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Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

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Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#11

Post by gavanwoolery »

Jokes are just witty truths.

The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquired, only to have their product completely destroyed by their new parent company.

Out of all the startups EVER created, I have only used a few products with more than passing interest: Facebook, Google, Youtube, Stack Overflow, and Yelp. And I consider myself to be pretty geeky. Having at least a crude understanding of economic concepts like supply and demand, the startup economy boggles my mind. How is it that so much money is getting circulated around hundreds of thousands of startups when only a handful of them survive for more than 3 years? (And yes, I often count acquisitions as "certain death.") Consumer goods have immediate and often necessary value. Houses last a long time, and carry obvious value. But tech companies can fizzle into nothingness in seconds. These days, value is measured in the size of your user base, which is kind of like monetizing a cat based on how many people pet it. Startups are getting so cheap to produce, I feel like we might as well be trading ideas.

All I can say is thank god for the sham. It is keeping me employed. :)

END INCOHERENT MIDNIGHT RANT

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#12

Post by emmett »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

It's important to keep in mind that the total amount of money going into early stage startups is still a rounding error on larger economic investment. Numbers that feel personally large, like "$40 million" are actually very small in economic terms.

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#13

Post by gavanwoolery »

emmett wrote: post #12
gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

It's important to keep in mind that the total amount of money going into early stage startups is still a rounding error on larger economic investment. Numbers that feel personally large, like "$40 million" are actually very small in economic terms.

Yep that is true :) But even micro-economies should function (more or less) similarly to their macro counterparts.

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#14

Post by revorad »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

If you are going to reduce everything down to meaningless trivialities, you should also realise that Facebook, Google, Youtube, Stack Overflow, and Yelp are also just new ways of pushing around bits of information

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#15

Post by gavanwoolery »

revorad wrote: post #14
gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

If you are going to reduce everything down to meaningless trivialities, you should also realise that Facebook, Google, Youtube, Stack Overflow, and Yelp are also just new ways of pushing around bits of information

Yes, they are about pushing around bits of information just like any other information-based tech, only they have somehow deemed themselves more useful or convenient because they are the only things I still use regularly. My point is more on the end of "how many more companies do we really need to attempt to push around bits of information?" I feel like you could almost come up with a startup generator (in fact, I am sure there are several) just by randomizing permutations of different buzz words. :) But even that was not my main point - I am more curious about how an economy based on no physical value and crazy hype-inflation is able to sustain itself.

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#16

Post by sskates »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

I think you mean out of all the web based startups ever created.

Also it's okay that you're a geek and you don't use other products. Most web based startups don't try to sell to people who consider themselves the biggest geeks.

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#17

Post by nadam »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

I have been alienated from the startup scene because I find that the current tech-startup scene is not about technology. Sure, when a startup gets big, it has to deal with scale: this is a territory where some deep engineering is needed. But other than that it is not the kind of research and development I admire. A lot of influental people in the startup scene has not a clue what creative engineering is about. (Think about Tim Ferris as an extremity.) I know what social is. I know what a lean startup is, I have internalized some of the wisdom of Steve Blank and others.

But I don't care about them now. I don't care about customer aquisition. I don't care about reelase early-release often. I am an engineer, and I am better at it than any of the self-help gurus out there. As an engineer I have my own internal thought processes which I have refined for years. I research and develop ambitious and deep technology. I think about the technology under the shower and on the train. Graphs, hierarchies, O(logn)-s, objects, classes and functions, (even conceptual) refactorings, sometimes even axioms and theorems are dancing in my mind all day. I have lots of TODO-s. I have new ideas every day. I know what to improve, I just need time, and I will improve those things. My motto is: TODO: 'optimize this further', 'TODO: figure this out', 'TODO: think about this from a new perspective', 'TODO: consider refactoring this in xyz way'. (I create a new GUI system in Javascript completely drawn on HMTL5 canvas. Kind of reinventing RIAs.) Engineering is important and brutally overlooked nowadays. Suprisingly few startups do ambitious deeply technical things.

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#18

Post by borism »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

> tech companies can fizzle into nothingness in seconds

their products and services can. but the people who made them and their ideas usually don't disappear without a trace. so if you see a service that was quickly shutdown by parent company after acquisition, you have to realize it wasn't about product but team or intellectual property (or just keeping them off competitors' hands)

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#19

Post by robryan »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Jokes are just witty truths. The startup scene is increasingly becoming a joke. I mean no disrespect to anyone who works in the scene - not to employees, not to founders, and not even to many investors. I used to be part of it myself. But what the hell is going on? People are trying to find out how many ways they can push around bits of information. They get an investment, iterate like crazy, and strive to get acquir…

More and more startups over time are focusing on niches, sure you may not use them and not know anyone that use them but there a lot of people out there and they are selling to a small subset.

Re: Startup Koolaid - It's a beverage, it's a lifestyle

#20

Post by ljf »

The thing that always niggles me about the 'drinking the company/start-up Koolaid' is it's reference to the Jonestown massacre. It was actually Flavor-Aid that was used to mask the Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan, and kill 907 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_Aid

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