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Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

nytimes.com

311–320 of 443 posts

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#311
post #294
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…

> thin-margin Mom & Pop, or medium sized private enterprise that had 1 week of cash on hand and ceased operations overnight. It would be foolish of them to fold instead of getting loans. And it would be foolish of a bank to deny a good business a loan to get through the next couple years. I think much of the moaning about closing up is to encourage low-cost loans. Which is fair, because the government should be subsi…

Sounds like you should go into the loan business. Good luck

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will also filter out sound business models that actually do work in times of plenty, but don't under the conditions of a pandemic.

That's far from a sound business model.

Working 99 out of every 100 years is quite sound.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#313
post #249
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the federal government has the ability to borrow money. States have to balance their budgets every year, and whoops, half their tax money has now vanished, because so many can't work. Delegating responsibility to state governments and simultaneously refusing to provide the needed resources is a recipe for failure. Allowing unlimited profiteering on essential supplies and forcing states to bid against each other,…

States can borrow money if they want, they are called bonds. The Feds can print money or they can sell bonds. That's the difference.

No. Lots of states have very strict limits on the amount of money they can borrow in their constitutions.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#314

I’ve got an esports side project that was starting to get some interest within the community and generate non-trivial MRR (~4k mo). I have a closed alpha that a few teams in the league were using, and I was talking at some level to basically everyone that could be in the market for the current version of the problem. I was looking into getting a business/sales partner in order to have more success on the business sid…

Interesting. If you don't mind me asking; how did you make contact with the first few teams? Was the early exposure from sharing parts of the project through social platforms or directly reaching out to the teams?

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CN has already penetrated Western markets. Do you expect the Martian Axioms to help you?

Sorry, I want to give a response, but I just can't figure out what you're trying to communicate here.

It means that the Harvard / Chicago driven models that ripped the CCCP apart cannot apply, since there are no more internal market models to be penetrated.

Yep.

HN: Dumb Money. Rip their faces off.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#316

I’ve got an esports side project that was starting to get some interest within the community and generate non-trivial MRR (~4k mo). I have a closed alpha that a few teams in the league were using, and I was talking at some level to basically everyone that could be in the market for the current version of the problem. I was looking into getting a business/sales partner in order to have more success on the business sid…

Congrats, that's awesome. Good job and good luck seizing the opportunity!

Thank! It’s exciting and scary at the same time. I’ve had some small projects that have also made small amounts of money, but never anything to possibly turn into a business

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#317
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.

Lets go down that list shall we?

Denmark - shutdown everything march 14th, same week that the US started shutting down, not sure what we could emulate there except more trust in government? I live in a large very liberal city that has voted blue for the last 40 years and we still have our mayor pleading daily with ppl to follow SIP orders.

Norway - See Denmark. They have a slightly stronger federal government then the US and thus were able to use that power in ways that our Fed could not.

Singapore - Whatever they were trying before it all failed and they are now doing a lock down that's actually stricter than ours, also the stuff they implemented initially was draconian and would never fly here, and didn't work there in any case.

New Zealand - An island the size of New Jersey with almost half as many people (5 million), they still have 1000 cases. Not a lot the US could emulate from there. Only reason NJ has so many cases now is because of its proximity to NY and a certain demographic that still refuses to listen to SIP orders (See Bnei Brak for another ex., I'm pretty ashamed).

Taiwan - If you looked at what they were doing to contain this you would know why it's not practical here. 1) they have a national citizen db. 2) That db can be cross referenced with their national healthcare system, 3) which is also cross referenced with everyone at every point of entry. 4) They also used cell phone data to track people's whereabouts. Not a single one of those things is remotely possible in the US. Some are outright unconstitutional others would require bills to be passed and 3-5 years of preparation. If you think the patriot act is wrong... well the fed being able to unilaterally cross-ref different db's and track law-abiding citizens wouldn't pass muster either.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will also filter out sound business models that actually do work in times of plenty, but don't under the conditions of a pandemic.

That's far from a sound business model.

Hotels. Parking. Restaurants. Not sound?

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#319
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small-medium hotel owner here, that used to write code for a living. What just happened in my industry, is forcing me to go look for a job. I don't think we are going to open for summer season or even if we do its not gonna make enough to live by. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, a few had all the wealth and then most people were poor. We even had slaves. I can't believe that in 2020 and with all the knowledge we'…

First, I'm sorry about your troubles. But it's not this way everywhere: there are countries (I'm thinking of Scandinavian) where inequality is perhaps not so bad, and there are countries where governments are making major and genuine efforts to support businesses and people who are at risk of (or who have) lost their jobs due to Covid. There's bad leadership and bad behaviour in many places, but not everywhere all at…

Global population is 7.8B. Scandinavia's population is 25-26M (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark). So your point applies to countries with 0.33% of humanity, which is not representative at all. Maybe add a few tiny countries or city-states and I would be surprised if their aggregative population crosses 2% of the overall global population.

So I believe GP's point still stands - humanity has not learned the lesson from thousands of years of its history.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anyone who thinks FAANG will survive without a contraction is deluding themselves. What happens to the ad market during a depression? How about luxury IT hardware? Entertainment subscriptions? Web services? If there isn't a bounceback in three months or so, the entire tech sector will deflate like a balloon. FAANG will probably survive in some form because of cash reserves, but there will absolutely be cancelled proj…

There may be modest layoffs in some specific targeted teams. But the giant tech companies are still hiring right now too. I'm still hearing from their recruiters.
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