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The 99% (of startups)

justinkan.com

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Re: The 99% (of startups)

#51

Post by brazzledazzle »

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")

While some people stay with a game/genre/gaming forever I notice a lot of people "age out" and can't even invest the time to keep up with watching esports (much less playing the games they're watching). I wonder if, assuming my observation is the norm, that will impact numbers as society has less children.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#52

Post by AznHisoka »

oaktowner wrote: post #49
brandnewlow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. He's saying that Twitch is a 1%-er now, but even 9 months before their deal they were in the 99%, aka VCs are clueless sometimes.

What's interesting is that they had already raised $42M at that point (according to comments here). Certainly raising $42M and having an over-$100M valuation already put them in the top 1%, right?

Exactly, the 99% would be someone like Appointment Reminder by Patio, or HitTail, or some bootstrapper that grinded it out for many years without funding, external validation, or connections.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#53

Post by jacquesm »

oaktowner wrote: post #49
brandnewlow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. He's saying that Twitch is a 1%-er now, but even 9 months before their deal they were in the 99%, aka VCs are clueless sometimes.

What's interesting is that they had already raised $42M at that point (according to comments here). Certainly raising $42M and having an over-$100M valuation already put them in the top 1%, right?

> Certainly raising $42M and having an over-$100M valuation already put them in the top 1%, right?

No, it put them in the top .1%.

Easily.

But even then, as a founder selling some of your own stock to a VC is not easy.

The reasoning behind this is twofold: first the VC wonders if the founder wants to set aside some money for themselves in case things go belly up, in other words, does the founder do this as an insurance premium? (Answer: yes, and why not, why should founders be always stuck with risk). Then the second: ok, so we'll make this guy 7 figures rich, what if he doesn't show up next Monday or absconds to Tahiti?

These and other (minor) fears are reasons why VCs are skeptical about deals where founders cash out (even partially) before they (the VCs) do.

Whether that is just or not is up for debate, I think VCs are well within their rights not to do deals, at the same time when you've been in the traces as long as Justin has (I've followed their story right from day 1 because we were in some ways a competitor) a bit of goodwill would be appreciated and I can see a couple of ways in which such a deal could be structured where most of the fears would be laid to rest. Still, it's an arrangement between consenting adults and if there is no consent then there is no deal.

That's tough but that's a trap that many founders are caught in, they have the stock but they don't have the liquidity and there is no market for their shares where they can get a chunk of cash 'just in case'. (pun intended).

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#55

Post by ThomPete »

srameshc wrote: post #33

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 ?

Or to paraphrase Horowitz.

Building a startup is hard. You will have to stand up to a lot of people who will tell you everything you are doing wrong. If you care a lot about social signals you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#56

Post by jay_kyburz »

smt88 wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would make for very depressing reading. It would be comparable to making a documentary about everybody who ever played the lottery. For the most part you'll see people that lost. Year after year after year. And then there would be the lottery winners. A couple of them. The middle is quite narrow, it's good money for a relatively large number of people but it is still a very small fraction of the total nu…

Thank you for being (seemingly) the only person on HN who understands that startups are a lottery. A very, very expensive lottery.

I think everybody knows it, but "you've got to be in it to win it".

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#57

Post by coldtea »

sehr wrote: post #32
coldtea wrote: post #31

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. That's part of what's depressing.

Why would that be depressing?

Well, for people upholding certain cultural values like me, which are not exactly too far-fetched, it's pretty obvious why an era where people watch live gaming in droves is depressing when contrasted with the decline of journalism.

I'd rather there was a citizenry that read the Washington Post more than watching others play video games (or NFL or whatever) more. Maybe people would have a better handle of politics, and the economy and what's going on around them.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#59

Post by moistgorilla »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #51
harryjo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")

While some people stay with a game/genre/gaming forever I notice a lot of people "age out" and can't even invest the time to keep up with watching esports (much less playing the games they're watching). I wonder if, assuming my observation is the norm, that will impact numbers as society has less children.

People age out but those that age out don't have the attitude of "old people", which in this case is "why would people watch this" and "this is a waste of time". (not trying to generalize older people but i think you guys know what type of people I'm talking about) Slowly esports and will become more and more mainstream (probably not completely mainstream but I can't predict the future) and more and more people will watch it.

Also, for the people that age out it seems like 3 more people join. Search viewership growth for games like League of Legends, Dota2, and CSGO and you will see that watching videogames is serious business.

Re: The 99% (of startups)

#60

Post by CPLX »

jaz46 wrote: post #25
CPLX wrote: post #15

What the hell is he talking about? Is the summary of that article something like "this one VC didn't buy shares from me but then I got rich so fuck the haters 99% of you are going to be rich too" or something? The article is like a word salad.

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.

That may be. But when he invokes the 99% he has veered into incomprehensibility. His anecdote has literally nothing to do with the daily issues faced by 99% of startups, and more to the point, seems oblivious to the fact that nearly all of them will fail and return no money or equity sale to anyone, hater-fucking notwithstanding.

I sort of understand the general message of self-confidence, but calling it the 99% renders it highly confusing.

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