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How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

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Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#21

Post by bmitc »

It's not just AI startups. It's almost all of them. The startup world is just a massive pump and dump scheme, and so it moves from field to field finding the next hotness. Self-driving cars, VR, EVs, AI, and so on. People soon realize that you can't just take a bunch of hipster tech employees and suddenly create non-solutions that need to have problems created for them to even be solutions, much less choosing extremely hard and ill-defined non-solutions.

I truly wonder how much of the U.S. economy has slowed down because of all this wasted effort. Is it really a good idea for every company to try and reinvent what a company is? Every startup I've been spends a non-zero amount on just re-figuring out how to be organized, how to manage people and projects, and even just figuring out the logistics and tech needed to run a company. It's a lot of wasted effort, time, and money. My time at startups has been the least effective portions of my career. Real work actually moves quite slowly at startups, in my experience.

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#22

Post by moduspol »

freeqaz wrote: post #4

My head immediately jumps to YikYak but I know there were some others in this domain 10 years ago. I can't think of many recently though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak

I was JUST thinking about this app a few days ago and couldn't remember the name. Thanks!

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#24

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tsunamifury wrote: post #9

This isn’t just a poorly made joke it’s also not even making fun of the right thing. The vast majority of investment is inside of public firms into themselves for ai. VCs have actually broadly been sidelines as they both lack the capital to make major moves nor see small enough direct application to invest. There are plenty of jokes to be made about AI, this is a dumb one.

> vast majority of investment is inside of public firms into themselves for ai

FAANG spent $114bn on R&D in 2022 [1]. VC funded nearly 4x that amount [2]. There are valid complaints about the state of venture capital. Lack of money isn't one of them.

[1] https://www.calcbench.com/blog/post/676274365248274432/chart...

[2] https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/en/gii-insights...

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#25

Post by mikeodds »

vgbm wrote: post #17
mikestew wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many syllables in the name, and too much functionality. I refer you to Yo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)

Interesting, I didn’t realize that the “Bro” app from Silicon Valley was based off of a real app.

I think that might have been Yo, which I actually enjoyed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)

super dystopian channels got setup on there like get a yo everytime a missle alert came in Israel

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#26

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bmitc wrote: post #21

It's not just AI startups. It's almost all of them. The startup world is just a massive pump and dump scheme, and so it moves from field to field finding the next hotness. Self-driving cars, VR, EVs, AI, and so on. People soon realize that you can't just take a bunch of hipster tech employees and suddenly create non-solutions that need to have problems created for them to even be solutions, much less choosing extreme…

> startup world is just a massive pump and dump scheme, and so it moves from field to field finding the next hotness

But we retain the solutions that work. A slime mold tries a bunch of useless paths in a maze before it finds the right one. Then it trims and reinforces. Most start-ups failing isn't a sure sign of wasted work.

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#27

Post by matsemann »

candiddevmike wrote: post #12

The weird thing with AI startups is the funding is kind of smoke and mirrors. So much of the funding is tied up in NVDA, MSFT, GOOGL, or AMZN incentives that the actual cash value is... murky. May be hard to pay salaries with GPU credits.

And how many of these companies' customers are just other VC funded startups burning money and buying services adjacent to their own? Like a bigger circle.

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#29

Post by mikestew »

causi wrote: post #11

Like a lot. Didn't YC even fund that startup that wanted to turn middle class suburban homeowners into slumlords by building rental poverty shacks in their back yards?

You're thinking of Pippin[0], and yours is about the most uncharitable take I can imagine, and I wasn't even a fan of the idea.

[0] https://spencerburleigh.com/blog/2022/12/21/shutdown/

Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?

#30

Post by dustingetz »

bmitc wrote: post #21

It's not just AI startups. It's almost all of them. The startup world is just a massive pump and dump scheme, and so it moves from field to field finding the next hotness. Self-driving cars, VR, EVs, AI, and so on. People soon realize that you can't just take a bunch of hipster tech employees and suddenly create non-solutions that need to have problems created for them to even be solutions, much less choosing extreme…

capital is a market

you can bootstrap

any other ideas?

main problem is that startup equity is not a good deal for anyone at all until after PMF

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