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

They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 167 posts

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#101

Post by drewcoo »

nl wrote: post #55
moralestapia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most VCs add zero value aside from the money. Bootstrapping is always better, if you can do it, of course. Exhibit A: Naval Ravikant, the flagship SV investor, widely regarded to as "a wise man", just released a kind of crappy messaging app that flopped. Imagine having unlimited leverage, unlimited money, unlimited reputation, a huge audience already in place and still that not being enough to put out a competent pro…

> just released a kind of crappy messaging app that flopped. I don't think releasing a messaging app that flops is bad? If getting a messaging app to succeed was easy then there would be more successes at it.

> I don't think releasing a messaging app that flops is bad?

For an exec, it's a "learning experience." Most startups fail. Take the VC cash, fail, and "learn" on their dime.

For any employee, it's s short stint to list on a resume that will make them less attractive to recruiters for the rest of their careers. "Why were you only at FooBarCorp for Baz months?" (Oh, wonderful - how do I explain without throwing anyone under the bus?)

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#102

Post by threeseed »

fuzzythinker wrote: post #34
iamleppert wrote: post #6

Add TechStars to the list of accelerators to be avoided at all costs. They make an investment in your company on terms they can claw back the money at any time. Most of these accelerators provide little to no value, in my experience. Unless you need to know what “product market fit” means. Hilarious.

Any source to your avoid TechStars advice?

The other problem with advice is that TechStars operates like a franchise.

So you don't know which of the many accelerators are problematic or not or what their incentives are.

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#103

Post by aitchnyu »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

What a psychopath. To anyone who may be in this kind of situation, trust your instincts and leave . It will not get better. You will find other, better opportunities elsewhere. Best lesson I ever learned was from a high level exec that had just started at the company where I worked. He quit in 2 weeks. Impressively, he did it without drama or really even causing bad will - he just told the CEO it wasn't a match, and…

I'm trying to normalize this to my circle and strangers in India, where getting let go is a huge shame. I joined a company and my boss wanted me to be a human copilot, given a task and left for a few hours before getting interrupted. I copy pasted 500 line scripts in Lambda web editor, released certain versions for dev/prod, complained about sql injection and variables named data which overwrite each other depending on state and more crap.

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#104

Post by threeseed »

knappe wrote: post #89
gfourfour wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a confusing perspective considering VCs are giving you money to pay for the operations of your business. Money is money no matter how stupid the giver is, their money won’t leech value from your company itself. As for founders ending up with nothing, in those cases their investors ended up with much much less than they were hoping to too. Plus there’s plenty of other cases where founders get rich off…

>>Money is money no matter how stupid the giver is, their money won’t leech value from your company itself. Yeah, this isn't true for a number of reasons. 1) The money you accept is given in trade for a percentage of the company and that means influence in the company. That influence almost always comes in the form of board seats which literally drive the direction of the company. I've seen many successful companies…

> That influence almost always comes in the form of board seats

Most pre-seed and seed investors don't take board seats.

And at Series A and above they are putting in enough money where it seems fair enough.

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#105

Post by dylan604 »

vidarh wrote: post #97
dylan604 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once worked at a place where an employee started their first day at the start of the shift. They mumbled their way through it to lunch where they never returned. That's the shortest I've personally seen. Absolutely not a c-suite role or anything management related though.

I've had that as well. I've always wondered how someone felt so out of place they wouldn't stick it out until the end of the day, or give it a few days.

I always tried to think of it as they were interviewing for some other place they really wanted, but that place was taking a really long time to get back to them so they took something else before things got too dire financially. Then the other job finally reached out, so they said c'ya! I really have no idea the actual thought process though.

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#107

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #7
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

What a psychopath. To anyone who may be in this kind of situation, trust your instincts and leave . It will not get better. You will find other, better opportunities elsewhere. Best lesson I ever learned was from a high level exec that had just started at the company where I worked. He quit in 2 weeks. Impressively, he did it without drama or really even causing bad will - he just told the CEO it wasn't a match, and…

What was the truth? Really just bad fits or something more sinister?

Not really something "sinister", but there was a level of chaos/shit-show that was orders of magnitude bigger than I had seen before, and I've worked for startups my whole career.

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#108

Post by morgante »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #26

> So she paid a $7,500 deposit and was all set to join Newchip when a founder friend told her to “never pay for introductions.” Hopefully everyone knows this here, but if you paid for an introduction it's a negative signal: just cold email. That being said, I'll make intros for only $6,500 and no warrants.

I don't really understand how these predatory businesses continue to exist.

I understand some entrepreneurs are very out of the loop / far from the VC ecosystem, but even just Googling about it you will find lots of clear advice to never pay for introductions or accelerators.

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#109

Post by behringer »

atherton33 wrote: post #37
jojobas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the company was essentially signed away even before the bankruptcy.

Yup. The bankruptcy just transferred the right to exploit it from the mildly incompetent to expertly ruthless.

I prefer the term scam artist over "expertly ruthless"

Re: They thought they were joining an accelerator – instead they lost their startups

#110

Post by rdlecler1 »

moralestapia wrote: post #39
dtnewman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one gives away 20% of a company for advice. He gives them capital. Hopefully connections. And founders can take or leave the advice. Anyway, he is a successful entrepreneur having built AngelList. Sure, maybe he isn’t Midas, but a single failure in a startup doesn’t make someone an idiot. But assuming you are referring to AirChat, it seems too early to call it a failure anyway.

>No one gives away 20% of a company for advice. You'd be surprised at how common that is. Wouldn't you be inclined to believe that @naval wouldn't want to use that capital, connections and whatnot to support the single project of its own authorship in its lifetime? The results speak for themselves. I have another theory, VCs freeride on the success and luck of other people's projects, which (sometimes) are so good an…

You don’t seem to understand basic economics. When you get on a bus and pay for your ticket, is the rest of the ride a free ride?

VCs are running a business too. Most VCs fail to return the capital to their LPs. That’s right, then spend 10 years of their life working with startups and have nothing at the end. They take RISK and they try to DERISK their investment by helping the portfolio company.

There’s also a LOT of stories where a VC invests a LOT of money only for the company to get recapped. The founders are given (some say rewarded) with new equity with the VC is wiped out. In many cases a founder will exit handsomely and the early VCs who came in end up with nothing. That’s the risk.

VC is simple but it’s not easy.

Post reply on HN