Seems strange to have a NYT article about this without mentioning Basecamp/ 37Signals. They've been a proponent of the bootstrapping model for a decade.
AFAIK, they received seed money from Jeff Bezos (although perhaps they did not really need it).
Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
161–170 of 271 posts
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are 2 kinds of engineers, one kind sent rockets and recollected them, made robots run and jump. The other kind, shrank blog posts to 140 characters, or added a timeout to short messages, removed the thumb down button, and called them a new feature. Today, we still remember the names of da Vinci, Tesla, Turing, not because they had a successful family ... I just want to keep the dream I had as a kid.
>Today, we still remember the names of So you're living based on how you will be remembered by strangers? That sounds incredibly unfulfilling and doesn't sound like a good way to live. In a few hundred more years almost no one will remember the names of those people either. >da Vinci, Tesla, Turing It's incredibly safe to say that you are not going to be as successful as these people. Almost no one achieves this much…
Are you reading what you're typing to this person? You're like the evil dad in the family telling their kids they will amount to nothing.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are 2 kinds of engineers, one kind sent rockets and recollected them, made robots run and jump. The other kind, shrank blog posts to 140 characters, or added a timeout to short messages, removed the thumb down button, and called them a new feature. Today, we still remember the names of da Vinci, Tesla, Turing, not because they had a successful family ... I just want to keep the dream I had as a kid.
>Today, we still remember the names of So you're living based on how you will be remembered by strangers? That sounds incredibly unfulfilling and doesn't sound like a good way to live. In a few hundred more years almost no one will remember the names of those people either. >da Vinci, Tesla, Turing It's incredibly safe to say that you are not going to be as successful as these people. Almost no one achieves this much…
Why are you trying to tell this guy what he should value? He wants to do work that interests and excites him, and he's making the tradeoffs that balance his personal set of values - with, incidentally, far more information than you have about what those values and specific tradeoffs are.
Pursue your own balance of values with passion, and allow others to be meaningfully different from you. Their desires don't diminish yours.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "hope to make 400k" Even with 10-20 years of experience in the bay area at small, medium, large size software companies, I've never ever made anything close to that amount.
FAANG and other large, profitable companies like Microsoft will pay you that.
FAANG tends to pay ~300k for senior engineers. For 400k you usually need to get lucky with stock appreciation.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
the startup is in robotics, highly aligned with my interests.
All the startup employees I've talked to work 80 hours a week. Why is robots so important to you that you're willing to accomplish absolutely nothing in at least a few of the important areas of your life such as health and fitness, friendships, romantic relationships, extraneous interests, relaxation, or family?
I work at a startup. Neither myself nor anyone on my team works 80 hours a week. I’ve been in tech in the Silicon Valley for two decades at a half dozen startups or more and have only ever put in a few 80 hour weeks.
Doing that consistently is unhealthy and sort of antithetical to building a thriving business.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
the startup is in robotics, highly aligned with my interests.
All the startup employees I've talked to work 80 hours a week. Why is robots so important to you that you're willing to accomplish absolutely nothing in at least a few of the important areas of your life such as health and fitness, friendships, romantic relationships, extraneous interests, relaxation, or family?
> All the startup employees I've talked to work 80 hours a week.
Worked at many startups. Currently run a startup. No one has worked 80h weeks at any of them, except myself in the first year of creating my own startup.
If you really have friends working at startups for < 10% equity and doing 80 hour weeks, something is wrong.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#167VCs win if enough of their bets make it big enough to offset the ones that go under. Naturally the big hits are few and the ones that fail are numerous. That means the big hits need to be huge and the failures need to have a certain cap. The latter also means you can't run a company for 10 years in slowmo until they get profitable. And the big hits need to be huge which means they need to take over a nice chunk of a…
The original story of getting rich off employee equity seems to go back to Netscape, but reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis, I was struck by how abnormal that situation was. Jim Clark hated the VCs, identified as an engineer, seemed happy to share his winnings with everyone, and had the leverage to dictate VC terms. That story shaped tech for a while, e.g. Google bragged about how even their cooks got rich, b…
That's one of my favourite books. There' also "Panic!" which is basically a curated list of newspaper articles and Lewis' columns about long-forgotten companies from the dotcom era and their business models.
What I found hilarious was Jim Clark's original vision of a "trillion dollar healthcare cost disruptor" that was Healtheon, actually IPO'd in '99, but ended up being acquired by the content mill cesspool that is WebMD.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotally, I worked as a software engineer at a very small (10-15 person) startup that just got acquired by FANG, and I, as well as almost everyone else there, generally worked 40 hour weeks. My relationships were fine, I went to the gym most days, and I worked on a masters in AI on the side, and I also learned a lot more than I would have at large companies since I got to own way more complex and interesting proje…
That's really cool. Any tips on identifying startups with this work-life balance?
Ask during interviews?
Most people aren't going to lie to your face that a normal week is 40h if they expect 80.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#169We raised on indie.vc terms, but not with Indie.vc - just a group of angels. Best decision we made. Now we’re profitable, and get to be in control of our future decisions - including whether to raise more or not.
Highly recommend folks checkout the indie.vc terms - I describe it as even more founder friendly SAFE note. Not every investor will be comfortable with it. Took us longer to raise and lost out on potential investors and plenty of funds as a result; but was still worth it in the end IMHO.
Re: Startups Rejecting Venture Capital
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Today, we still remember the names of So you're living based on how you will be remembered by strangers? That sounds incredibly unfulfilling and doesn't sound like a good way to live. In a few hundred more years almost no one will remember the names of those people either. >da Vinci, Tesla, Turing It's incredibly safe to say that you are not going to be as successful as these people. Almost no one achieves this much…
Why are you trying to tell this guy what he should value? He wants to do work that interests and excites him, and he's making the tradeoffs that balance his personal set of values - with, incidentally, far more information than you have about what those values and specific tradeoffs are. Pursue your own balance of values with passion, and allow others to be meaningfully different from you. Their desires don't diminis…
I think that was in response to the false dichotomy the guy created, and the implied judgments about skill for those who didn't value what he did.