story we want about ourselves, and you can choose to believe whatever stories you want to about others. None of it really matters...

At the end of the game, "The Pawn and the King both go back in the same box."

I can really relate to how the author feels within other…

> Who chose the open office concept in the first place!?

I always figured zoning laws usually discourage heavy development, so companies are heavily incentivized to use open-plan offices to save on rent.

Here's a listing for 3 offices for 900 sq. feet for $63.33/year, or $55,197/year. Each office might be something like 10% of your fully loaded cost, so a company with at 10 employees is spending an entire employee on rent. https://42floors.com/us/ca/san-francisco/235-montgomery-st?listings=581568 .

You could cram them into a box and they would whine, but it might be worth it if you can get an entire extra employee out of it.

Though, there are 3 8-hour shifts in a single 24-hour day, so I'm surprised they don't stagger scheduled times for employees so they can share the same space. I myself usually like starting work at 4 or 5 AM, since there are fewer people around. There's probably way too much social inertia for that in general, compared to spending a few thousand $ on some cubicle walls.

If you can afford more than 10 employees, you're probably quite profitable and the margin on well-run software companies is pretty high, so maybe they don't care about rent at that point.

I think YC has reached a point where anything PG says is likely to be interpreted in the worst possible light.

That's unfortunate, because YC really doesn't have a type. I don't think there was a single Zuckerberg clone in our batch[1], a large portion of the batch had a foreign accent (me included), there were several awesome women led teams (Shoptiques, HireArt, TheDailyMuse, 99Dresses...) and we all got in.

As I told a friend somewhat indelicately recently, the best attitude to have post YC-rejection is "Screw YC, we are going to go gangbusters on this anyway". Ironically, this makes you more likely to get in the the next time, should you choose to apply. If not, you still win. Mbellotti clearly got that part right with this: "Everything I have ever achieved in life has started with a panel rejecting me, YC was just another notch." So godspeed to her!

[1] The closest may have been Jason Freedman, and he looks nothing like Zuckerberg http://42floors.com/team

this is depressing. cheers to the guy for his persistence and interest - but seriously - why would you still want to work for a company after being literally treated like crap like that? also - what bargaining value do you have at all w.r.t. salaries or equity if you go in seeming like the most desperate person alive? It should be the other way around - if you´re good and talented - which the author of the article obviously is - then companies should court you to be come a part of their business. Case in point - the 42floors guys - who were awesome enough to really try to woo Dan Shipper publicly - http://42floors.com/blog/consider-this-a-job-offer-to-work-at-42floors - at the end of the day - you want to be valuable to a company - and you want them to want you - telling them that they can use you isnt that.

Apartment discovery is already well served. There are a dozen new startups that apply innovative methods to search. http://www.apartmentlist.com/, https://livelovely.com/, http://42floors.com/ come to mind.

Software for estate agents needs to be become more modern though. http://nestio.com/ just rebranded themselves to do that for example.

There's a German property portal (number two in the market) which released an iPad app for estate agents. Property management, contact list, calendar etc. Something like 50 USD/month for the app or $100/month for the hardware&app.
Website is in German, but there are screenshots and video http://immonetmanager.de/produkt/

42Floors (http://42floors.com/)

San Francisco, CA

We're looking for extremely talented people to help us bring the commercial real estate industry into the 21st century.

Hiring salespeople, operations coordinators, data analysts, market researchers, admins/EAs, full stack engineers, and back-end engineers. (Apply: http://42floors.com/jobs)

All positions are full time, SF-based.

YC W12, $18m in funding from NEA, Bessemer, Thrive, SV Angel, etc. (http://42floors.com/investors)

Learn more about us here: http://42floors.com/press or email me with any questions!