The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
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Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#2Just one $25 million payday from the sale of a startup will more than cover an Angel investor’s loss from a hundred dud $25K investments — which is a loss of just $2.5 million. The risk to reward ratios are off the charts, which is why so many want to be Angels.
Sure buddy. A $25m payday means you have an 8% stake in a startup worth more than $300m. And as we all know, $300m+ acquisitions happen every day, right?
But hey, who needs to understand business or technology when you're a writer.
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#3Just one $25 million payday from the sale of a startup will more than cover an Angel investor’s loss from a hundred dud $25K investments — which is a loss of just $2.5 million. The risk to reward ratios are off the charts, which is why so many want to be Angels. Sure buddy. A $25m payday means you have an 8% stake in a startup worth more than $300m. And as we all know, $300m+ acquisitions happen every day, right? But…
Your sarcasm is misplaced. That scenario doesn't need to play out very frequently at all to make that math work out very well in your favor. Those specifics aren't quite right, but it demonstrates a valid point. If 1/500 are massive hits, you're still ahead.
His point doesn't quite fit with his theory that everything's a big talent acquisition conspiracy, though, since those are usually much, much smaller. Unless that was your point?
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#4> My advice to young engineers is don’t worry too much about your business idea and bootstrap your own venture with three pals.
The first rule of selling your startup is don't act like are looking to sell your startup. If your startup has no chance of making any money, why would a big company pay you anything more than market salary to work for them? If you want to get paid a lot for your startup you have to be seriously invested in it for the long-term, or at least look like you are.
This guy has a point or two, but I wouldn't be taking engineer career advice from him.
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#5Just one $25 million payday from the sale of a startup will more than cover an Angel investor’s loss from a hundred dud $25K investments — which is a loss of just $2.5 million. The risk to reward ratios are off the charts, which is why so many want to be Angels. Sure buddy. A $25m payday means you have an 8% stake in a startup worth more than $300m. And as we all know, $300m+ acquisitions happen every day, right? But…
Your sarcasm is misplaced. That scenario doesn't need to play out very frequently at all to make that math work out very well in your favor. Those specifics aren't quite right, but it demonstrates a valid point. If 1/500 are massive hits, you're still ahead. His point doesn't quite fit with his theory that everything's a big talent acquisition conspiracy, though, since those are usually much, much smaller. Unless tha…
But I feel like it isn't 1/500. Maybe on the order of like 1/5000... Think about how many companies apply to just one program like YC at any given SEASON. And this is just one program. When you factor in the other ones like TS, AP, 500 Startups how many years did it take for the first Heroku to come out. And then these guys are considered the "best" at picking and cultivating startups. Think about all the crap other angels have to probably go through.
They might be ahead but I don't think it's that easy.
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your sarcasm is misplaced. That scenario doesn't need to play out very frequently at all to make that math work out very well in your favor. Those specifics aren't quite right, but it demonstrates a valid point. If 1/500 are massive hits, you're still ahead. His point doesn't quite fit with his theory that everything's a big talent acquisition conspiracy, though, since those are usually much, much smaller. Unless tha…
But I feel like it isn't 1/500. Maybe on the order of like 1/5000... Think about how many companies apply to just one program like YC at any given SEASON. And this is just one program. When you factor in the other ones like TS, AP, 500 Startups how many years did it take for the first Heroku to come out. And then these guys are considered the "best" at picking and cultivating startups. Think about all the crap other…
Sure, for angels who aren't very prolific, it's a lot more variable. I should have mentioned that I was thinking about it from an incubator's perspective.
Normal angels aren't investing in a uniform random manner, though, and I have to assume that that helps their odds. Lending their money and their name to the company can help the odds as well.
Heroku was founded in 2008, years before 500 Startups and many of the other incubators, so it didn't take that long. (YC was founded in 2005)
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#7This is one of the most ignorant, poorly written articles I've ever seen on Hacker News. it doesn't belong here.
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#8This is one of the most ignorant, poorly written articles I've ever seen on Hacker News. it doesn't belong here.
It may not be a conscious conspiracy by the big boys but the reality of the startup scene isn't too far from what he describes.
Edit: I'd also say that a certain section of startups are in on the game too - how many startups can you recall where their sole raison d'être and exit strategy was to be acquired by Google, Facebook or Apple? The dropboxes and facebooks of the startup world are much more rare.
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#9This would be a very penetratingly insightful criticism if you had never heard of Airbnb, Dropbox, Twilio, etc etc. Some people at the current classes of YC and 500 Startups may well find themselves working for AmaGooBookSoft in 4 years, and may that be a happy outcome for all concerned, but you've got to torture the math to come to the conclusion that hiring acquisitions are where most of the money is changing hands.
That said, it totally makes sense for AmaGooBookSoft to pay at least some engineers amounts of money which historically were not awarded to technical employees. This should be priced into everyone's expectations, startup-affiliated or no.
Re: The 'Startup Boom' is a disguised jobs fair for big corporations
#10This strikes me as no worse that the traditional approach of hiring recruiters and HR people to processes thousands of CVs and sit through hours of interviews.
The engineers have a route to distinguish themselves, they get well rewarded in the process, the big companies get the talent they want and society runs lots of experiments in the marketplace as a result.
Only only downside I can see is that a particular valuable service may get shut down, but at least the model has been proven and someone else in search of an idea could emulate it (think etherpad).