51–60 of 443 posts
- Forget funding. The window is closed.
- Big customers are battening down the hatches. Cash is king. Lots of asks for payment terms.
- Little customers are failing.
If you run a startup or work at one, implement Plan B now. Cut.
Is the narrative that big companies are safe havens for job seekers actually true? Isn't Airbnb a "big" company?
> For start-up workers, the past few weeks have been sobering. Many had bought into the tech industry’s change-the-world ideals, had few boundaries between their work and personal lives and hoped for big payouts if their start-ups went public. This saddened me, because it's a refrain that we hear over and over and over. Same exact thing happened during the .com bust (which scares me to believe that was 20 years ago a…
> I’ve also found that the best folks in business tend to have rich, fulfilling lives outside of business as well. Totally agree, but I’ve been burned multiple times by startups that see any kind of multifaceted lifestyle as “not fully committed” to the team or company, which is ridiculous. I’ve been so disappointed how frequently this happens in tech.
I think you probably already know this but for those that need to read this - the chances of you becoming a millionaire at a start up are zero. Better to go buy a lotto ticket. That said, much like owning a home in Southern California there are many good reasons to join a startup- money is not one of them.
There is of course the caveat that of course some people win the lotto but planning your financial life around winning the lotto is idiotic.
By our very nature, we need months of runway just to keep running. We're designed to weather this kind of storm because "zero revenue" is the default state.
Hearing about Bird cutting 30% of their workforce is awful. But it's nothing compared to the thin-margin Mom & Pop, or medium sized private enterprise that had 1 week of cash on hand and ceased operations overnight.
My friends and family in startups are doing fine, for the moment. It's those that chose to work at the more stable, traditional work environments that are getting wiped out, and much less likely to return when the economy starts back. Because when it does, there will be money ready for investment - extending your runway to get there for a startup is more straightforward. But when you're a bigger business with little cash and no-one is buying assets right now, you literally are unable to make any decision to help.
I've got friends in manufacturing, hospitality, services, and so on that will not return to work because their businesses are going to or have already failed, for good. That's the fucking terrifying thing happening right now and it's more deserving of attention than us tech bros.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet we all know what they mean when they call those companies "startups". The term has drifted pretty far from its original meaning, but it does carry a new meaning even though it's almost completely different
It means they're VC-backed webapps from San Francisco?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So "startup" now means "company" and "early-stage startup" means "startup". I look forward to having to call them "incipient early-stage startup".
I guess startup is generally understood now to mean a VC-backed company that doesn't make any money.
I've heard numerous times startups have had a hard time getting a smaller amount of funding from angels and VCs. As in, "I want $500k" and "no, we only do deals with $1M+", or something like that. I thought that was crazy. This is probably the pendulum swinging back, as pendulums do. I am interested in how this situation affects larger companies. My guess is since they're so much larger this time around than back in…
Probably this is focused on ownership and there's miscommunication. VCs don't care that much about dollars; they want 18%+ ownership or even big returns aren't material to them.
Classpass was founded in 2013. Wonderschool was founded in 2012. Can we stop calling companies that age a startup? Or at least stop using them as examples? I mean, the article then goes on to call Airbnb a "home rental start-up". It isn't a start-up, it is over a decade old and has over 10,000 employees.
The reason AirBnb is a startup is because it makes no money. A company stops being a startup when you aren't relying on someone cutting you a check every month to keep it all going. Most of these companies will now fold. The number of employees or, even, revenue is irrelevant.
Classpass was founded in 2013. Wonderschool was founded in 2012. Can we stop calling companies that age a startup? Or at least stop using them as examples? I mean, the article then goes on to call Airbnb a "home rental start-up". It isn't a start-up, it is over a decade old and has over 10,000 employees.
Another thing that's more than half a decade old is your objection. The term "startup" has come to have a broad meaning. The meaning of words changes over time. Fortunately, new terms often come along to fill gaps. In this case there is the term early-stage startup .
So I think it's fair to ask whether Airbnb, a profitable company with 12,000 employees and annual revenues of $3B+ for the last few years, can really be called a "startup" now. They were a startup. But now? Eh...
What I’m seeing: - Forget funding. The window is closed. - Big customers are battening down the hatches. Cash is king. Lots of asks for payment terms. - Little customers are failing. If you run a startup or work at one, implement Plan B now. Cut.