I was interested in applying to Oxide a few months back. They ask candidates who reach interviews to provide at least 9 hours of availability, normally arranged as three separate 3-hour blocks. Each block contains three 1-hour interview slots, so the standard schedule is effectively nine one-hour conversations. Not including the follow ups.
I got another great offer after just 1 interview that I took, so I never went through their process, but it looks very exhausting to me. Being rejected after investing so much time must also feel awful.
Is it not good for exceptionally talented employees who want to work with other employees who are also great at their job and good communication skills?
IME those kinds of interviews are a waste for the applicant because you have to do your 5-10 minute elevator pitch and 10-15 minute dive into your experience 9 separate times. It’s terribly exhausting.
On the other hand I like meeting a lot of people that I’d be working with. It’s nice to start day 1 knowing who people are.
Yep, I had two interview processes that did this... 8 times, at the same time.
Both said no after 8 interviews because of one person in the process who didn't like me, everyone else supposedly were on board.
It genuinely took me another year to even consider applying to another job it was so demoralizing.
In our interviews, the interviewer has read the applicant's detailed written materials, and the candidate has received the interviewer's materials from when they applied. So there is no elevator pitch, no walking through resume, no getting to know you. Just a conversation.
We also advance very few candidates to interviews and hire a surprisingly large proportion of those who interview, so it's not like you're doing all this interviewing for the usual slim chance of being hired. The written materials are the primary filter.
I read their "we will respond to every application, even if it has to be a brief non-specific rejection" and thought that sounded like a great policy that I wish more companies would follow. It's been 6 months now and I never heard anything from them, so that's a little disappointing.
They waste very large amounts of candidate time on an essay like assignment before you get to talk to someone.
Truth be told they already know from your resume if you’d be worth interviewing. That’s enough , and maybe a OA.
The best process I’ve experienced, was a quick conversion with a few technical questions, then I can start as a contractor. If it works out it works, if it doesn’t that’s ok too.
No need for me to write a long paper, when HR probably took one look at my resume and sent out a rejection.
> Well, yes, it is: most startups don’t pay income tax because most startups aren’t profitable! Indeed, startups seek investment because they have costs long before they have revenue, let alone gross profit — let alone income. This is by design: profitability is a lagging indicator of product/market fit (the adventure in venture capital is investing long before the business has materialized!).
Venture Capital is one of the greatest engines of growth, and fitting for the vast majority of early stage tech companies, it is interesting to see how changes in business economics may result in niche, differing capital structures. Eg. Companies which sell RL envs have vastly different economics than a food delivery app.
Awesome company, awesome products. I wish they pushed AI less in their socials, like we get it computers and servers means ai workloads. It just devalues their whole image in my opinion. Hope you all do continue to do awesome things and don't become evil.
A confusing thing about fundraising and dilution is that the new shares don’t take away value from existing shareholders.
If each share is worth $1 at the valuation used in the raise, then an investor adding $100 million gets 100 million shares for it. The shares aren’t taken away from anyone, they're issued in exchange for the capital.
So ideally the dilution is neutral to the value of the equity. In practice this is highly variable because the valuations are fuzzy numbers used for the raise, but you get the idea.
If a company can get the same growth without raising, that would be better because the proportional ownership stays higher. However, the reason companies give equity in exchange for capital is that they need the cash for growth and can’t get it on better terms anywhere else.
That's always struck me as a very idealistic way of looking at dilution.
Another way to look at it, is that it's partly locking in the value of those shares at the time of dilution, effectively reducing the variance of the future value of the existing shares.
As a thought experiment:
If you're holding a lottery ticket that you bought, and someone comes along, says they're going to buy 1,000 lottery tickets, but promises to share any winnings with you pro-rata. You don't really have a choice to say no.
You'd probably be really annoyed, if your ticket is a winning ticket, you split the jackpot and don't even get a life-changing amount of money back for it. If any of theirs wins, you likewise get a modest amount, but you weren't bothered about losing £1.
It's an expectation neutral thought experiment, but reducing variance isn't always wanted!
But that's not how shares work. And companies aren't lotteries.
In your example, the additional 1,000 lottery tickets might add nothing whatsoever to the value of the winning lottery ticket in your hand. It's just not a good metaphor. That's not how buying shares in a company works. Investors don't invest using bearer instruments of totally unknown value. They invest using cash. Cash always adds the value of the cash. That's intrinsic to it being cash.
A much better way to think about it is that you have something in your hand that's worth X dollars and has Y shares. If somebody were to give you X dollars in investment in exchange for Y additionally issued shares, then at the end of that operation the company, by definition, would be worth $2x, and your Y shares would be exactly half of that value, meaning that you start with X and you end with X.
As mentioned, knowing exactly what the company is worth in dollars is a little tricky, but that's the premise, and it completely makes sense.
They’re raising from a position of strength for capital they don’t need. As far as I know, they haven’t published their valuation, but it is very possible they’re giving up little equity. Plus, giving up some equity to meet customer demand is generally a good idea as more revenue means higher valuation.
36 comments
Oxide continues to be one of the most inspiring companies in the space, I was just encouraging someone to apply there yesterday. :)
I got another great offer after just 1 interview that I took, so I never went through their process, but it looks very exhausting to me. Being rejected after investing so much time must also feel awful.
On the other hand I like meeting a lot of people that I’d be working with. It’s nice to start day 1 knowing who people are.
It genuinely took me another year to even consider applying to another job it was so demoralizing.
We also advance very few candidates to interviews and hire a surprisingly large proportion of those who interview, so it's not like you're doing all this interviewing for the usual slim chance of being hired. The written materials are the primary filter.
Hiring process RFD: https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0003
They waste very large amounts of candidate time on an essay like assignment before you get to talk to someone.
Truth be told they already know from your resume if you’d be worth interviewing. That’s enough , and maybe a OA.
The best process I’ve experienced, was a quick conversion with a few technical questions, then I can start as a contractor. If it works out it works, if it doesn’t that’s ok too.
No need for me to write a long paper, when HR probably took one look at my resume and sent out a rejection.
Oxide are so good at comms.
a few days ago I migrated a non-trivial firestore app to sqlite
10x less latency (10x requests / second)
migration took a few minutes (+ 2 days of prep)
just a few months ago that would have been infeasible or at least nerve wracking
Venture Capital is one of the greatest engines of growth, and fitting for the vast majority of early stage tech companies, it is interesting to see how changes in business economics may result in niche, differing capital structures. Eg. Companies which sell RL envs have vastly different economics than a food delivery app.
If each share is worth $1 at the valuation used in the raise, then an investor adding $100 million gets 100 million shares for it. The shares aren’t taken away from anyone, they're issued in exchange for the capital.
So ideally the dilution is neutral to the value of the equity. In practice this is highly variable because the valuations are fuzzy numbers used for the raise, but you get the idea.
If a company can get the same growth without raising, that would be better because the proportional ownership stays higher. However, the reason companies give equity in exchange for capital is that they need the cash for growth and can’t get it on better terms anywhere else.
Another way to look at it, is that it's partly locking in the value of those shares at the time of dilution, effectively reducing the variance of the future value of the existing shares.
As a thought experiment:
If you're holding a lottery ticket that you bought, and someone comes along, says they're going to buy 1,000 lottery tickets, but promises to share any winnings with you pro-rata. You don't really have a choice to say no.
You'd probably be really annoyed, if your ticket is a winning ticket, you split the jackpot and don't even get a life-changing amount of money back for it. If any of theirs wins, you likewise get a modest amount, but you weren't bothered about losing £1.
It's an expectation neutral thought experiment, but reducing variance isn't always wanted!
In your example, the additional 1,000 lottery tickets might add nothing whatsoever to the value of the winning lottery ticket in your hand. It's just not a good metaphor. That's not how buying shares in a company works. Investors don't invest using bearer instruments of totally unknown value. They invest using cash. Cash always adds the value of the cash. That's intrinsic to it being cash.
A much better way to think about it is that you have something in your hand that's worth X dollars and has Y shares. If somebody were to give you X dollars in investment in exchange for Y additionally issued shares, then at the end of that operation the company, by definition, would be worth $2x, and your Y shares would be exactly half of that value, meaning that you start with X and you end with X.
As mentioned, knowing exactly what the company is worth in dollars is a little tricky, but that's the premise, and it completely makes sense.