Dan Shapiro

One way in which liquidation preference could be constrained is if potential employees of start-ups began actually inspecting the expected value of their job offers, or at least some heuristics that approximate such a thing. For example, I've always found [0] to be a very useful way to get a rough sense of what an offer is really worth, and from there you still have flexibility to shade to a more or less risk averse assessment depending on who you are personally. Crucially, doing this must include pieces of information such as what liquidation preference has been given to investors. And if a company won't share this with you, run, don't walk, away immediately.

So often people say that you should not attempt an expected value computation or even any attempt whatsoever to estimate the distribution of possible outcomes when appraising the value of a start-up offer.

The usual excuse is that you should value equity at $0 and just hope to be pleasantly surprised if it's worth anything -- in which case the sole reason you accept the below-market wages, long hours, poor benefits, etc., of the start-up job is because you (supposedly) personally get satisfaction from working on something "cool" that is "new" and "unproven" and "entrepreneurial" -- and I guess it is just personal taste as to whether you feel that applies to any given company. (Personally, I have encountered maybe 1 or 2 total start-ups that were doing any kind of work that was different from standard big-box…

Okay, i'm no expert, i don't know how the play. But wanted to learn it a while ago.

As i think i could be a user, this is what you "could" keep in mind:

What i did was (i didn't have a piano and that's expensive), i bought a piano keyboard. (it's like a piano but with notes instead of buttons and it runs on batteries :-P).

All that i learned, was the start of the fûr elise while watching youtube videos. I know about the 30 first notes or so and that's where my expertise ends.

My brother has a piano, what i did then was put a tablet on top of it (not much space on it) and imitate a "virtual piano" app. I could imitate some some because of this.

Some things you should know:

The idea of this project is great, but a lot of people who don't own a piano. So your audiance is already "limited". Suggest alternatives like a cheap piano keyboard for the ones who don't have one. Just to get them started.

Second thing, not much people have place to put a monitor on top of their piano. A tablet is about the max you can get on top of ours.
You could start looking into Raspberry Pi and small screens to adjust this.

Third thing, you are showing notes and in the start, people don't know where the notes are, you could show piano buttons /places instead.

Fourth thing, you're video isn't inspiring. If you look at the top kickstarter campaigns... You'll see a lot of different things then you're video. Watch these for…

Good question that most people face and are afraid to ask :)

Here are some resources to check out that have covered this well:

* Rand wrote a great post (http://moz.com/rand/understanding-stock-options-at-startups-and-at-moz/)

* Solid overview: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/11/how-much-are-startup-options-worth/

* This is a good book that doesn't get enough love (http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Silicon-Valley-Startups-ebook/dp/B004Q9U19G)

* Good high-level notes about equity in startups (part of an incredible series, read it all if you can - http://blakemasters.com/post/21742864570/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-6-notes-essay)

* Venture Hacks on the "Option Pool Shuffle": http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle

> Again, once you have doubled your money and gotten it back, you can invest it anywhere you like, including the same companies you may have before. But now you have twice as much money.

Again, that's exactly wrong. As far as the fund is concerned, that money's gone.

Let me help you understand with this link: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/

Pay special attention to the section entitled, "They don’t appear to be particularly interested in making large amounts of money."

Dan Shapiro has written a good post on this: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-second/

To summarize, he says:

1. Skip the title

2. Skip the drawings

3. Skip the abstract

4. Skip the specification

5. Find the independent claims, and read them

6. Back to skipping – toss the dependent claims (any claim that starts with “The _____ of claim _____” is essentially a refinement or detail of the parent claim).