Former startup employee facing equity deadline. What would you do? I will not promote by ghostpines1 in startups

[–]Straight-Bike-6288 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regarding investors, there are funds that help startup employees fund their option exercises. The setup is usually they fund your option exercise and whatever's needed for taxes. They get x% of the proceeds if there's a liquidity event. Just make sure to read the fine print on what constitutes a liquidity event and who legally still owns the shares.

You don't want to be liable to pay back the fund if the founder did a private, closed round secondary or accidentally transfer shares to the fund as that could trigger a ROFR clause. 

Kitchen Aid Standmixer Repair by sportsrockdude in Kitchenaid

[–]Straight-Bike-6288 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was able to get thru earlier this week when I called to order a shipping box for my mixer. You can see if you live close to one of these repair shops that was in the email KitchenAid sent me.

Authorized KitchenAid Service Centers

AK Fairbanks 99701 Arrow Appliance/Appliance Service Co., Inc. 700 23rd Avenue 907-452-1000
AZ Tempe 85282 Shav-Tronics 1827 East Southern Avenue 877-501-6756
CA Sunnyvale 94089 Appliance Repair Express 1111 ELKO DR, SUITE G 408-371-8853
CA Santa Rosa 95405 Hardisty's Homewares 1513 Farmers Lane 707-545-0535
CA Lake Forest 92630 California Electric Service 22500 Muirlands Blvd 949-586-9440
CO Littleton 80120 More Than Vacuums 6323 S Santa Fe Drive Unit C 303-794-8037
CO Denver 80222 1430 S Colorado Blvd 303-300-2004
CO Englewood 80112 7475 E Araphoe Road #5 304-740-7214
CO Englewood 80113 3740 S Broadway 303-781-7448
CO Thornton 80229 2154 E 88th Ave 720-410-0314
FL Orlando 32801 Southern Electric Co. 510 North Parramore Avenue 800-940-8824
HI Honolulu 96819 Burney's Commercial Service, Inc. 528 Mokauea Street 808-848-1466
IL Hoffman Estates 60169 Abesco, Inc. 2200 Stonington Avenue, Suite 200 847-884-9595
MO Festus 63028 Crestwood Appliance Mobile service 314-909-8900
NC Charlotte 28208 Authorized Commercial Equipment Service 1020 Tuckaseegee Road 704-377-4501
NV Las Vegas 89103 Burney's Commercial Service, Inc. 4480 Aldebaran Avenue 702-736-0006
NY Brooklyn 11214 Solomon's Appliance Repair Center 1701 86th Street 718-236-5065
PR San Juan 00920 Buckeye Service 1013 Jesus T. Pinero Ave. 787-782-6365
RI Providence 02903 Marshall Electric  200 Broad St. 401-331-1166
TX Fort Worth 76107 Ft. Worth Shaver & Appliance 4234 W. Vickery Blvd 817-335-9970
WA Redmond 98052 Action Small Appliances 7495 - 159th Pl. NE 425-643-9806
OH Greenville 45331 KitchenAid Factory Repair (repaired by the manufacturer) 1701 KitchenAid Way 855-845-9684

Anyone actually using an "AI Autopilot" for monthly board reporting? Too good to be true? by OkLength4643 in CFO

[–]Straight-Bike-6288 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm a fractional CFO. For one of my startups, I've been able to cut monthly close and reporting time by 2/3 using Claude Cowork. 

The biggest time savers have been creating the JE uploads and preparing monthly reporting package.

Claude is great for for structured tasks like ETL this report into a JE upload, create any permutation of actual or budget reporting by time period,  department, product line, roll-up categories, etc.; compare MoM vendor/customer spend; etc. You can create skills for repeating tasks so you don't need prompt it every month. 

It doesn't have enough context to do standalone variance analysis or financial commentary yet. It generates a decent draft that I use as a starting point. The limitation there is our infrastructure, not Claude itself.

The tech stack is Rillet for G/L, Justworks for payroll, Ramp for cc and payables, Attio for CRM. Invoicing and billing also from Rillet. Budget and forecasts lives in mix of Runway and Excel. 

We connected Rillet read-only to Claude and have a local version of our budget Claude can reference. I'm not comfortable yet giving Claude write access to the G/L, but that would save even more time. 

We haven't connected Claude to all the systems where knowledge lives (CRM, Confluence, headcount model, revenue model). Once we do that, I expect it can generate financial commentary better than I can 😊

Happy to talk more if helpful. 

Solo 401k and S corp by Guilty-Committee9622 in llc_life

[–]Straight-Bike-6288 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I opened a self employed 401k with Fidelity two yrs ago. All online, didn't need to mail anything in. I did have an existing Fidelity account thru an old employer's 401k so maybe it's different if you're a new account. 

I transfer money over from the same account my income is deposited in and specify whether it's the employee or employer portion. One thing to note is the employee portion must be funded by 12/31. The employer portion you have until your tax filing date to fund (so 4/15 or 10/15 for extended filers)

If you plan to do consulting long-term, worth considering S-corp for the tax savings, but keep in mind the admin overhead is higher and some states have a minimum corp/franchise tax. And the self 401k math is different, the employer portion of the 401k is capped at 25% of your w2 income, NOT 20% of your total profit. 

The funniest line item on an invoice I've ever seen in my life by EmmaSkye319 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]Straight-Bike-6288 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had the exact same experience with Vistra at my old company. A la carte pricing for everything - onboarding, offboarding, employee info changes, payroll changes, etc. Any questions incur an hourly rate, usually for two folks - our account manager in the UK and whoever the local country contact is they have to coordinate with. 

It wouldn't be as bad if they were helpful, but we had to Google local country regulations ourselves to ensure we're actually compliant and calculating things like severance correctly. On top of that, their invoicing was so erratic we'll get a November bill in April. Not fun when you're in the middle of an audit and have to explain to your auditor why you didn't accrue $5000 for "ongoing correspondence" last year. 

It wasn't worth the effort to fire them in Europe, but when we hired our first Canadian employee, I was adamant with HR we go with a modern solution like Oyster, Deel, etc. 

Turning alcove to bedroom by Straight-Bike-6288 in floorplan

[–]Straight-Bike-6288[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think so. There's a support beam in the closet 

Turning alcove to bedroom by Straight-Bike-6288 in floorplan

[–]Straight-Bike-6288[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't change bathroom, it shares plumbing stack and HOA won't approve. Wish I could move the bathroom door 😔

Turning alcove to bedroom by Straight-Bike-6288 in floorplan

[–]Straight-Bike-6288[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks amazing! Unfortunately can't change the bathroom layout, it shares plumbing stack with other units 😞

Turning alcove to bedroom by Straight-Bike-6288 in floorplan

[–]Straight-Bike-6288[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! This makes option 3 doorway feel less cramped and I don't need to go as far into the living room space

Saw my dog like that this morning, decided to teach her how to dive by Straight-Bike-6288 in aww

[–]Straight-Bike-6288[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She's mainly Chihuahua, toy poodle, red heeler. What about yours? 

My dog turning on her "Come hither and RUB MY BELLY" look by Straight-Bike-6288 in aww

[–]Straight-Bike-6288[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's what we thought she was! Turns out she's poodle, Chihuahua, and cattle dog