What kind of VC expects you to buy them a $291 lunch? If I were a VC I certainly wouldn't invest in any company that thought buying me lunch was a good use of their funds.
So, it's common for people to make a list of wedding gifts they'd like to receive, and these guys are asking people to help fund their startup instead? Do I have that right?
If so, is it common for people to spend over $100 on a wedding present for another couple? $420?
Traditionally, a married couple would need to furnish their new home after moving in together. Modern couples cohabitate before getting married and already have all this stuff, but wedding gift registries are still used to get "better" stuff.
As explained in sister comments, much of this stuff will be expensive, impractical things they don't actually use very often if at all, but will provide an expensive and symbolic keepsake that satisfies people's mammalian hoarding instincts until making for an awkward asset-division discussion during the probable divorce or, less probably, will probably either be inherited or bring in some moderate amount of money at the longest-lived partner's estate sale. (You can look at it more romantically than this, but I'm in an existential mood.)
More practically, a gift registry prevents a couple from getting ten unique waffle makers when they only need one.
How much you spend depends on (a) how close you are to the couple and (b) how rich you are. Rich relatives might easily give a $420 gift, but there's a real lack of gifts in the sub-$100 range there.
More to the point, if I'm going to give a couple a $400 gift, I want them to keep it and appreciate it. I want it to be the good silverware which only comes out on special occasions, or the fancy glassware that the children aren't allowed to touch. I don't want it to wind up as a small part of a line item on an accountant's bill.
Per billable hour, for a good tax accountant, probably. Per working hour for an average accountant, I doubt it. It's not impossible for a good programmer to make $420 per billable hour (or whatever the equivalent is in "real" hours).
Billable hours for an accountant or lawyer are usually around 1800/yr. (The job also requires non-billable hours.) That's 420*1800 = $756,000, assuming the accountant themselves takes home the whole fee. But they don't, just as a programmer doesn't take home every dollar of value they bring into the company. If they take home roughly 2/3 of it (generous, probably unrealistic) that's $500k. So how does a programmer get $500k per year?
One way is to perpetually earn $500k on a 5% rate of return from $10,000,000. That's 33% equity in a startup that's acquired for $30,000,000--probably more rare than a tax accountant.
A programmer doing consulting work might make around $420 per billable hour, but probably as a peak rate and not sustainably.
You could combine income streams: a high paying software job (that's $100,000-$200,000/yr at the top levels) plus consulting (another $100,000+ worth of contracts in a given year is doable for some) plus some equity as a founder or early employee ($100,000 as 5% return on $2,000,000 in wealth) could get you there. It's not as convenient as putting in hours at an accounting firm, but a lot of good programmers fall into it anyway.
As a consulting programmer, I can imagine you might get paid $420/hr in a few rare cases:
1. You built something really complex and a very rich client needs emergency help with it.
2. You are extraordinarily famous and a very rich client feels they must have you.
3. You are convincingly misrepresenting yourself as a team of 7 hardworking people.
4. You have an unusually efficient way of doing something, so you can win fixed-cost-for-deliverables contracts and execute them in fewer hours.
As for what a mortal working as a consultant can normally achieve, $420/h is more than twice what I would consider a very good rate. Only under very unusual circumstances can I imagine a programmer billing at this rate, even on a large corporate client.
I make almost exactly $420 an hour when I teach training classes.
Of course, there is much work that went into developing those classes that I get no hourly wage for at all. So I think of it in terms of, "I need to teach x courses a year" rather than $x/hour.
This was cute for about 7 seconds. After that it was just annoying.
OTOH, if they can get people to fund their startup with donations, more power to them. Then I'd say something like, "Gee I wish I would have thought of that."
Have been noticing an reasonable number of articles or advice from executives that emphasize not mixing family and business. Perhaps they didn't get the memo.
