Ex-Feedster Scott Johnson has an interesting podcast entitled
The Young Engineer’s Guide to Startups. It gives a nice overview of the
startup life, especially things like equity and the ‘risk to reward ratio’. The latter
can be summarized as: the earlier you join a startup, the higher the risk… but also
potential reward. Other tips: the less cash you take when you join a startup, the more
reward you potentially get; startups are “problem-solving paradises”; delay the valuation
if possible. All of which are handy tips if you’re thinking about starting a company, or
joining a startup.
I learned some new terms too – like “vomiting in the data center” 🙂
Interesting to
note that Scott has a new startup called Ookles, while his old company Feedster
is busy doing damage
control over at TechCrunch. Incidentally, Feedster does have a point when they say
their business is RSS-based and so it’s not quite the same as Technorati – something we went over back in July 2005 when I did my own
Alexa charts damnation
post. All the same, I think Feedster would help their cause if they promoted some of
the business arrangements they have – e.g. didn’t they do a deal with AOL in
June last year? What’s the latest on that and other RSS-based business that Feedster
does?
