Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s Time to Build

a16z.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: It’s Time to Build

#891

Post by indymike »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #832
danimal88 wrote: post #784

I build tech enabled, innovative physical infrastructure solutions for buildings. People do want them. VCs, less so, unless it's as high margin as a photo sharing app, destructive and lucrative as consumable businesses like Kurig, etc. Consumers don't know what they want until the possibilities are presented to them. VCs are literally the gate keepers of much innovative possibilty at the early phases of enterprises.…

What happened with SBA loans that forced everyone into needing VC funding? Didn't people used to just get SBA loans to fund inventions and small businesses? Now it seems like everyone defaults to VC funding.

The issue is that SBA loans require founders to put their house up as collateral or have sufficient real property or capital equipment to collateralize the loan. VC does not.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#892

Post by sah2ed »

danimal88 wrote: post #834
pc86 wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I build tech enabled, innovative physical infrastructure solutions Can you explain what it is you do without copying and pasting a line from your pitch deck? This sentence could literally mean any of at least a dozen completely different things.

Sure. Tbh, I didn't really want this comment to be an opportunity to pitch my company or make it too specific about our solution as there are many different types of solutions, categories and problems that could use innovation capital that are second in line. flair.co is us. We have taken money from investors, those that aren't afraid of energy problems, that aren't afraid of energy efficiency, and that invest in mea…

Your post still reads like marketing-speak — it is not immediately clear how you differ from other home builders.

Anyway, I’m not really sure the point of your criticism of VCs. That you eventually found investors is good, but your grouse is that you don’t have prominent venture capitalists among your investors?

Venture Capital, by definition, has a different appetite for risk than private equity for instance, so it is understandable why your idea may not have been interesting to them.

Why? Because it is inherent in their name: venture, noun; ‘a risky or daring journey or undertaking’. Building an energy efficient home is an innovative undertaking, but I’m sure many will agree it hardly qualifies as risky the way social-oriented startups like GitHub, Slack, Pinterest were risky before they matured into going concerns. Social businesses live and die by the power of network effects, so those startups had no choice but to seek out venture funding to fuel their hockey-stick growth and in exchange they promised their VCs high returns.

Home building OTOH may not benefit from seeking out venture funding compared to traditional funding since the risks of construction are pretty well understood. Also, there are no network effects to ride on to massive growth, as is abundantly clear from the WeWork story.

That’s a summary of the purpose of VC. In practice, the fact that VCs herd towards funding the next big cat video sharing app that would surpass TikTok is a different story. More of a failure of imagination of the VC class as a group.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#893

Post by zachrose »

car wrote: post #119
zachrose wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hard to say just yet about how poorly the American system is failing.

I don’t mean to critize american healthcare, it’s one of the best in the world. Unfortunately not accessible for the part of society that is uninsured and undocumented. Marc and his family have donated so much for emergency medicine, the last resort for the uninsured, which is awesome. What makes me sad is to see how people can end up in an existential crisis, both for their health and financially, because the system…

American healthcare should absolutely be criticized, I just meant that it’s too early to say, as Joe Biden did two months ago, that a socialized healthcare wouldn’t have helped COVID because Italy has socialized healthcare. We haven’t seen the full destruction of COVID to make an valid comparison.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#894

Post by cortesoft »

danimal88 wrote: post #834
pc86 wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I build tech enabled, innovative physical infrastructure solutions Can you explain what it is you do without copying and pasting a line from your pitch deck? This sentence could literally mean any of at least a dozen completely different things.

Sure. Tbh, I didn't really want this comment to be an opportunity to pitch my company or make it too specific about our solution as there are many different types of solutions, categories and problems that could use innovation capital that are second in line. flair.co is us. We have taken money from investors, those that aren't afraid of energy problems, that aren't afraid of energy efficiency, and that invest in mea…

I have flair vents... they are pretty cool.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#895

Post by rexreed »

This reeks of Hypocrisy. After years of VC companies investing in bat-shit ideas they now cry about not having solutions for bat-borne illnesses. Oh "failure of imagination" when they poured billions into the lack-of-imagination ideas such as WeWork, Uber, AirBnb, and others.

Oh now we need imagination when companies with potential solutions for these problems over the past few decades couldn't get these investors attention, who would much rather throw more money to the same set of well-connected entrepreneurs than ignore the innovation happening all around the world in small cities and mid-sized towns, coming out of universities that aren't in the Silicon Valley / SF are or NYC or Boston.

So, the chickens are coming home to roost. We have societal problems that Silicon Valley VCs haven't done anything to solve. Am I surprised? Hell no. Do I believe this woah-is-us "let's build" BS from the same VCs that have built what we have so far. Hell no.

We need new imagination for investors too. The same class of investors will give us the same class of solutions to the same class of problems. Let's look elsewhere for ideas and inspiration. The solution is not Silicon Valley VC. The solution is not the same profit-driven health care institutions. The solution lies elsewhere. And that's what we really need imagination for.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#896

Post by dang »

rexreed wrote: post #895

This reeks of Hypocrisy. After years of VC companies investing in bat-shit ideas they now cry about not having solutions for bat-borne illnesses. Oh "failure of imagination" when they poured billions into the lack-of-imagination ideas such as WeWork, Uber, AirBnb, and others. Oh now we need imagination when companies with potential solutions for these problems over the past few decades couldn't get these investors at…

This comment breaks the site guidelines. Most importantly this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

But note also: "Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's generally better to wait to cool down before posting. That makes it easier to follow the site rules. In addition, you'll think of better points to make your case with, and will be more likely to notice anything untrue or unfair in what you are inclined to say.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#897

Post by bbleciel »

It's depressing this receives this much attention on hacker news.

An extremely wealthy person making an imperative to less wealthy people to "ignore partisan politics and focus on results!"

To this person I would ask... who had the capacity, the agency, the capital, the resources, (and given this article, presumably according to them, THE VISION) this entire time? You did. So rather than make an imperative to everyone with less to "get back on the horse" and "put aside petty differences"– why don't you examine the decisions you made, and examine the systems you were party to, which led to this colossal failure.

"I’m with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know"... Uhhhhh people you don't know are dying everywhere meanwhile speculative finance i.e. markets i.e. your entire business is doing great. Fuck off

Re: It’s Time to Build

#899

Post by jahaja »

Eridrus wrote: post #768
jahaja wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues How is it even possible to isolate capitalism from regulatory capture? Capital accumulation inherently creates power and influence, so regulatory capture is surely just the perfectly logical second phase?

This isn't just a big business problem, there is plenty of regulatory capture on behalf of other interest groups (eg doctors keep the supply of new doctors low). There is no enduring structural answer to this problem, it is fundamental to democracy. The only answers are to struggle for our goals in the political and cultural arenas to hope to marginally improve the situation.

While it's true that there will always be special interest groups, it's not true that the current situation is even close to "more or less the best it can get". There's too much power in far too few hands due to capital accumulation. This is not a natural law.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#900

Post by dang »

quietthrow wrote: post #313

Since you are reading why nations fail I would like to recommend a pairing. How democracies die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. The central thesis here is parties are the gatekeepers of democracies and when they put party before nation they erode the democracy that eventually fails. More often it’s a slow degrade than a sudden spectacular collapse. The erosion paves way for leaders that are more “spectacular”…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22912001.
Post reply on HN