[8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm]

I've been burned repeatedly by startups recruiting me for one role which matches my experience/skillset, then after a month or so radically changing the role to one which I'd had no experience with. I get pivoting, I get needing to be flexible, but why would you hire someone skilled in networking operations and four weeks later decide that person need to design/develop your Windows application instead?

I've always been paid, however I now check to see if startups have actually filed the SEC paperwork when they claim to have raised a round, and verify with the investors they claim to have backing from that they've actually invested in the company. One startup I worked for lead the employees to believe we had a solid 18 month runway, when in fact the founders were covering payroll from home equity lines of credit. They didn't actually close the round until a year after most of the initial employees left as payroll became erratic.

Another startup I worked for on the basis of a handshake...never do that. After a year of developing the company's MVP the founder formalized the structure and equity of the company, cutting the four early employees out as co–founders and reducing our equity from 2% to 0.5%. As were were all working on handshakes, none of us had legally committed to working for him, so we all walked away. He lost the MVP since I had the only copy.

The last startup I worked for (and will ever work for), I was recruited by the CEO to come in and build a mixed-discipline technical team in a supporting role. Within a month it became fairly clear that I'd been hired over the objections of pretty much the entire management team, which had I known I wouldn't have taken the role. I was clearly pegged as "a bad hire" which would not have happened had anyone I'd interviewed with spoke up.

Throwaway account…

[s3b]

> verify with the investors they claim to have backing from that they've actually invested in the company.

I'm curious, how would you go about doing this?

[8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm]

As mooreds wrote, I'd start with Edgar and the SEC. I'd also check state records (i.e. are they a Delaware C corp? I should be able to pull public information about the filing, same for most states at varying levels of difficulty).

I used to get annoyed at all of the chest-beating press releases about how much money a company had raised until I realized it was a form of external validation. None of the companies which burned me on equity/funding issues wanted to talk publicly about their fundraising rounds, it was always "we're going to a do a press release, it's just not the right time now". If you publicly state "We raise a $2.5MM Series A from the following investors" I can go out and verify that.

Bonus story: a "company" recruited me hard to be their CTO. Some wining and dining. But a lot of handwaving about the business model and where the funding was sourced from. The founders wanted me to bring their "vision" of social e-commerce to market utilising a proprietary algorithm which would be disclosed to me only upon taking the role. When pressed about corporate structure and funding they eventually disclosed that funding was coming in the form of personal checks written to cover bills as they came in, by the domestic partner of one of the founders. No C Corp, not even an LLC. I declined.

[8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm]

Late followup…in addition to Edgar/SEC I'd look at Mattermark, Crunchbase and Angelist. Meant to mention them earlier.

[mooreds]

If they are a US company, I'd start with Edgar: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

For example, you can see the amount of money FullContact raised in 2015 here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1523064/000152306415...

[jordache]

why didn't you just use the MVP as leverage? surely he would have given in?

[8KjRu5VAAeMBIZm]

I did, he held fast to his belief that we hadn't contributed enough to be co–founders nor to get the equity stakes he’d promised when he recruited us. He never raised the money he kept claiming to be raising, and never replaced us with a new team. The startup (if you can call it that) died pretty much when the founder decided to screw the rest of us.

[st3v3r]

What would be the point? Would you want to continue working for someone who would pull that crap? Would you have any kind of confidence in a company run by someone who would pull that crap?