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Winter is coming

startuplessonslearned.com

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Re: Winter is coming

#71

Post by cageface »

grandalf wrote: post #35

Check out my counter-argument: Why are startups hot now? Not because the economy is good or because the startup ideas people are having are particularly good, but because risk seeking investors are trying to shove capital anywhere they can. After the crash of 2008 lots of avenues (created by Wall Street post Financial Modernization Act) to invest this capital were closed, and the growth of the startup scene, particul…

Unfortunately this is also going to mean that a lot of the impatient money that has been chasing a quick buck in housing and clever financial derivatives is going to pour into tech startups and make it hard to distinguish the good ideas from the bad.

Re: Winter is coming

#72

Post by cma »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #61
timmyd wrote: post #18

Its funny that in 2008 - we see posts like "RIP Good Times" - http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/r-i-p-good-times-one-year-l... - and yet nothing - fundamentally - came of it. I'm sure Sequoia's companies left that meeting - scared, sacked a bunch of employee's, cleaned out the closest - and the VC's were happy because the capital lasted longer ensuring no more dilutions for themselves and a "trimmer" business even if…

Nothing terrible happened after 2008 because the Fed and US Govt completely propped up the US economy with $700B TARP + $800B stimulus + two rounds of Quantitative Easing + many more billions of alphabet soup supports and bailouts. The result was deficit spending making up for a precipitous dropoff in GDP: http://imgur.com/1aJbj The idea was to prevent a shock and/or collapse and buy time to work out the underlying p…

This leaves out the state and local part of the picture. The federal stimulus spending minus state and local cutbacks only ended up being around a $100 billion net spending increase. This was minuscule compared to the magnitude of the drop in consumer demand after the burst of the bubble.

(I'm excluding TARP which is more complicated; it isn't quite $700 billion in spending if ends up getting partly repaid, however, aside from the part that doesn't get paid back, there was also an opportunity cost)

Re: Winter is coming

#73

Post by robryan »

atsaloli wrote: post #30
timmyd wrote: post #18

Its funny that in 2008 - we see posts like "RIP Good Times" - http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/r-i-p-good-times-one-year-l... - and yet nothing - fundamentally - came of it. I'm sure Sequoia's companies left that meeting - scared, sacked a bunch of employee's, cleaned out the closest - and the VC's were happy because the capital lasted longer ensuring no more dilutions for themselves and a "trimmer" business even if…

FYI http://www.debtclock.com.au/ shows Australia with $68 billion in debt and rising. That's much better than the US, not in the black, either. Given Australia's much smaller population, this works out to $7,889 per capita. Compare to USA $46,780 per capita. Country's headed in the wrong direction, mate. Same direction as the USA, I'm afraid.

At least here there is a plan and commitment from both sides of politics to put the budget back into the black in the next 2 years. The US seems a fair way further from that.

Re: Winter is coming

#75

Post by analyst74 »

edw519 wrote: post #4

From "The Godfather", about the cycles in their "industry": MICHAEL How bad do you think it's gonna be? CLEMENZA Pretty goddamn bad. Probably all the other Families will line up against us. That's alright -- this thing's gotta happen every five years or so -- ten years -- helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one.

Winter just makes the surviving ones more profitable, mafias or entrepreneurs!

Re: Winter is coming

#76

Post by vynch »

trevelyan wrote: post #70
vynch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol downvoting this must feel really good!

I was pretty pleased about working "the winter's balm" line into that bit about Zygna. And there were a couple of upvotes early on, but I guess meta jokes about English literature don't fly on a hacker audience.

on a serious note...i dont really think this particulat post is that bad...but encouraging such posts can turn our beloved community into reddit!

Re: Winter is coming

#77

Post by geboyr »

bluekeybox wrote: post #11
DanielRibeiro wrote: post #2

...the truly great entrepreneurs didn't get in this to make money, but to change the world Great food for thought.

Beware of schemes that claim that your participation in them will help change the world but which come with no money attached. One is only capable of doing great good if one is also capable of doing great evil. More simply: to do a lot of good (not just a teeny tiny bit), one has to be capable of something that affects real world, ergo one has to be powerful. Capability is closely linked with power (and, in a Western…

But it's not impossible to be powerful without turning your immediate work into money. You might be able to help others make/turn their work into money, which makes me go off on a tangent in my head about an algorithm that could calculate how much power one truly had based on n degrees of separation out from their work.

Re: Winter is coming

#78

Post by chanux »

Yeah! There's some truth to the idea of winter. But for the people who are doing it just for the sake of doing it, winter doesn't matter.

Make good things. Money will follow no matter what the season is.

Re: Winter is coming

#79

Post by nl »

atsaloli wrote: post #30
timmyd wrote: post #18

Its funny that in 2008 - we see posts like "RIP Good Times" - http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/r-i-p-good-times-one-year-l... - and yet nothing - fundamentally - came of it. I'm sure Sequoia's companies left that meeting - scared, sacked a bunch of employee's, cleaned out the closest - and the VC's were happy because the capital lasted longer ensuring no more dilutions for themselves and a "trimmer" business even if…

FYI http://www.debtclock.com.au/ shows Australia with $68 billion in debt and rising. That's much better than the US, not in the black, either. Given Australia's much smaller population, this works out to $7,889 per capita. Compare to USA $46,780 per capita. Country's headed in the wrong direction, mate. Same direction as the USA, I'm afraid.

This is a stupid measurement.

Firstly, what exactly is it measuring? For a start, it appears to include private debt.

Australian government debt is under 5% of GDP. As recently as 2008 it was debt free.

http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1496/PDF/01_Debt.pdf is a good link (from another comment here)

Re: Winter is coming

#80

Post by mise »

May I suggest a soundtrack for this article?

The Doors - Summer's Almost Gone "Summer's almost gone. Where will we be, when the summer's gone?"

The Doors - Wintertime Love "Wintertime winds blow cold this season. Fallen in love, I'm hoping to be."

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