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State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

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Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#61

Post by Veelox »

pavlov wrote: post #23
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #6

Since 3 out of 9 are about sexual harassment and one is about politics, I was hoping to get your thoughts. These days, people feel increasingly under fire. We have to watch what we say, what we do, who we offend, what our political affiliations are, and whether we are crossing any lines. A little anecdote: I was hacking away on a couch in a mall, and a couple of techies came up to me doing a user study. They asked me…

These days, people feel increasingly under fire. We have to watch what we say, what we do, who we offend, what our political affiliations are, and whether we are crossing any lines. For everyone else but white men, that was always the case.

I think this mindset is part of what the poster is asking about. It seems like you are celebrating the pulling down of white men instead of being sad we cannot elevate everyone else to phycological safety.

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#62

Post by anon11082016 »

mlevental wrote: post #57
anon11082016 wrote: post #45

Are we still pushing the idea that superficial diversity is something to strive for? How about diversity of thought?

those two things go hand in hand.

Clearly not, because after all the effort, at least the valley has been making, it's still a cesspool of the same ideology. Even with VPs of dieversity and correct think

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#63

Post by SeoxyS »

codingdave wrote: post #49
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #6

Since 3 out of 9 are about sexual harassment and one is about politics, I was hoping to get your thoughts. These days, people feel increasingly under fire. We have to watch what we say, what we do, who we offend, what our political affiliations are, and whether we are crossing any lines. A little anecdote: I was hacking away on a couch in a mall, and a couple of techies came up to me doing a user study. They asked me…

> We have to watch what we say, what we do, who we offend, what our political affiliations are, and whether we are crossing any lines. People felt the same way in the 90s when the "Political Correctness" movement really took off. It did feel like a bit much at the time, and if tumblr existed in 1991, surely it would have gone overboard... but at the end of it all, we did move to a culture that was more conscious of d…

I don't agree that we ended up in a culture that is more conscious of diversity. I think we moved to a a culture of adversity between social justice warriors and those who outright rebel against their ridiculous campaign. If it wasn't for that dynamic, we'd have a different President right now.

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#64

Post by pavlov »

Veelox wrote: post #61
pavlov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, people feel increasingly under fire. We have to watch what we say, what we do, who we offend, what our political affiliations are, and whether we are crossing any lines. For everyone else but white men, that was always the case.

I think this mindset is part of what the poster is asking about. It seems like you are celebrating the pulling down of white men instead of being sad we cannot elevate everyone else to phycological safety.

I'm a white man too, and I don't understand what it means to "elevate" the rest of the population without white men having to change their ways.

There's a strange Marie Antoinette quality to this discussion. The young queen just wanted everyone to be happy -- why couldn't the poor eat cake too? It's the same with men who sit on top of the present power structure and can't seem to understand why everyone else couldn't simply do the same.

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#65

Post by kjpy »

watwut wrote: post #25
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I do take women seriously, and one of my closest friends is also a badass dev who happens to be female. She confided in me one day that feminism originally started out with the central idea that equality is for both women and men, and everyone else. But it has morphed, and it's feeling like people are simply gleeful whenever they hear stories of men whose lives have been ruined or wh…

> We can't flirt in a professional setting anymore. Not without risking our jobs. Flirting and harassment are not the same. The meetoo stories I read were nowhere near grey zone. They were not consensual. I am sure there might be some, but I did not encountered them and they were not prominent. Funny how revelations of assault and stories about how female careers were stopped due to it got redefined as "flirting" on…

SNL got the difference between flirting and harassment exactly right: https://youtu.be/PxuUkYiaUc8

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#66

Post by saosebastiao »

mrleiter wrote: post #12
Silhouette wrote: post #4

I love this one: How confident are you that you're building a billion dollar company? 18.6% I'm certain we will 41.8% I'm confident we have a decent shot 23.2% It's possible, but I'm not so sure 10.1% I doubt it 6.4% Definitely not They interviewed 869 venture-backed founders to get the data. As of December 2017, WSJ lists 168 VC-backed private companies valued at over $1B in the entire world . Meanwhile, how many ye…

#33 What’s the hardest executive hire you've made? (Choose one) 2.6% Finance Well, I see some sort of correlation here. *EDIT: Two options - either there are so many brilliant finance people looking for jobs or finance is not so important (although it obviously should be).

Accounting always was and always will be more important at a startup. Finance is a distraction and doesn’t become important until you’re big enough to care about it.

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#67

Post by jaggederest »

anon11082016 wrote: post #62
mlevental wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those two things go hand in hand.

Clearly not, because after all the effort, at least the valley has been making, it's still a cesspool of the same ideology. Even with VPs of dieversity and correct think

Part of the difficult of achieving diversity in the startup world is that the first filter everyone has to pass is drinking the ideological Kool-Aid.

Tough to attract diversity of thought when you directly screen it out.

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#68

Post by jaggederest »

Silhouette wrote: post #53
sp527 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't delusional overconfidence practically a prerequisite to get through the VC filter? Chris Sacca for instance once praised Systrom for talking in radical future-spect when raising seed funding (paraphrasing, 'once we reach 50 million users, we'll add this...'). If the VC community is applying selective pressure to identify that type of person, then it's no surprise that these kinds of surveys will reflect that. V…

On the flip side, entrepreneurs know they have to deploy an airtight reality distortion field. When dealing with the outside world, sure, the appearance of having faith in your business is important. But believing your own hype to the point of wildly overestimating your prospects doesn't seem like a healthy characteristic in anyone running a business. At some point it's probably going to lead to bad decision-making.

People seem unlikely to consider a VC survey to be the place to confess their deepest fears honestly.

As in a job interview, if someone asked "What is your biggest flaw as an employee?" They are unlikely to get a useful reply: "Sometimes I work so hard that I make other people feel bad" perhaps

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#69

Post by kylestlb »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #26
sidcool wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't get the reference of Daily show and Colbert there. Care to elaborate?

These types of shows were based on showing short clips of someone saying something, then cutting back to Stewart with a shocked face. Reminds me of this comment on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11104428 The poster does not know Fry, the award winner or their relationship but the first thing that comes to mind is shock: How could he say such a thing when we can interpret it in the worst possible wa…

This is in no way unique to The Daily Show or The Colbert Report (both of which were on a Comedy channel, but I digress).

Lots of TV news programs are attempting to curate your opinion based on carefully cherry picked nuggets of information. Nancy Grace, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly (used to be at least), et al. The 'show clip -> explain outrage' is a news trope that won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe we should focus on the individual merits of these shows instead of unilaterally deciding that they are a general cause of some aspect of society that you may think is problematic.

Re: State of Startups 2017 Survey Results

#70

Post by benp84 »

jansho wrote: post #41

#53 is interesting! I assumed that there would be more 20-something founders. But 31-35 year olds account for 23%, and 41-50 year olds account for 30%

Though #54 is "How long ago did you start your company?" for which the average is 4-5 years. So, subtract that off for the age at founding I guess.
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