DROdio's posts

DROdio

CEO of Socialize. Entrepreneur & lifehacker in Silicon Valley. Hopeless travelaholic.

Twitter: @drodioWeb: www.DanielOdio.com Message

DROdio hasn't filled out their bio yet. CEO of Socialize. Entrepreneur & lifehacker in Silicon Valley. Hopeless travelaholic.
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Should Mike do a Kickstarter project? Email him if so.

Here's a transcript of the video:

Daniel: I’m here with mike and mike is the founder of Factor 55. We’re here at the expo. Mike has a couple of really awesome that he made. We’re just telling how to kickstart it. He hasn’t really heard about it. We’re saying he should totally do it. If you watch this video and you think mike should put these products at kickstarter email him at mike@factor55.com. Tell us what you got going on right here.

Mike: What we’ve done is we’ve addressed a shortfall of off road Winching. The traditional winch comes with a winch hub which is designed for a chain and these days nobody uses a chain anymore. They use synthetic recovery straps and so what we ended up doing was you end up taking your traditional cable or synthetic winch rope and you remove the hook and we developed a product where you simply insert this loop up this cable into the back of our product and stall a titanium double shear pin and then you put a snap ring in that retains that. Now you have a safe shackle now on the  end of your winch cable or winch rope. There’s an example of one.

DROdio hasn't filled out their bio yet. CEO of Socialize. Entrepreneur & lifehacker in Silicon Valley. Hopeless travelaholic.
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How buying company stock options works

I had an employee ask me what the process was to buy stock options, so I figured I'd answer this question publicly so anyone interested could understand & benefit from it.

The way company stock options work is as follows:

As an employee, a company will grant you a pool of options.  Let's say you get 10,000 options.   Those options typically won't "vest" all at once, meaning that although the company has promised you those options, you receive them on a specific schedule known as a vesting schedule.  That schedule is usually something like the following:  "4 years, with a 1 year cliff".  What that means is that they vest over 4 years (so 25% of the options become available to you each year) on a monthly basis for as long as you're an employee.  So if you're an employee for the next 27 months after the option grant, then you'd vest 27/48ths of the total, or 56.25% of your total options (and 10,000 x .5625 = 5,625 options vested).  The "cliff" means that in the first year, you don't vest monthly, but rather annually.  So in the first year, if you only stay for 11 months, then you don't vest any of the options.  But if you stay for 12 months, then boom-- you vest 12/48ths (or 25%) of the options granted.  The reason companies do this is so that if an employee doesn't work out in the first year, they don't have an obligation to grant any options.  (It would be awkward to hire an employee for 3 months who it turns out isn't a good fit for the company, then have to fire that employee, but still have to vest 3/48ths of his or her options).

OK so you have these vested options.  Now what?  

Granted options have a "strike price" -- the price at which you can pay to turn them into stock.  Let's say that the strike price is 50 cents each.  That means that if you stayed at the company for 27 months after the grant, and you vested 5,625 of your options, it would cost you $2,812.50 ($0.50 x 5,625) to purchase your options and turn them into stock.

DROdio hasn't filled out their bio yet. CEO of Socialize. Entrepreneur & lifehacker in Silicon Valley. Hopeless travelaholic.
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Comparing the Micro 4/3's 20mm 1.7f-stop lens with the 14-55mm zoom lens for the Lumix GX1

My buddy Isaac just bought a GX1 -- in fact, he bought two of them.   This gave us a great chance to compare lenses:  The non-zoom, 20mm 1.7f lens (about $350 on Amazon) with the power zoom, 14-42mm 3.5f lens (about $325 on Amazon).  There's also a very interesting third lens to consider, which we didn't specifically test:  The non-zoom, 14mm 2.5f lens ($286 on Amazon).

Here's what Isaac had to say about the 20mm lens:

 

Here are some relevant blog posts to read about the 20mm lens, as well as a newer 14mm lens:

DROdio hasn't filled out their bio yet. CEO of Socialize. Entrepreneur & lifehacker in Silicon Valley. Hopeless travelaholic.
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Just landed at SFO: What you should do first

I just had someone whom I originally met in DC come by our office here in SF.  He's out here trying to get a new startup off the ground.  

I told him I'd send a few ideas his way to help him figure out how to take advantage of being in SF.  Instead of sending him a private email, I figure it'd be great to get it going as a public conversation where other entrepreneurs can contribute as well.

So here's the question:  If you were new to SF with a startup idea, what would you do first?

Here's my quick initial list:

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