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Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

nytimes.com

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Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#401

Post by mepiethree »

danielscrubs wrote: post #363
pj_mukh wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in San Francisco for 3 years now. Haven't seen a single needle yet or "human filth". AMA.

How? I was in the city for a week and saw more needles on the street than the slums of China. Even the townsfolk would complain about some mental hospital closing down forcing mentally ill people to live on the streets and you could see them everywhere. That said, I didn't have a guide, I'd just walk with friends for an hour or two aimlessly starting from the pier. On the other hand, this is how I'm used to do it and…

All cities have bad parts. San Francisco is somewhat unique amongst places that I've visited, in that most of the tourist traps are either in or are immediately next to the absolute worst parts of town.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#402

Post by rexreed »

krona wrote: post #372
closeparen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so offensive to people in this industry that our skills are valued? Sometimes it seems a little crazy to me too, but I'm not, like, excited to need to live with 5 roommates 90 minutes away from work again like you seem to be.

In my experience the pareto principle is hard at work in VC funded startups that went for rapid headcount expansion.

Bingo. This is exactly what I meant.

And when the industry / economy in contraction, the first jobs to go is the "excess fat" of those 80% non-productive that accounts for 80% of wages. The remaining 20% are the high value contributors, which honestly represents what the true employment should have been.

VC economics are not the same as general market economics.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#403

Post by rexreed »

mikeg8 wrote: post #343
tjr225 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The schadenfreude isn’t necessarily directed towards individuals who choose to work at a startup and have the misfortune of being laid off. I believe it was meant towards an overly aggressive/ borderline reckless leadership mentality that has founders raise tens/hundreds of millions in capital, pump a majority into explosive, unfettered growth objectives, without having to exercise much of the fiscal conservatism tha…

Exactly! This comment reflects the best summation of what I meant and how I feel. The schadenfreude is directed at the COMPANIES not the INDIVIDUALS. And honestly it's directed at the VC.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#404

Post by rexreed »

gxon wrote: post #358
tjr225 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point isn’t that you or the parent that I’m replying to are incorrect at all. You seem to be missing my point entirely. Feeling schadenfreude when a business fails is tantamount to being happy that someone loses their job. That’s fucked up- and I can’t believe anyone would be stoked about this. Seek help.

I don't see a problem in feeling good that a bad company failed and feeling bad that employees at that company are losing their jobs and going to suffer. Conflicting emotions are a natural result of complicated situations. This is part of why I think we need a much stronger economic safety net with UBI and universal healthcare. Too often, we protect objectively bad institutions and companies because of the very real…

This is great insight. We protect bad companies because we want to protect good employees. In the process we reward bad management and bad investors and the good employees get shafted anyways.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#405

Post by mepiethree »

ummonk wrote: post #227
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been reached out to by Google recruiters with COVID-19 specific messages. They know this is the time to hire software engineers.

Startups with cash are doing this, too.

My takeaway so far is that the tech job search is going to be way more competitive for a while. Since this started, we have had about twice as many people pass phone screens. Smart people who were taking time off who suddenly want a stable income, and smart people who were laid off from less secure startups. Some very talented people that we would have hired two months ago, might not get hired when they interview next week, and it's not because we are hiring less.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#406

Post by changdizzle »

0x202020 wrote: post #296

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…

Can I ask what the project is? Have worked in the space for a bit and would love to connect to learn more.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#407

Post by veggieburglar »

Stratoscope wrote: post #204
wozniacki wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure youre replying to my comment? My comment was calling into question the viability & competitiveness of most restaurants that cannot weather a sudden change of fortunes. They are not be confused with long-lived, well-run and meticulously managed restaurants that stand the test of time because they offer something compelling. Most restaurants don't fit that bill and never had those ingredients baked into th…

Mobile friendly quote (don't use code formatting for quotes): > In 2001, my co-workers at PayPal and I would often get lunch on Castro Street in Mountain View, Calif. We had our pick of restaurants, starting with obvious categories like Indian, sushi and burgers. There were more options once we settled on a type: North Indian or South Indian, cheaper or fancier, and so on. In contrast to the competitive local restaur…

Starting a restaurant to get rich is dumb.

Starting a restaurant because you think your great grandmothers naan is superior is not dumb.

Neither is it dumb to start a restaurant because you love feeding people, or a bike shop because you love repairing bicycles, or .

As long as you know what you’re getting into, it’s a perfectly honorable way to live your life and there are ways to make it work.

EDIT- at least there were ways to make it work during non pandemic times. I hope we will see an upswelling of these types of businesses in the wake of this, although you couldn’t pay me to take bets on a timeline.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#408

Post by goatinaboat »

closeparen wrote: post #110
conception wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because the owners are trying to squeeze as much value as they can out of you in as short a time as possible. This might be obvious but owners want as much they can show an investor as soon as possible to make their ownership of the company more valuable in the shortest amount of time, and also often trying to make the amount of money they lose to you as small as possible. I think you probably already know this…

Owners of every kind of company want to extract as much value as they can at the lowest possible cost. Even nonprofits want to serve their missions (which are usually distinct from staff welfare) as best they can at a given budget. Greed doesn't seem to have much explanatory power for why startups in particular would be worse.

Owners of every kind of company want to extract as much value as they can at the lowest possible cost

Other than sports, what other industry than VC-backed startups lures in talented-but-naive young people, promises them riches, then chews up and spits most of them out, having burned them out? OK maybe music and fashion as well.

Meanwhile the owners get richer and richer.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#409

Post by EthanHeilman »

vkou wrote: post #398
nostrebored wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's far from a sound business model.

Most business models also don't work if the world plunges into global thermonuclear war, but we still consider them to be sound.

Yep, if your startup plan has a good chunk of the budget dedicated to "how does the business survive global thermonuclear war" you are wasting money, time and focus.

Re: Startups are pummeled in the ‘great unwinding’

#410

Post by mark_l_watson »

Excuse me for getting a little bit off topic: I think these crazy times will cause startups, medium size companies, and especially individuals to, in the future, keep much larger cash reserves and generally exist more frugally.

It is true that at least in the USA that democrats and republicans in Congress and the president are working overtime to shore-up their constituents (i.e., large corporations) so they will be fine. I think the help given to the mega corporations will be at least an order of magnitude greater than what is given to help individuals and regular businesses - I base this on what has been just been given to the financial industry in the last month.

Frugal small businesses that we own ourselves are probably the most stable unless you are in the billionaire class.

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