Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week's startup news and trends. During the garage-stage and Zoom-room days of a company's life, fluidity is key to idea creation. The lack of contractual obligations is baked into how we understand the origin stories of the most famous startups. We celebrate rapid pivots, love scrappy MVPs over perfectly polished platforms and pay attention to repeat entrepreneurs who raise money for their next idea, before they even know what it is. You can DM a techie you admire on Twitter for advice that could unlock an entirely different way of building. You can get a press mention that makes you realize you're onto something. The ability to quickly spin up a team and launch something is clearly the core of what makes startupland so special (and, candidly, fun to write about). Even though the amorphous beginning of a startup can feel energizing beyond belief, here's an unpopular opinion: Formality, even when thousands and thousands of people are pouring into a Discord server to buy the constitution, matters. Startups and movements need to establish clear governance because it's important to set expectations upfront. There's a difference, both in ownership and weight, between a founder, a founding team member, an adviser, an investor, an angel investor and an early employee. As shown by the Winklevoss twins versus Facebook, Reggie Brown versus Snapchat, and most recently, Avi Dorfman versus Compass, acknowledging people's roles within companies isn't semantics, it's clarifying ambiguity before it turns into anger. In our most recent episode of Equity, I chatted with my co-hosts about the string of lawsuits between ousted founders and the companies they felt a part of, and why it's important to have titles before you tout your vision on Clubhouse. So, what makes a founder, a founder? When does it make sense to escalate a founder dispute into a legal case? What do the Winklevoss twins and Avi Dorfman have in common? And can an entrepreneur claim a co-founder title because their idea seeded a successful business, or do they have to stay at a company long enough to prove that they can take it from thought to execution? These are the questions that I answer in my TechCrunch+ column: Name your job title before you name your startup. I interviewed a lawyer who represented the Winklevoss twins, Rent the Runway co-founder Jennifer Fleiss on her decision to leave the company, as well as current founders and investors who are drawing these lines in real time. This is a meta start to the newsletter, but what else do you expect? In the rest of this newsletter, we'll talk about ConstitutionDAO, the Macro and Zillow. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or direct message me on Instagram @natashathereporter. |
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