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My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

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Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#91

Post by thih9 »

fuzztester wrote: post #53
Xeoncross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solutions presented great. The made sense. They smelled good. They made great leadership stories. ...but none of it actually mattered to the customer.

Yeah! Reminds me of a project life cycle cartoon I first saw in a software book early in my career. Just now searched for "systems analysis tyre cartoon" and selected this page, which seems the best, on a brief look, since it has both some history and multiple versions of the cartoon: https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-s...

There are more modern versions too, with additional panels, like: https://pmac-agpc.ca/sites/default/files/Tree.jpg

I especially like “how the customer was billed”.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#92

Post by firefoxd »

pyrophane wrote: post #76
firefoxd wrote: post #71

This sounds like the start up I left a couple years ago. I was employee number 3. I took a deep pay cut to join them. I shared a cubicle with the ceo and cto, the two cofounders. Tight nit group. A year later, we had our first round of vc fund. I had a slight bump in salary, but owned stocks so all is good. My role was, make-things-work-at-all-cost. I'd be on calls with customers and their engineers to make things wo…

How did your stock wind up being worth $0? Down round or a "practically an acqui-hire" type of acquisition?

It was an acqui-hire, so former employees got nothing.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#93

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

lotsofmoney wrote: post #89
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in what sense are we better off for this? Is the claim that innovation only happens in the USA? That the only good companies are US companies? What are the specific benefits, other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders, that come from this "high risk, high reward" environment?

An insane amount of money, world hegemony, and a very high standard of living. I’m not sure the average European appreciates just how comfortable life in the US is. And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans. Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poo…

Insane amount of money: Of the 10 countries with the highest median income, 7 of them are European. By some measures, the USA is-midpack, with Norway/Canada very similar to us, but missing most of the entrepeneurial/VC culture of the USA.

World hegemony: mostly a function of the post-WWII situation, combined with our willingness to spend absolutely insane amounts on our military and use it to impose or at minimum encourage US interests globally.

Very high standard of living: the US has one of the highest GINI coefficients world wide, so only a median comparison (which is quite hard to develop) really conveys the differences accurately. Large swaths of the USA (notably Appalachia and also the desert southwest) have a substantially lower median standard of living than most of Europe.

Anyway, even if your claims about the USA were true, that by itself doesn't connect them to the VC risk/reward culture under discussion.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#94

Post by adwn »

lotsofmoney wrote: post #89
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in what sense are we better off for this? Is the claim that innovation only happens in the USA? That the only good companies are US companies? What are the specific benefits, other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders, that come from this "high risk, high reward" environment?

An insane amount of money, world hegemony, and a very high standard of living. I’m not sure the average European appreciates just how comfortable life in the US is. And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans. Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poo…

> * And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans.*

Such as? Name three examples, please. "smartphones and cars" doesn't cut it, those are pretty common even for low income citizens here in Germany at least, and we don't really need air conditioners on account of being located in higher latitudes – everyone has heating, though.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#95

Post by master_crab »

jacquesm wrote: post #50

I can condense this to 'I thought CEO was a nice title but I failed at taking it seriously and allowed others to lead my company whilst I held the title'. The results are predictable. Note how there is no acceptance of personal responsibility. I also note that there isn't a shred of evidence for this whole story, and $100M to $0 does not seem like a believable trajectory (nor does $0 to $100M, but the other is much l…

I’m willing to accept the 0 to 100M to 0 plot line. But I agree, if this was a truly productive post the poster would have also admitted some level of personal culpability. They are the founder after all and the VC is just another stakeholder. The founder hired those VPs, not the VCs.

A key requirement of any company is managing your equity holders.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#96

Post by therealdrag0 »

booleandilemma wrote: post #35
raincom wrote: post #11

Lessons learned from that post: (1) "I was told to hire a lot of people. Put fuel on the fire they said. Bring industry experts who can move the needle. All this BS you hear all day. All failed. I hired VPs and bloated my payroll. Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” Imagine you hire someone to scale an area and their solu…

That's how it works in a nutshell. Lots of talkers out there. The people I know who do the real work are the ones at the bottom, and you don't know them because they keep their heads down and focus on writing code. The people that self-promote the most are the ones least capable.

Time spent coding is a zero sum. Leaders are needed to identify how to do use that energy and time. In terms of business success. This might be the #1 thing (granted I’m entirely speculating). Are your priorities correct and do the engineers know them? This is not that easy. People will argue endlessly over when to address tech debt, how much security is enough security, how much to deliver early vs fully formed, what features to build, When to bail on a half made feature, etc etc.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#97

Post by croes »

jamesaurichs wrote: post #44
mustafa_pasi wrote: post #26

All I'm thinking is, you Americans are really fucking lucky. Yeah OK, VCs are greedy and difficult to work with, but at least they give you a chance and literally give you startup capital in the millions to build your own thing. That is mind blowing to me and definitely what sets America apart from everywhere else.

The built-in culture of risk taking in US can't be underestimated. Yes, we joke about Florida man and lament about the excess funding for startups. But with great risk comes great reward, and chances for inexperienced founders to prove themselves. Nowhere else on the planet are you able to do that with such magnitude, not in Japan, not in Europe, not in China (now that they're broke and in a Great Depression, and Xi…

With great risk, like Lehman brothers mortgage bundling, comes great reward, government bailout.

> Nowhere else on the planet are you able to do that with such magnitude, not in Japan, not in Europe, not in China

Europe had that too, rich nobles sponsored scientists and artists.

We are back in aristocratic society

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#98

Post by croes »

jamesaurichs wrote: post #88
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said another way, America is the sandbox for the rich to experiment on the poor, with technology that may or may not be good for the poor but ultimately doesn’t matter because the ultimate winner is always the one funding them. It’s the test and staging servers for global capitalism

Tesla creates American jobs for the poor to work in manufacturing SpaceX creates aspiration for the poor Google allows the poor to advertise their product to anyone in the world cheaply Facebook allows the poor to market their product to anyone in the world cheaply AirBnB allows the poor to live in an expensive city, cheaply Stripe allows the poor to sell their product to anyone in the world cheaply

And still people can't afford to buy house like their parents did.

Maybe the problem isn't jobs but wealth distribution.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#99

Post by opportune »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #84
jamesaurichs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get more rockets (literally), faster. We get Tesla, SpaceX, Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Stripe, etc...

Said another way, America is the sandbox for the rich to experiment on the poor, with technology that may or may not be good for the poor but ultimately doesn’t matter because the ultimate winner is always the one funding them. It’s the test and staging servers for global capitalism

Those companies have generated hundreds of thousands of extremely high paying jobs because hundreds of millions of consumers/many businesses chose to give them money.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#100

Post by Waterluvian »

ghaff wrote: post #87
Waterluvian wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more than anything this demonstrates the “my context must be everyone’s context” fallacy. The VC world is a little slice of the tech world. Hacker News is a wee little slice of the tech community.

If you're in a senior management position in a company which has any M&A activity, I'd expect you to have at least some understanding of VC basics.

“I’d expect”

That’s my point. People think their context is everyone’s context. You expect the world to be a certain way. Is it?

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