Most successful AI ventures.
Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#12Pixar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar "..the Image Computer never sold well.[21] Inadequate sales threatened to put the company out of business as financial losses grew. Jobs invested more and more money in exchange for an increased stake in the company, reducing the proportion of management and employee ownership until eventually, his total investment of $50 million gave him control of the entire company." I h…
Steve Jobs is probably the only person in recent human history that you would actually want to have controlling your company instead of you.
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#13Pixar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar "..the Image Computer never sold well.[21] Inadequate sales threatened to put the company out of business as financial losses grew. Jobs invested more and more money in exchange for an increased stake in the company, reducing the proportion of management and employee ownership until eventually, his total investment of $50 million gave him control of the entire company." I h…
Steve Jobs is probably the only person in recent human history that you would actually want to have controlling your company instead of you.
No. He was a huge jerk. I'd prefer someone who is just as brilliant and less of a jerk. They exist, I've worked with them and they have contributed far more to society than building over priced toys. Let's stop giving credit to this a-hole.
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#14The underlying assumption behind the negative attitude here is that everything worth doing, is easy. That for every line of development which will turn out to be worthwhile, it's possible to build a minimum viable product on a shoestring. This is an understandable idea, because it would be great if it were true. It would be very handy indeed if the universe worked this way.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. Sure, it's true enough for websites because the industry spent several decades building infrastructure to the point where a couple of guys in a garage can build a website. It's not true for much anything else. If we want to make the transition to clean energy before we wreck our environment, if we want to do something about the degenerative diseases collectively referred to as old age before we all bankrupt ourselves trying to prolong dying, if we want to get off this planet before we get snake eyes on the cosmic dice, we need to get back into the habit of understanding valuable goals need big investments.
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#15Jet immediately comes to mind. Many other examples too.
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#16The push toward PMF has been really great for the industry and really helped avoid wasting a ton of cash. The only argument AGAINST it rally is when a team has a proven track record and already KNOWS how to find PMF and knows that it has value. PMF is amazing when you do it right. With http://datastreamer.io we were actually a meme tracking app (similar to hacker news) but what ended up happening is that people basic…
I have been looking for something like Polar. Heavy user of Diigo but it doesn't work offline first.
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steve Jobs is probably the only person in recent human history that you would actually want to have controlling your company instead of you.
No. He was a huge jerk. I'd prefer someone who is just as brilliant and less of a jerk. They exist, I've worked with them and they have contributed far more to society than building over priced toys. Let's stop giving credit to this a-hole.
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Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#18Paypal, Flickr, Slack
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#19Depends on your definition of "big $$$" probably.
I don't have many specific examples, but the cases where it would work tend to be focused around investing in people with track records doing capital intensive things.
Re: Ask HN: When has big $$$ before product-market-fit ever worked out?
#20Segment -> Raised some 100k-ish $ after YC, didn't find PMF till their 3rd iteration on an insanely different idea.
The YC podcast recently had one of the founders on to tell that story. It was pretty interesting to hear first hand since I had only read a little bit beforehand.