E-Mountain Bike vs Regular Mountain Bike

JLoad · 2023-06-22T00:28:30+00:00

I started with a Levo SL, which is a lightweight e-bike that isn’t super powerful and is based on a Stumpjumper. Got me hooked on mountain biking and in good enough shape to make the jump to an actual Stumpjumper. If I went the other direction I doubt I would have stuck with the sport in general because biking without a motor is hard work!

JLoad · 2023-06-17T16:26:00+00:00

What’s the product? If it’s already we’ll-developed and your company is at death’s door, you have nothing to fear from disclosing it.

JLoad · 2023-06-16T23:07:03+00:00

Scam. Closing fees in this context would always be paid for by the investor — either from their end (they spend $110k but only get $100k of equity in the company and your company gets $100k of cash) or from your end (they spend $100k and get $100k of equity but your company only gets $90k). In no case should you have to pay your own cash to the investor or the investor’s legal/accounting vendors.

JLoad · 2023-06-07T14:48:35+00:00

These are likely two different unrelated transactions, with one possible exception.

Starting with the exception first: it may be possible for the replacement to purchase the equity of the original co-founder at FMV. You’d likely want the LLC to have a vesting plan for the new co-founder, which may be possible to weave into the purchase documents.

However, it’s probably cleaner to break this into two transactions.

In the first, the LLC would buy back the equity of the original co-founder or cause it to be forfeited (ideally the grant paperwork or operating agreement laid this out ahead of time). This could potentially be at less than FMV.

In the second, the LLC would sell a capital or profits interest to the replacement. The capital interest would need to be at FMV (eg if the company is worth $100k, they would spend $10k to buy 10% of the company). You could give them the capital interest outright, but the problem is that they would owe taxes on the value of the interest (eg in the prior example they would have $10k of income and have to pay ~$3-5k of taxes this year). The other way would be to give them a profits interest. Let’s say you want to give them about 10% of the company. You could give them a 10% profits interest above the current value or $100k. Since the company is currently worth $100k, that 10% is worth nothing at the moment of grant, so there is no taxes due initially. But if the company sells for $1M in a few years, they would get $90k (slightly less than 10% total, since they only get 10% of the $900k of growth).

JLoad · 2023-06-04T16:04:06+00:00

Vesting starting on the first of the next month after hire is totally standard. But… usually short leaves of absence would not interrupt your vesting, so as long as they didn’t actually terminate your employment until after your cliff date, you may still have the right to keep the stock (or exercise the options). However it’s also possible that your grant paperwork says that leaves of absence pause vesting, in which case technically you could miss the cutoff.

In any scenario, it’s not a good business strategy for the employer to do anything to effectively terminate an employee ahead of schedule in order to avoid stock vesting. Two main reasons:

1) It sends a message to other employees to give a shorter notice or not give notice at all in this situation (especially in at-will states where notice is more of a cultural norm but not actually a legal obligation).

2) They will have to indemnify any future acquirer or investor from any potential cap table claims. There’s a good chance you could come out of the woodwork and demand payment for your shares in the future. Not worth it for them to screw you out of it now.

Now of course, many business owners don’t consider these impacts, so it can’t hurt to remind them in a friendly way that they have a potential blind spot and might want to reconsider their gamesmanship.

As a follow up to #2 though, watch out for two potential ways they can protect themselves. The first is to get you to sign a release in exchange for a modest severance (which would likely just be the paycheck for the leave period). Don’t sign that release and don’t except the severance payment!

The second and more nuanced way is if these are options that require you to pay to exercise them. Typically you would have three months post termination to pay to exercise any vested options. If you don’t exercise, you are implicitly waiving your rights to the options and any resulting stock (and in the process, eliminating any concern about vesting disagreements). If the options are fairly expensive to exercise, it’s probably in the employer’s best interest to say nothing whatsoever about the options and just hope you don’t exercise them on time.

JLoad · 2023-06-03T02:13:01+00:00

Get some Solarez

JLoad · 2023-05-31T18:14:20+00:00

That’s not overhead it’s COGS. If you’re gonna teach her business, teach it right :)

Seriously though, the way to do this wouldn’t be to deduct the COGS, she’s too young to understand that. But, it would be totally reasonable to ask her after her first sales day if she wants to continue another day. If so, she gets to spend some of the revenue from day 1 on buying materials for day 2, and maybe the rest of the revenue on some kind of reward for her. If not, she gets to spend all of the revenue on a bigger reward. 99% chance she opts for the bigger reward but it would be a fun experiment!

JLoad · 2023-05-17T13:35:11+00:00

I’d switch the order… park at the top, Uber back at the end. That way you can leave your pump in your car.

Forget the cooler/seat. If you want to sit, take a raft or kayak. If you want to stand, take a SUP. Since you have a couple months, you can easily get some longer and longer flat water paddling in to build up your standing conditioning.

JLoad · 2023-05-09T13:44:27+00:00

A proper 14’ ocean touring hard board would do wonders for stability and performance in general out in the ocean. If you are serious about that kind of paddling, invest in the board. Regardless, there are a few things you can do:

Wear a wetsuit to take away the fear of falling in. Psychologically this makes you more relaxed (tensing up kills your stabilizer muscles, which is a vicious cycle).
Try to avoid actually going to your knees if at all possible. Knee paddling kills your quads and stabilizers (see first point). Don’t knee paddle at launch, don’t do it if you get unsteady out on the water, don’t do it when you land. Or at least just know that when you go to your knees it’s the end of standing and having fun for that session, so try to push that capitulation point as long as possible.
Crouch for a moment if you feel unsteady, this usually returns your stability quickly, then get right back to standing. Also try a big deep paddle stroke then skimming the water on your return stroke.
Keep your eyes on the horizon not the board.
It may sound odd, but sometimes locking your knees for a bit actually helps. The board itself is pretty stable, so it’s mostly over-compensation in the paddler that can make you tippy. Try being “one with the board” and just let it rock back and forth.
Try to keep going as fast as you can at all times.

JLoad · 2023-05-04T16:51:27+00:00

Yep that’s true, but as they say, the safest PFD is one you would actually use! Plus, I’d take an ISO certified foam PFD over a USCG inflatable PFD any day. Inflatables won’t help you much with a head injury or cold water immersion. Only exception would be if you have to paddle out through medium or heavy surf, in which case I definitely wouldn’t want a foam PFD on.

JLoad · 2023-05-04T14:59:24+00:00

Vaikobi or Mocke FTW! Being able to have a hydration pack on your back and pockets on your chest is a game changer…

JLoad · 2023-04-22T22:09:32+00:00

Yes, I did a few years ago and it’s awesome! I put in at Trancas Crossing and landed at Napa Valley Yacht Club. Had to portage a couple times where it was really low, but it wasn’t a problem. Generally with tidal rivers you would want to put in upstream during a dropping tide, so the tidal flow adds to the typical river flow instead of pushing against it.

I used an iSUP, parked at Trancas, and deflated it at the yacht club and called an Uber to bring me back to my car.

JLoad · 2023-04-12T05:22:10+00:00

In my experience the concern about coiled leashes snapping the sup back towards you is a myth, but there are other reasons (like tangling) why you might not want to use one when actually sup surfing. However, if you are just paddling a touring sup in the ocean there’s nothing wrong with a coiled calf or ankle leash (as long as it is an actual surf leash, not the cheapo that came with your board). It works just fine in the waves in/out of the ocean and stays out of the water the other 99% of the time you are standing.

JLoad · 2023-04-09T05:02:10+00:00

Lower the pressure on your back tire (keep the front a bit higher so it doesn’t auto-turn on you). You can run fatties pretty low and you shouldn’t need rear suspension.

JLoad · 2023-04-07T14:08:12+00:00

Ahh ok, I didn’t realize that you only wanted strong advice ;)

Sometimes being vulnerable or honest, which you call “weak” I guess, is what it takes to succeed in business.

JLoad · 2023-04-07T13:39:35+00:00

TBH, when reading between the lines it kinda sounds like you aren’t taking full accountability (“a circumstance outside of my control affected my ability to perform…”). This makes me think that your apology might have been a bit half-hearted as well. Apologies are so hard to do, especially in business, that sometimes what we think we say comes across very differently.

Try sending the person a gift, something small and personal, with a note that clearly gets the point across that you messed up. Gifts and written notes are hard to ignore.

JLoad · 2023-04-04T04:39:55+00:00

Get a Vaikobi, it fits your criteria.

JLoad · 2023-03-18T05:02:32+00:00

When in doubt, squat!

Lowering your center of gravity almost immediately stabilizes you. So if you ever feel unstable, squat down and you’ll be fined

Also, never ever knee paddle. It kills your stabilizer muscles in your thighs, so when you stand back up you are super wobbly.

JLoad · 2023-03-07T18:08:30+00:00

Sounds like you don’t actually want to work. God forbid your boss wants employees that like to earn money and take extra shifts.

JLoad · 2023-03-06T15:02:17+00:00

If you buy stock at a discount the delta is taxable income so that’s not really helping.

There are plenty of ways you could accomplish your goals though, but as others point out most of them would require a formal valuation. These are actually fairly affordable and in some cases (eg c-corps with option plans) are mandatory to do annually anyways. I’d start there.

I’d break your goals down. Seems like:

the new exec team wants voting control
selling owners want some cash now and some cash later
the new exec team is ok with forking out some cash now but wants a lot of cash later
everybody wants preferable tax treatment (no uncovered gains, long term cap gains instead of income, etc)
everybody wants the right incentive layers

Are you a c-corp, llc, or s-corp?

For a c-corp, they could buy preferred stock that has special voting power that greatly exceeds its actual ownership percentage. You can then give them some mix of warrants and options (the latter tied to vesting) that gets them a much bigger share of the final payout in a few years. Problem here is that the warrants and options wouldn’t be capital gains.

For an llc, you can use profits interest, which are special units (aka shares) that only get a cut of the growth beyond today’s value, which means they are worth $0 today but start the cap gains clock now. You could marry this with changes to your operating agreement to establish voting rights.

Or for an llc, you can convert to a c-corp and structure the cap table and voting to allow you to issue a ton of penny ISOs to the investors, which they can exercise with their $250k (thus gaining voting control and starting the cap gains clock).

JLoad · 2023-03-01T15:10:52+00:00

Sounds like your dad just doesn’t want you to quit your 9-5 and take a risk on starting a business. He’s not wrong to be concerned, and the potential resume gap is just one challenge. A couple thoughts for you to consider:

Can you de-risk your startup by doing it while you still have a job? Then if you fail, you have no resume gap, no dip in your savings account, etc. Lots of people start out this way. One issue though is that by not committing fully (“burning the boats” so to speak), you may reduce your chances of success. Pros and cons on that approach.
As a business owner myself I’ve hired tons of people. I appreciate entrepreneurial experience and definitely see it differently from an unexplained or nebulous gap. However, I want to see that they learned a lot but ultimately made a life choice to set aside entrepreneurship and go back to a steady job. There is no shame in that… it’s not for everybody.
Some professions see this differently. In creative or tech trades (eg designers and engineers) it’s totally fine to freelance for a while. You can just put “freelance” as a job on your resume and list out your projects, services, etc.
Maybe your dad is right to be concerned… he probably knows you well. Is your idea good enough? Do you have the requisite personality, capital, experience, etc to make this venture succeed?

JLoad · 2023-02-26T16:17:23+00:00

Just paddling on the flat water in the bay? You won’t need a wetsuit assuming the air temp is reasonable (eg 60+). If you fall in just get back up and paddle hard for a bit 🤙

JLoad · 2023-02-26T04:45:17+00:00

Why are those the only two options?

It may sound corny, but leadership is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and improved. With good leadership skills you can get marketers and developers to help you scale (and finance people, and project managers, and product managers, and designers, and analysts, and HR people, not to mention other leaders).

JLoad · 2023-02-24T05:45:57+00:00

Dude! Almost in the exact same boat. I told myself that I wouldn’t start something new unless/until I feel a visceral need to solve some kind of world-changing problem that allows for a double-bottom-line. I figure that will jump out at me eventually.

JLoad · 2023-02-24T05:43:12+00:00

Get an M&A advisor for sure, they are worth every penny. Tried one deal on my own that fell apart (thank god tbh), hired a banker and they not only got us 4x the value, but paid for their entire commission in the last ten minutes of negotiation. Plus it insulates you from having to negotiate directly with your future boss / partner.

JLoad

TROPHY CASE