McCloskey hired StyleSeat's first engineer via equity-only Craigslist ad
Melody McCloskey · 20VC: Why Every Founder Should Bootstrap Their Startup, How To Solve Information Asymmetry Between Founders and VCs & Living In A Cupboard For Two Years To Fund StyleSeat with Melody McCloskey, Founder & CEO @ StyleSeat · Mar 31, 2017 · at 3:32
Melody McCloskey, founder and CEO of StyleSeat, discusses how she built the initial prototype of her beauty marketplace before raising capital.
0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 22.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I found my first engineer by posting an ad on Craigslist and saying, I'm stealth company seeks engineer to build first version of product for equity, only no money. And believe it or not, that actually resulted in a fantastic engineer from Google who had made a bunch of money and didn't really want to work anymore, but he didn't want to get bored.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Melody McCloskey
McCloskey: Executives rarely transition successfully between early and late startup stages
“I think it's very rare to see that flexibility. I, it is that rare bird to find the person who can work at the public style company, or the company that's on that smooth paved road that is scaling, that can also go do the early stage stuff, or that gravelly ro…”
McCloskey: Leaking low runway to VCs severely damages fundraising terms
“When, I mean, the biggest challenge is when you are, let's say you're in the A stage of raising money, and you don't have a lot of runway, and as a startup, you need to try and keep as much of the power in that negotiation process as you can, while also, you k…”
McCloskey: Every founder should bootstrap their startup
“I think everyone should bootstrap because especially in boom times, I mean, a couple of years ago we had pretty significant boom times.”
McCloskey: The individual VC partner matters far more than firm brand
“The partner is so much more important to me than the firm because there's such asymmetry of information between founders and VCs that makes it really hard for a founder.”
McCloskey: Operating experience makes board members far more valuable than pure investors
“One of the big lessons that I've learned around what makes a good board member is having as much operation experience as you can, because investors can sort of say, well, here's what we've seen other companies do. Here are some trends and here's some data. And…”
McCloskey: VCs maintain information asymmetry because transparency isn't in their interest
“The challenge is that founders can't really share that information because it's not in their best interest, and VCs don't Really want to be transparent because it's not in their best interest, right? They sort of hold all the power. And what that means is that…”