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The 99% (of startups)

justinkan.com

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Re: The 99% (of startups)

#31

Post by coldtea »

Jasber wrote: post #17
Animats wrote: post #11

It's depressing that Amazon paid four times as much for this business as Bezos did for the Washington Post.

27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. It's pretty clear eSports is going to be huge. Having the biggest streaming site/brand will be valuable and doesn't seem crazy in that perspective. [1] http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome-leagueof...

>27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships.

That's part of what's depressing.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#32

Post by sehr »

coldtea wrote: post #31
Jasber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. It's pretty clear eSports is going to be huge. Having the biggest streaming site/brand will be valuable and doesn't seem crazy in that perspective. [1] http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome-leagueof...

> 27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. That's part of what's depressing.

Why would that be depressing?

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#33

Post by srameshc »

Why the hell is this so negative ? He is very clear "This is for all the founders who know they have built something that people want, but the rest of the world hasn’t recognized it yet." It must be tough as a founder to prove yourself and others that there is an certain value to his/her business. Isn't a good exit is what an investor's or founder's option ?

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#34

Post by maxmcd »

minimaxir wrote: post #30
jaz46 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justin is saying that VCs understand what's hot now, but are sometimes bad a predicting future value. So to founders, if you're creating value, keep going even if VCs don't see the light yet. They'll come around.

The haters-gonna-hate philosophy in Silicon Valley is starting to become a problem. There's a lot of luck involved in making a startup, and startups can fail for any number of reasons that no data can predict. The notion that if you do your best, you will succeed, is dangerous to naive entrepreneurs.

The parent article contains this line:

> "trust your numbers and growth to give yourself confidence in the face of rejection"

I don't imagine the people that you're worried about this being dangerous for can always find comfort in their numbers and growth.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#35

Post by huac »

josu wrote: post #22
Animats wrote: post #11

It's depressing that Amazon paid four times as much for this business as Bezos did for the Washington Post.

Content creation vs content distribution. While both companies operate in a thin margin environment, content creation is not easily scalable but content distribution is. Also, shrinking market vs growing market. Besides, value to society and value to investors don't always go hand in hand.

Twitch also fits in great with Amazon's overall strategy of distribution across all verticals - from retail and Prime Movies/Music, to cloud services and esports.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#36

Post by anonymousab »

coldtea wrote: post #31
Jasber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. It's pretty clear eSports is going to be huge. Having the biggest streaming site/brand will be valuable and doesn't seem crazy in that perspective. [1] http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome-leagueof...

> 27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. That's part of what's depressing.

American tournaments vs. world tournaments.

A better comparison would be the World Cup.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#37

Post by huac »

harryjo wrote: post #21
Jasber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27 million people watched the League of Legends world championship[1] which is on par (or better) than MLB & NBA championships. It's pretty clear eSports is going to be huge. Having the biggest streaming site/brand will be valuable and doesn't seem crazy in that perspective. [1] http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/instantawesome-leagueof...

That's a high single-event number. Do the numbers sustain across the year? MLB and NBA have over 100 events per year (considering all the days games as one daily "event")

Mm, League has events maybe 20 or so weeks of the year (matches mainly on weekends), for probably 8 of those we see very high numbers. But Twitch also hosts other stuff - SC2, Hearthstone, and CS:GO also draw large crowds. Dota 2 also, but Valve does have their own streaming platform for that.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#38

Post by kamaal »

minimaxir wrote: post #30
jaz46 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justin is saying that VCs understand what's hot now, but are sometimes bad a predicting future value. So to founders, if you're creating value, keep going even if VCs don't see the light yet. They'll come around.

The haters-gonna-hate philosophy in Silicon Valley is starting to become a problem. There's a lot of luck involved in making a startup, and startups can fail for any number of reasons that no data can predict. The notion that if you do your best, you will succeed, is dangerous to naive entrepreneurs.

>>The notion that if you do your best, you will succeed, is dangerous to naive entrepreneurs.

That is dangerous to any naive person in the world in any area of work. Doing your best, means your boss will look at you like a threat that you might take their job, or some political cartel in a big company will treat you like a pawn who does all their work, while their yes men reap benefits.

Start ups are only a area of work where the heart burn is amplified because of a lot of work is done in a very short period of time.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#39

Post by thethimble »

ryporter wrote: post #26

At the time he attempted to sell his shares, Twitch had raised $42 million, and had been valued at around $100 million several months earlier [1]. He is complaining about the gall of VCs not to buy his shares at a price that would imply a valuation of less than $194 million (and presumably not that far below). I do not believe that this is a good attitude for entrepreneurs to internalize. [1] https://www.pehub.com/20…

His sentiment is worth much more than the raw numbers.

Raising a round is a very very hard thing to do. As an entrepreneur, you look around and all you see are the 1% in the media. On the other hand, the fundraise feels like you go door to door getting your idea shot down by everyone you talk to. The passion and tenacity to fight through this negativity is what Justin is trying to elicit.

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