

Couple getting married, creates registry for funding for their startup  - khangtoh
http://www.aboomba.com/wedding/
Jefft Bar already got AWS hosting for them
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timmaah
If you check the comments, Amazon Web Services fulfilled their wish for a week
in the cloud. Cheap and makes for good publicity.

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philwelch
This page seems to portray a very cost-inflated idea of what a startup is.

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hughprime
"Feed a hungry VC lunch: $291"

What kind of VC expects you to buy them a $291 lunch? If I were a VC I
certainly wouldn't invest in any company that thought buying me lunch was a
good use of their funds.

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philh
So, it's common for people to make a list of wedding gifts they'd like to
receive, and these guys are asking people to help fund their startup instead?
Do I have that right?

If so, is it common for people to spend over $100 on a wedding present for
another couple? $420?

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philwelch
Traditionally, a married couple would need to furnish their new home after
moving in together. Modern couples cohabitate before getting married and
already have all this stuff, but wedding gift registries are still used to get
"better" stuff.

As explained in sister comments, much of this stuff will be expensive,
impractical things they don't actually use very often if at all, but will
provide an expensive and symbolic keepsake that satisfies people's mammalian
hoarding instincts until making for an awkward asset-division discussion
during the probable divorce or, less probably, will probably either be
inherited or bring in some moderate amount of money at the longest-lived
partner's estate sale. (You can look at it more romantically than this, but
I'm in an existential mood.)

More practically, a gift registry prevents a couple from getting ten unique
waffle makers when they only need one.

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tjic
> Modern couples cohabitate before getting married

 _some_ modern couples cohabitate before getting married

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endtime
>Give an accountant some love for an hour, a.k.a. avoid "making friends" with
the IRS >Price: $420.00

Do accountants really make $420/hour? I'm in the wrong field...

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philwelch
Per billable hour, for a good tax accountant, probably. Per working hour for
an average accountant, I doubt it. It's not impossible for a good programmer
to make $420 per billable hour (or whatever the equivalent is in "real"
hours).

~~~
endtime
$420 * 8 * 5 * 50 = $840,000. Where can a good programmer get paid that?

~~~
philwelch
_Billable_ hours for an accountant or lawyer are usually around 1800/yr. (The
job also requires non-billable hours.) That's 420*1800 = $756,000, assuming
the accountant themselves takes home the whole fee. But they don't, just as a
programmer doesn't take home every dollar of value they bring into the
company. If they take home roughly 2/3 of it (generous, probably unrealistic)
that's $500k. So how does a programmer get $500k per year?

One way is to perpetually earn $500k on a 5% rate of return from $10,000,000.
That's 33% equity in a startup that's acquired for $30,000,000--probably more
rare than a tax accountant.

A programmer doing consulting work might make around $420 per billable hour,
but probably as a peak rate and not sustainably.

You could combine income streams: a high paying software job (that's
$100,000-$200,000/yr at the top levels) plus consulting (another $100,000+
worth of contracts in a given year is doable for some) plus some equity as a
founder or early employee ($100,000 as 5% return on $2,000,000 in wealth)
could get you there. It's not as convenient as putting in hours at an
accounting firm, but a lot of good programmers fall into it anyway.

~~~
shimon
As a consulting programmer, I can imagine you might get paid $420/hr in a few
rare cases:

1\. You built something really complex and a very rich client needs emergency
help with it.

2\. You are extraordinarily famous and a very rich client feels they must have
you.

3\. You are convincingly misrepresenting yourself as a team of 7 hardworking
people.

4\. You have an unusually efficient way of doing something, so you can win
fixed-cost-for-deliverables contracts and execute them in fewer hours.

As for what a mortal working as a consultant can normally achieve, $420/h is
more than twice what I would consider a very good rate. Only under very
unusual circumstances can I imagine a programmer billing at this rate, even on
a large corporate client.

Well, maybe if you were working for a bank...

~~~
jrockway
I make almost exactly $420 an hour when I teach training classes.

Of course, there is much work that went into developing those classes that I
get no hourly wage for at all. So I think of it in terms of, "I need to teach
x courses a year" rather than $x/hour.

But technically, that is what the client pays.

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mattmaroon
Apparently feeding an engineer for a day costs $273. Imagine Google's profits
if they didn't have the cafeteria.

~~~
testr4
If you read carefully, this is the annual salary divided by 365 days

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phatboyslim
Have been noticing an reasonable number of articles or advice from executives
that emphasize not mixing family and business. Perhaps they didn't get the
memo.

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BRadmin
Would be interesting to see the breakdown of donators -- wedding attendees vs.
non-attendees.

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joecode
Emily Post is rolling over in her grave... but good luck to them, anyway.

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edw519
This was cute for about 7 seconds. After that it was just annoying.

OTOH, if they can get people to fund their startup with donations, more power
to them. Then I'd say something like, "Gee I wish I would have thought of
that."

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youngj
pathetic

