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Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

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181–190 of 443 posts

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard to find investors if you aren’t interested in hyper growth. The financial risk that the company will go out of business is the same but the expected returns are a lot lower. That just doesn’t make sense from an investors standpoint from a risk/reward vantage point.

Raising too much money can increase likelihood of bankruptcy. fight me

[deleted]

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#182
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I genuinely believe all federal government leadership is incompetent - it’s not a matter of it being “OK”, that’s just the default for every administration. Which country on earth is responding to this well without resorting to authoritarian practices?

Denmark. Norway. Singapore. New Zealand. Taiwan. The fact of the matter is, there’s too many people in America invested in a cynical notion that we should expect the government to “fail,” which makes it easier to keep everything underfunded, which almost guarantees failure (random acts of heroism not withstanding). THAT, more than any single person, is what’s killing America. And that’s a bipartisan cancer.

The American people want public services to be funded, but that is not where money comes from. American politicians are far more influenced by big money than they are by their constituents.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#183

So I’m curious will property and rental prices drop in San Francisco now that funding is drying up? Can’t seem to find much information about that. For example a friend of mine who was laid off still has to pay $3300 / month for his studio. Curious how long this will last for?

Employees with high salaries at the larger more stable tech companies are doing most of the Bay Area home buying. Think FAANG, stripe, twitter, slack, etc. These companies can weather economic downturns without laying off people so Bay Area house prices don’t drop much. This was the case in 2000 and 2009. Supply is also dropping as tons of homeowners are refinancing, which balances out any drop in demand. The biggest…

> Supply is also dropping as tons of homeowners are refinancing, which balances out any drop in demand.

Can you explain this? How does refinancing affect housing supply?

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#184
I work for a Fortune 150 company as a programmer. I've had lots of people ask me why I don't move to California and work for a startup. The main reason is because I'm risk adverse and I really don't like the Bay Area (I spent many years living in San Ramon, Alameda, Newark, etc. in my youth and have no desire to ever return). Now I have a new reason to be grateful I work for a Fortune 150 company. I've been able to work from home no problem. Nobody has been laid off. The company has already announced that they are going to go ahead and pay 100% of our year end bonus regardless of what happens in the 4th quarter (the current quarter). Frankly the quarantine has been very very non-stressful for me and my family so far. I don't think that would be the case if I had been working for a startup.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#185
post #79

I'm sorry for some of my schadenfreude here, but really, so many of these startups are overfunded with way too many employees to begin with. They've often paid top dollar for expensive technical talent in locations with very high cost of living. I can't wait to see a pull back to solid fundamentals. I don't see why a daily vacation rental company honestly needs 240 highly paid employees. One company cited in the arti…

Schadenfreude is an absolute awful response to this. A lot of us are just trying to put food on the table and pay off student loans.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you’re probably not looking for a large exit. You are trying that unheard of concept of spending less than you make. What you are doing is running a “lifestyle business”. That’s not a negative despite what the tech bro’s think. I hate the idea of success for a company seems to be “we got another round of funding while losing money”.

The term "lifestyle business" really annoys me. It's Silicon Valley propaganda. There are better ways to build companies than taking hundreds of millions or billions in funding. Pre-crisis startup funding was largely decadence enabled by cheap money. By contrast early generation SV companies took relatively small amounts of funding if at all. Intel for example took the equivalent of $18.4M US in 2019 dollars prior to…

The thing that annoys me about "lifestyle business" is that it also suggests this idea of short days, tons of vacation, etc. Which is usually not the case.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#187
post #33

Startups have had years to prepare, work on their plan, strengthen their fundamentals, and raise capital if necessary. I think the shock is that probably this is a faster onset and deeper drop scenario than most had modeled. Every [1] startup has been thinking for the past couple years about their plan for when the recession would come. Probably hundreds of articles written in mainstream and economic/financial press…

People always write about coming recessions. I could "recession year 20NN" and find someone proclaiming a recession would happen that year. Given someone in the peanut gallery is always claiming recession is near imminent, when are businesses supposed to prepare? Leaving piles of purposeless cash is poor business acumen: it could be put into R&D, expanding operations, or returned to shareholders.

>People always write about coming recessions. I could "recession year 20NN" and find someone proclaiming a recession would happen that year.

i have an economist friend that says "economists have predicted 10 of the last 9 recessions"

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#188

One of my good friends is a restaurant owner in NYC and my spouse is a doctor/surgeon in NYC. Startups aren't pummeled -- they're insulated. Restaurant owners and doctors are pummeled. And all of you who thought incompetent federal government leadership was OK in this modern world -- you were bamboozled. You can start apologizing now.

But I genuinely believe all federal government leadership is incompetent - it’s not a matter of it being “OK”, that’s just the default for every administration. Which country on earth is responding to this well without resorting to authoritarian practices?

It'll be a couple more months before we can say with certainty, but I think Sweden has done an excellent job of balancing economic, life and liberty trade offs.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#189
post #54

Startups are in way better shape than traditional small businesses. 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 o…

Keep telling yourself that.

Note: the OP heavily edited the original post which heavily downplayed the potential impact to startups because of some magical force that insulated them from all ill.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you’re probably not looking for a large exit. You are trying that unheard of concept of spending less than you make. What you are doing is running a “lifestyle business”. That’s not a negative despite what the tech bro’s think. I hate the idea of success for a company seems to be “we got another round of funding while losing money”.

The term "lifestyle business" really annoys me. It's Silicon Valley propaganda. There are better ways to build companies than taking hundreds of millions or billions in funding. Pre-crisis startup funding was largely decadence enabled by cheap money. By contrast early generation SV companies took relatively small amounts of funding if at all. Intel for example took the equivalent of $18.4M US in 2019 dollars prior to…

> Pre-crisis startup funding was largely decadence enabled by cheap money.

Arguably with current rates we are going to have cheapest money ever possible. On top of that a lot of traditional investment vehicles are contracting.

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