Photo: Edward Reed (via Inc.com)

At any startup accelerator, Demo Days are a relentlessly upbeat affair--a parade of promotional pitch decks and stats about market size that somehow always reach up into the billions. But in New York City, Techstars' biannual showcase takes the cake.

Founded in Boulder, the program launched in New York in 2011 (just as the startup scene cried out for tent poles to rally around) and easily fills auditoriums. Companies often announce “soft-circled” funding or even that the round has already closed. Mayor Bloomberg even called the number of investors who fly to New York to check out presentations, "proof positive that the TechStars is going to change this world and certainly change America and this city.”

Or as TechStars mentor Joel Spolsky put it before introducing one of the startups at Webster Hall: "Time to get my company oversubscribed."

However, some investors and entrepreneurs have expressed concerns about whether the spring 2013 class of TechStars New York will yield the same financial windfall--and the same amount of interest from potential applicants.

Part of the worry is related to the Series A crunch and fears of funding cliffs and falling valuations. Economic conditions are unlikely to support the accelerator boom we've seen over the past couple years. "We grew too fast," Paul Graham wrote this month, announcing that Y Combinator, the mother of all incubators, would reduce the number of startups in its program from 84 down to 50. And that was after downgrading the investment per company from $150,000 to $80,000. Under the headline, "We know accelerators are headed for a shakeout — but do they? "PandoDaily recently pointed out, there are "at least 100 such programs churning out thousands of startups a year and the expectation that 90 percent of them won’t return their money."

"I'm not sure why you'd say there's an overall constriction based on one data point on the opposite side of the country," TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen retorted by email when we brought up changes at Y Combinator as a sign of things to come for other accelerators. "The fact that TechStars is in NYC, offers more funding than Y Combinator, has an awesome alumni and mentor network right there means that more startups from the area will likely apply," he said. (In exchange for 6 percent equity, TechStars invests $18,000 per company and a $100,000 convertible note.)

Mr. Cohen noted that New York's first program raised $24.2 million including follow on rounds, where the second program raised $13.8 million and the third raised $11.6 million. As for whether the next class will see as much investment, he said, "Time will tell."

But in interviews with Betabeat, local sources also listed specific concerns related to the management of TechStars New York, which recently saw a changing of the guard. David Tisch, who rose to prominence in his role as managing director of the program, stepped down in August to focus on investing through Box Group, his boutique angel fund, which has already seen a number of exits including GroupMe and just this week Behance.

Betabeat has learned that Adam Rothenberg, a director at TechStars for the past two years, has also left the program and will likely be working on investments through Box Group as well. Both Mr. Tisch and Mr. Rothenberg declined to comment for this article.

In November, rather than announcing a permanent replacement for Mr. Tisch from within the New York ecosystem, TechStars shipped in an interim managing director from the Boulder: Nicole Glaros. Ms. Glaros, a serial entrepreneur, comes equipped with plenty of relevant experience. She's run five previous TechStars' programs and will be living here.

So far, the absence of a hometown cheerleader like Mr. Tisch doesn't appear to have affected applicant interest. Mr. Cohen told Betabeat that the April program already boasts 735 application with a month to go before the deadline. "My guess is we'll break another record--which has happened every year since inception. As you know our acceptance rate is around 1% nationally, and we've seen 1200-1400 applications in the past in NYC for 10-12 spots. This doesn't seem to be slowing down," he said.

Mr. Cohen will be "very hands on with this program as usual," he added, noting that TechStars cofounder Brad Feld "will be spending extra time with this program as well."

However, those familiar with TechStars New York noted an unusual aura of silence around this program's candidates. "It's still a big mystery. Rumors usually spread like wildfire within the TechStars community," said one source, noting that around this time insiders typically know who is applying.

A couple of sources wondered if there was difficulty in finding a permanent replacement because of the way managing directors, who get a cut of TechStar's equity in companies, are compensated. Details offered are always hazy in terms of whether the position requires a buy-in. "There is limited salary at best for the position, but there are PLENTY of great people in NYC who can make this work," one TechStars mentor told Betabeat.

Mr. Cohen dismissed speculation about compensation, adding that although no offers have been made, TechStars has "heavy inbound interest in the role." Including other cities, TechStars boasts 17 exits overall. "In the past it's helped us attract high quality people such as Katie Rae, Jason Seats, Andy Sack, Nicole Glaros, Luke Beatty, and David Tisch in the past, and I don't expect that will be a concern at all."

Then there are some more pressing issues related to the startups themselves. One angel investor attributed skepticism about this class of companies’ ability to raise to the success rate of previous graduates. "TechStars bets on a category and hopes they can shape the startup," the investor explained. "People that invest after TechStars do it with the assumption that they've been vetted." However, the investor said, some graduates, "get the money and don't understand that it's money to build a business--or at least get LAUNCH. Where's Wander? How long has it been that they've been in beta?" Bondsy, another much-hyped startup, is also still in beta.

The investor also wondered if the lessons learned during the program were enough to prepare them for life outside the accelerator's bubble. "They teach them all this crazy shit about pitching that's not applicable in the real world. When going for your next round after TechStars, you can't go with your 10-slide TechStars deck and a promise that you're going to produce."

Mr. Cohen pointed out that TechStars New York has already had one exit from its first class: ThinkNear, a hyperlocal ad company that was acquired for $22.5 million by Telenav in October. "We're talking about 2011 here, last year," Mr. Cohen said in response to those concerns about the caliber of companies. "I wonder what sort of success people expect in that timeframe, now that it's the end of 2012?" It's often mentioned that Y Combinator, which was started in 2005, depends on a handful of blockbusters for its returns, including Dropbox, Airbnb, and Heroku.

Mr. Cohen encouraged anyone with questions or concerns about the upcoming program to reach out to him. There is an upcoming recruiting event, TechStars for a Day, scheduled for January 10th. The event will feature talks from Ms. Glaros, Mr. Spolsky and Thrillist and Lerer Ventures cofounder Ben Lerer. "Most importantly, it's a chance for us to spend time with interesting companies who want to learn more about TechStars." To get an invitation, startups have to apply before the January 4th early deadline.

The view from the Fog Creek office. (joelonsoftware.com)

Fog Creek Software has a fish tank embedded in one wall. The fish are pretty and colorful, but not neon; it looked like there might have been an eel in there too. They wandered around their dark blue and green environs, their movements accompanied by the soft white noise of the pump, imparting a sense of calm.

The offices of the developers of Fog Creek look sort of like fish tanks, because they have sliding glass doors to make them more soundproof. The compartments look airtight, as if you could fill the whole thing up with water. Founder Joel Spolsky has been preaching for years that developers should have private offices. It's better for their temperament, and it reduces distractions and makes them more productive, he argues. Mr. Spolsky himself has a closed-door corner office, with a view of the Financial District in one direction and Fog Creek's airy lunch room in the other.

Fog Creek has a motto: "What if programmers were treated like rock stars?" Betabeat had a chance to glimpse the office of the esteemed New York company last night during a class, "How to Hire Developers in a Competitive Market," taught by two employees of Fog Creek's uppity younger cousin, Stack Exchange. The message at the end of the night: developers are choosy, peculiar, brilliant and needy. But their needs are actually pretty simple.

The night started out with an amateur psychoanalysis of the developer. The developer is a detail-oriented perfectionist. He or she has a "very strong bullshit meter." He or she needs to be able to get into the "zone;" Fog Creek has what amounts to a "do not disturb" sign on one of the doors that says, "The sys admins are working heads down until _____." The developer is also obsessed with merit and craves status within his or her own sphere. Other adjectives included "pasionate," "competitive," and "opinionated." "Prima donna!" suggested someone in the audience.

So how do you go about ensuring your developers are happy, healthy and at their most productive?

First, the Stack Exchangers said, figure out what developers care about:

• interesting work
• good conversation
• being stimulated outside of work
• creature comforts (standing desks, soft mats to stand on, ping pong tables, food)
• being able to get into the zone
• having the right tools for the job
• independence and self-direction
• sense that they're having an impact

Mr. Spolsky has been thinking about this stuff for a long time. At the end of the night, we were given copies of "Smart & Gets Things Done," Mr. Spolsky's 2007 book about how to find and hire the best people. (The title is stolen from Microsoft's recruiting philosophy.) Back in February, Mr. Spolsky wrote a blog post entitled "Programmer Nesting Rituals." In it, he argued that developer salaries are not the most important factor for a developer picking a job; he will expand on that idea in a keynote at the ERE Expo, a recruiters' conference in San Diego, later this month.

It was interesting to see the ideas implemented in life. Both the offices of Fog Creek and Stack Exchange are spacious and pleasant. They have fully-stocked kitchens, with cereal, beer, pizza, and the works; employees can send an email to the office manager with grocery requests. Fog Creek has a strict 9-5 rule, so the office was completely empty at 6 p.m. Upstairs at Stack Exchange, a few sales, community managers and programmers still hadn't left by 7 p.m. Fog Creek has a corner office that's been converted to a library, complete with leather armchairs and shelves of programming books. Programmers are encouraged to order whatever books they want from Amazon. Stack Exchange, where sales and community employees sit in a bullpen-style office in the middle of the room, with developers in offices around the perimeter, has a ping pong table. Every desk is electronically convertible to a standing desk. Mr. Spolsky is also a big proponent of the Aeron chairs, the spendy furniture that became a symbol of dot-com excess, which start around $600. In six years, he wrote in 2007, no one had ever quit.

Much of this seemed obvious to us, but the best practices are surprisingly uncommon at places that hire developers. Mr. Spolsky seems to have made it his mission to make the world a better place for developers by evangelizing about job satisfaction and workplace culture. As the presenters talked about developer care, one attendee periodically burst into laughter. She had recently quit her job at a finance firm.

Mr. Atwood

Yesterday, Stack Exchange CTO Jeff Atwood did the unthinkable, at least in Startupland where work is your life and companies are talked about and tended to with the same care as young children. On his blog Coding Horror, Mr. Atwood announced that effective March 1st, he would leave day-to-day operations of Stack Exchange, the beloved New York-based community-driven Q&A site for programmers, behind.

But not for all the usual reasons like starting his own company, starting a VC fund, or untold riches in preferred Facebook stock. No, Mr. Atwood did for actual human young children. Earlier this month, his wife gave birth to twin girls whose Twitter handle (@theladybabies) is probably better than yours.

"Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful," Mr. Atwood wrote, "But I finally realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure."

Reached by email, CEO Joel Spolsky, who co-created Stack Exchange, told Betabeat, "We're really going to miss him. He did great work building a site that genuinely makes the Internet a better place to get expert answers. It grew from nothing to be in Quantcast's top 150 US networks and every developer relies on it every day."

The response to Mr. Atwood's heart-felt confession, which referenced Steve Jobs death as a wake-up call to entrepreneurs, seems to have struck a cord with his fellow technophiles who shared their thanks for building Stack Exchange and the wisdom of his decision on Hacker News, their personal blogs, and, of course, Twitter:

Sincere thanks to @codinghorror for the passion & love it takes to make the web better! "Farewell Stack Exchange": codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/f…

— Anil Dash (@anildash) February 6, 2012

An amazing reminder from @CodingHorror about what startups and being an entrepreneur are all about: family - j.mp/A3mcQe

— Tim Jahn (@timjahn) February 7, 2012

On Jobs the dad: "If you want your kids to know you, spend time with them. (Biographer unnecessary.)" deliberatism.com/blog/not-like-… via @codinghorror

— Brian Alvey (@brianalvey) February 7, 2012

Kudos to @codinghorror for not only building a great product, but for knowing what's truly important and acting on it: codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/f…

— Dave Greiner (@davegreiner) February 7, 2012

Thanks jeff - you have made the web better “@codinghorror: Farewell Stack Exchange codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/f…”

— Bijan Sabet (@bijan) February 6, 2012

Although @theladybabies have yet to weigh in on this development, we imagine their response is something like: "Yaaaaaaaaaay!" Well that or, "Feed Me." Babies, man. Such a one-track mind.

Admiring their handywork

Betabeat stopped by Stack Exchange the other day to interview the CHAOS team. We snapped some pictures of the big monitor array they have set up, including some eye popping stats on the way traffic is growing. But we didn't want to make those public just yet, since we were invited in to visit to report another story.

But today Stack Exchange COO did an interview with founder Joel Spolsky about the big board and tipped their hat about some of these numbers. Over the last 30 days Stack Exchange has grown 40 percent, hitting more than 17 million page views on 6.3 million unique visitors. Gaming.stackexchange.com led the way, with 245 percent growth in the last month. 

There are now more than 70 sites that make up Stack Exchange, with dozens more being tested in Area 51, the section of Stack Exchange were users can suggest new verticals. All these sites put together still don't come close to the godfather of them all, Stack Overflow, which clocked in at 19 million unique visitors and more than 132 million page views. But the new sites are growing much faster.

The release of SkyRim, the most played game of 2011, has led to the huge growth on the Gaming Stack Exchange. As Seth Schiesel reported in the New York Times, SkyRim is the sort of game that lets a single player get sucked into a fantasy world for hours and even days on end. But when these gamers come across a particular challenge they can't solve, or just want to discuss which way to lead their character, they are increasingly turning to Stack Exchange as the best forum for discussion. For example, What Did Happen on That Drunken Night Anyway and Where Did I Get This Wedding Ring?

The CHAOS team in action

When Stack Overflow was created in 2008 as a forum for questions about computer programming, there was no need to worry about understanding the community. Co-founders Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood had long and storied histories working in the software industry. But as the Stack Overflow blossomed into Stack Exchange, a group of more than 70 sites covering topics from photography to parenting to cooking, they found that groups of humans do not respond well to being managed by an algorithm.

Everyone knows the drill. A community springs up online, leaders naturally emerge, and their commitment earns them the right to become moderators. But over time whatever small biases these folks bring with them are amplified in the minds of new users, until the inevitable charges of fascism begin to fly and a full-on flame war breaks out.

Is it possible to find a formula for combating this decline? In a row of two desks at the far end of the Stack Exchange office, just off the ping pong table, sits the CHAOS team (Cheerful Helpful Advocates of Stack), a group of community managers who spend their days experimenting in the laboratory of human interaction. "We're trying to derive some universal principles about how to grow a community on the internet that can govern itself and regenerate after a conflict," said CHAOS member Abby Miller. "So far we've learned that there are no universal principles."

Stack Exchange Growth 2010

An Anthropology major, a former staffer for Wizard magazine and comic convention veteran, these are the kind of talents Stack Exchange was looking for when it formed CHAOS. Their job is to ensure that the torrid growth at Stack Exchange leads to lasting sites that don't rise and fall as Myspace, Digg and so many other social services have in recent years.

When the parenting exchange launched, there were brutal fights going on about topics like spanking and co-sleeping. Questions were being closed for being even slightly off topic or just too inflammatory. "We had to find ways to channel that controversy into something productive," said CHAOS member Aarthi Devanathan.

Slowly, through the meta section, where users go to discuss the purpose and scope of each Stack Exchange, two canonical opinions emerged on the parenting site. As Anil Dash pointed out, this came from MetaTalk approach on Metafilter, a site Joel Spolsky knew and loved. "We taught the users that it was alright to disagree, and gave them a set of arguments they could reference without every thread degenerating into a fight," Ms. Devanathan concluded.

As social interaction comes to underpin most every site on the web, these skills are becoming widely sought after. "What we are learning is that no two sites are the same," said Joel Spolsky, preparing espresso for his staffers during the team lunch. "We don't want Stack Exchange to become Yahoo, where the fitness channel is exactly the same template as the automobile channel, just a different subject."

A lot of venture capitalists are mulling over this same problem. "Online communities require both software and people. Sometimes the software part is the easier part," writes Fred Wilson. "Modern community building isn't easy but if there is one thing the Internet has taught me over the past 15 years, large engaged communities are incredible powerful things, both commercially and socially. Building them is important and ultimately very valuable work."

Fred Wilson refers to himself as the bartender on his blog, AVC. Mr. Spolsky uses a similar metaphor to describe CHAOS. "This job will be sort of like being a community organizer at a non-profit. It combines elements of marketing, PR, and sales, but it’s really something different. I don’t expect that there are a lot of people out there who already kn0w how to do this well, so I’m going to train them, personally." The team has grown from two people to eight agents in the last few months. "Everyone who joins the program (and survives for a year) will come out with an almost supernatural ability to take a dead, lifeless site on the internet and make it into the hottest bar in town. That’s a skill worth learning for the 21st century," Mr. Spolsky concluded.

Like Steve Ballmer on a bad day.

Thanksgiving marks the start of tech's most intense hiring season, as promising computer science students start looking for summer jobs and internships. Software veteran Joel Spolsky was kind enough to let us print some of his thoughts on how to avoid getting stuck at your second choice. The original post appears on his blog, here.

If you’re a college student applying for jobs or summer internships, you’re at something of a disadvantage when it comes to negotiation. That’s because the recruiter does these negotiations for a living, while you’re probably doing it for the first time.

I want to warn you about one trick that’s very common with on-campus recruiters: the cynical “exploding offer.”

Here’s what happens. You get invited to interview at a good company. There’s an on-campus interview; maybe you even fly off to the company HQ for another round of interviews and cocktails. You ace the interview, of course. They make you an offer.

“That sounds great,” you say.

“So, when can you let us know?”

“Well,” you tell them, “I have another interview coming up in January. So I’ll let you know right after that.”

“Oh,” they say. “That might be a problem. We really have to know by December 31st. Can you let us know by December 31st?”

Tada! The magnificent “exploding offer.”

Here’s what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, well, that’s a good company, not my first choice, but still a good offer, and I’d hate to lose this opportunity. And you don’t know for sure if your number one choice would even hire you. So you accept the offer at your second-choice company and never go to any other interviews.

And now, you lost out. You’re going to spend several years of your life in some cold dark cubicle with a crazy boss who couldn’t program a twenty out of an ATM, while some recruiter somewhere gets a $1000 bonus because she was better at negotiating than you were.

Career counselors know this, and almost universally prohibit it. Every campus recruiting center has rules requiring every company that recruits on campus to give students a reasonable amount of time to make a decision and consider other offers.

The trouble is, the recruiters at the second-rate companies don’t give a shit. They know that you’re a college kid and you don’t want to mess things up with your first real job and you’re not going to call them on it. They know that they’re a second-rate company: good enough, but nobody’s dream job, and they know that they can’t get first-rate students unless they use pressure tactics like exploding offers.

And the worst thing that career centers can do is kick them off campus. Big whoop. So they hold their recruiting sessions and interviews in a hotel next to the campus instead of at the career center.

Here’s your strategy, as a student, to make sure you get the job you want.

1. Schedule your interviews as close together as possible.

2. If you get an exploding offer from a company that’s not your first choice, push back. Say, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to be able to give you an answer until January 14th. I hope that’s OK.” Almost any company, when pressed, will give you a chance to compare offers. Don’t worry about burning bridges or pissing anyone off. Trust me on this one: there’s not a single hiring manager in the world who wants to hire you but would get mad just because you’re considering other offers. It actually works the other way. When they realize you’re in demand, they’ll want you more.

In the rare case that they don’t accept that, accept the exploding offer at the last minute, but go to the other interviews anyway. Don’t cash any signing bonus checks, don’t sign anything, just accept the offer verbally. If you get a better offer later, call back the slimy company and tell them you changed your mind. Look, Microsoft hires thousands of college kids every year. If one of them doesn’t show up I think they’ll survive. Anyway, since we instituted that 13th amendment thing, they can’t force you to work for them.

If you do find yourself forced to renege on an offer, be classy about it. Don’t do this unless you are absolutely forced to because they literally refused to give you a chance to hear from your first choice company. And let them know right away you’re not going to take the offer, so they have a chance to fill the position with someone else.

Campus recruiters count on student’s high ethical standards. Almost all students think, “gosh, I promised I’ll go work for them, and I’m going to keep my promise.” And that’s great, that’s a commendable attitude. Definitely. But unethical recruiters that don’t care about your future and don’t want you to compare different companies are going to take advantage of your ethics so they can get their bonus. And that’s just not fair.

Blame Trello for the housing bubble.

Fog Creek Software is a Silicon Alley survivor. Founded in 2000, the company ran smack into the dot-com bust before it had fully hatched. "We were just trying to keep ourselves in business, so we looked at what we had built for ourselves, and we settled on this bug tracker we had made in house," Fog Creek Software co-founder Joel Spolsky told Betabeat over the phone last night. The resulting software, FogBugz, has gone on to be one of the best selling bug tracking services, giving Fog Creek the freedom to fund a series of interesting projects.

"We reached a certain point where I realized we had this mature product, kind of running under its own steam, and while we continue to improve and update it, we could take eight people off of FogBugz," he added. Those eight employees were split into teams of two and given the freedom to spend three months building something that interested them. "I like to think of this place as an idea factory," said Mr. Spolsky, echoing a sentiment betaworks co-founder John Borthwick has shared with Betabeat. "They have some time to work on something and if its great, we might scale. If not, we pivot, or kill the project and try something totally new," explained Mr. Spolsky.

The newest idea to come out of this is Trello, a project management tool that Fog Creek has been using internally and decided to release as a free web app. Betabeat has been testing out Trello with our small three person team. Its intuitive to use and seems to offer both a broad and a granular way of dealing with projects coming down the pipe. "It started out as a small project and then it caught on and more people moved to that team to work on it. When we saw the traction it got internally we decided to push it public," said Mr. Spolsky.

The service, says Mr. Spolsky, is meant to encourage the "agile" development methodology so popular among software engineers these days. "But we were very careful not to position this as a tool for just programmers. Agile works equally well on a sales team or in an editorial setting."

There are no plans to monetize Trello right now, although its easy to see how it could be turned into a paid tool like Basecamp. Mr. Spolsky says that in the future they may begin releasing interesting projects even when they have no apparent path to profit. "We built this thing internally, WebPutty, and I don't have a clue how we could get people to pay for that. But we've put out a public beta and we'll see what happens."

In the meantime, Stack Exchange, which Mr. Spolsky started with Jeff Atwood, has secured a big round of financing, become the official Facebook developer forum and continues to grow at an astronomical rate. "I think Stack Exchange is probably the first company I'm involved with that has a good chance to go public," said Mr. Spolsky.

Stack Exchange and Facebook announced a partnership today--facebook.stackoverflow.com, a Facebook-centric forum embedded within Stack Overflow's programming-focused, question-and-answer wiki--and there was much rejoicing.

"It came about very quickly," said Alex Miller, director of strategy at Stack Exchange, the network of wiki-esque forums that includes Stack Overflow. (Mr. Miller is also chief of staff and "sidekick to the CEO," Joel Spolsky, who is on vacation this week and was unavailable. He also holds more than a dozen other titles for which he has corresponding business cards, according to his various duties. Betabeat can empathize.)

"One of the joys of us being a small agile start-up is, we can do things very quickly," Mr. Miller explained. "In late June, early July they approached us and basically initiated a discussion about ways for us to partner on it. They were looking for a new solution and recognized the value of the platform ... we were obviously thrilled to work with them."

Stack Overflow was already serving as an official forum for Android developers, with Google sponsoring the Android tag on posts. Perhaps that's how Facebook got the idea of moving the official Facebook developer forum, a standard thread-based community with which many developers were frustrated, onto Stack Overflow.

The Facebook forum is basically a curated mini-site within the Stack Overflow site, where the more than 10,000 posts about Facebook that had already amassed have been curated into a coherent destination, with a few extra features for usability, Mr. Miller said.

The advantage for Facebook developers on the new curated mini-site is that their questions are also seen by the Stack Overflow community at large--so if it turns out the problem isn't with the Facebook API, but with something in the underlying code, a befuddled developer can still get an answer.

This is a new product offering for Stack Exchange, but Mr. Miller hesitated to call it a potential revenue stream. The revenue comes from its careers mini-site, he says, which has grown explosively since its launch a few months ago at the LAUNCH conference in San Francisco. He sounded very happy with the Careers 2.0 revenue, which he says is mutually beneficial to both job seekers and employers. It's a positive feedback loop you don't find with other revenue possibilities such as advertising. With a jobs site, more users leads to more job postings which leads to more users, he said--whereas ads can really either be optimized for advertisers, making the user experience worse and vice versa.

Still, Mr. Miller noted, don't be surprise if you see more mini-sites come out in the coming months. Stack Exchange doesn't have anything specific planned, but there's been interest. "All of our sites have launched based on community demand and support," he said. "As the community asks for more ... I'm sure we'll roll out more in the future."

"Let me see if I can explain how 'Internet Startups' work," he writes. "They make these apparati that draw a box on somebody's computer screen. That person then types words into that box on their screen. Then, the Internet Startup uses some computer codes to copy those words onto somebody else's computer screen, so that other person can then read them."

Some founders took issue with this description. "We're a telecom startup that happens to use the internet," founder John Sheehan said. "I think you're mocking the internet," writes Ben West. "Also, I know an internet startup that copies words from 3 little boxes onto paper, and delivers them to other users, who aren't on the internet.

But others were quick to play along. "And then, Steve Jobs, the father of all Internet Startups put a camera in his devices, allowing people to photograph and videograph themselves, and copy those into that box on their screen," Dharmash Shah writes. "This begat about half of all new Internet Startups."

"You could go a step further and say that all Internet companies modify the voltage in a series of memory units in someone else's computer," says Doug Jones in another comment.

And our favorite: "You forget about the internet startups that aggregate all the little things people type into boxes and sell them to other companies."

Mr. Spolsky was careful to point out that another aspect of internet start-ups is the backlight that turns your phone into a flashlight.

Reddit user Samdumb got the trolling started. "I think that's misleading. You and your co-owner are both employees and are presumably receiving the vast majority of that money."

Spolsky fires back. "There are a couple of dozen owners of Fog Creek. My co-founder (Michael) and I started 3 years before almost everyone else, so we have more seniority (e.g. I have 10 years, the most senior employee has 7). But we're not even close to receiving "the vast majority of that money." That's not the way we roll."

Bring it on Samdumb. "I find it hard to believe that of the millions that Fog Creek makes in revenue per year you and your partner are not taking the majority of that. Whether it be through large salaries, bonuses, dividends, or some other mechanism.
You're making it sound like you make just a bit more money per year than the oldest employees, which is very doubtful."

A Fog Creek employee steps in to defend Spolsky. "Because our revenues are publicly available--in real time, no less!--to employees at the company, it's really easy to do a back-of-the-napkin calculation to see whether this is actually how Joel and Michael are running the company. And it turns out that, yep, sure is. I'm sorry that someone actually doing what they say they're doing is hard to swallow, but that just is what's going on here. Sorry there's no scandal to point at."

Real time revenue metrics for calculating your personal bonus? Betabeat wants to know more.