Wow, some of this is even surprising to me. Interviews were 40 minutes? We only asked for 4%?
(Now that I think about it, the very first time we didn't think in terms of percent. Instead we decided on a valuation for each company, and the percent was whatever 6k per founder worked out to at that valuation. So it was probably 4 point something, not exactly 4.)
I still remember meeting Emmett and Justin quite well. What impressed us most was how good their demo looked. Also that they'd met in second grade. I remember thinking that Justin looked as if he'd just gotten out of bed, because his hair was standing on end and his eyes had that surprised look you have when you've been jolted awake. I didn't realize till later that he often looks that way.
Yeah, I remember that they were based on valuations. I'm almost positive the valuation you gave us was 300k (can't remember if that was pre or post though), so the 12k was 4%.
I knew the demo cinched in for us (remember, this was back when people didn't know if it was possible to write fancy web apps with things like calendar appointment dragging). Looking back on the emails and our application (thanks, Gmail) I was surprised how much better our application was than I had remembered.
It seems a stupid question now. I'm not sure when we dropped it. Patents do matter in a small subset of startups, but only if you first make the company work.
(Now that I think about it, the very first time we didn't think in terms of percent. Instead we decided on a valuation for each company, and the percent was whatever 6k per founder worked out to at that valuation. So it was probably 4 point something, not exactly 4.)
I still remember meeting Emmett and Justin quite well. What impressed us most was how good their demo looked. Also that they'd met in second grade. I remember thinking that Justin looked as if he'd just gotten out of bed, because his hair was standing on end and his eyes had that surprised look you have when you've been jolted awake. I didn't realize till later that he often looks that way.