Goood, gooood.
Let the hate flow through you!
(I'm an business/enterprise kinda guy, and it's been an ugly decade.)
Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
21–30 of 101 posts
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#22Sure, Silicon Valley might produce only 10 great companies a year, but where I'm from (Ottawa, Canada), we'd produce only 1 great company every 10 years.
(I'm referring to tech companies)
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#23This is great. When I was once looking to join a start-up I met with people who wanted to build a "social fitness food" website, a "social ebay where people shared the things they bid on," a ton of "new way to share music," a social "t-shirt based on Twitter" business, a ton of "new way to share images," a "music video" business, a "new way of producing music in the music" business, etc... I met a few companies solvi…
That witter t-shirt sounds like a great idea, I bet I can quickly create a startup for that.
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#24They may be crappy, but likely they would have been customers of several quality startups as well.
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#25So can we expect lower rents in SF and less congestion on the 101/280? The last stat I saw indicated that Northern California's unemployment rate is shrinking fast; it doesn't seem like this is the same situation we saw back in the dot.com bubble from that perspective. Or is it? Can somebody explain the discrepancy?
i have no idea if anything resembling the last crash is going on (it doesn't look like it to me, last time it was really obvious) but if you're looking for leading indicators i would suggest commercial occupancy rates and not employment. that is what dropped sharply first in sf a decade or so ago.
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#26The bombastic tone of this article obscures some nuggets of truth. The most promising startup founders I know have 5-10 years of experience in an industry, enough to have some domain expertise and insight into the needs of that industry. This contrasts with people who move here to "do a startup" - largely producing clones of the latest consumer success story (in my time in the valley, the cycle of clones has been Foursquare, Groupon, Zynga, and Instagram, respectively). I was in that second group when I moved here, embarrassingly working on a SoLoMo consumer app in an industry where I had zero competitive advantage. (SoLoMoPho = social local mobile photo)
A little shakeout is a good thing. It will free up talent and make the valley feel less trivial.
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#27This article was designed simply to inflame Rush Limbaugh style
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#28How do you report on business for a decade and yet hold such a visceral and character flaw type thesis about behavior that's nothing more than the intended, text-book result of specific monetary policy decisions?
What's the monetary policy that's influencing startups?
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#29I really don't understand the hate with which Dan Lyons is speaking. Startups are crazy, sometimes hugely profitable companies that sometimes start up with the same money it takes to start a restaurant or less. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, sometimes they are a complete joke. It's intense and awesome and that's why we are all drawn to it: huge potential. VCs are a part of it and without them this marke…
Consider the source, especially where Dan Lyons is concerned. His history demonstrates he is not a good judge of anything other than how to get on the wrong side of history. The John Doerr pic linked from the story is gold, though. Don't forget your pleated slacks, Pres. Coolidge!
Re: Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money
#30I really don't understand the hate with which Dan Lyons is speaking. Startups are crazy, sometimes hugely profitable companies that sometimes start up with the same money it takes to start a restaurant or less. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, sometimes they are a complete joke. It's intense and awesome and that's why we are all drawn to it: huge potential. VCs are a part of it and without them this marke…
I think it's because the attitude in the startup community is ridiculously egotistical. It's a problem around development community as a whole but amplified with startups because there is a ton of get-rich-quick hero worship.
The fact that someone can build a piece of code doesn't mean that it solves a problem. The fact that it solves a problem doesn't mean that they can get money for it. The fact that they can get money for it doesn't mean that the lifetime revenue it generates will exceed the cost to develop. So on and so on...
Achieving these is as much about luck and timing as it is about skill. For most startups there are a few others also working on the problem including legacy providers and other startups. Succeeding and growing in the marketplace is about a ton of factors.
Now we get back to the hero worship. The startup community, from what I can tell, pays lip service to luck and environment and honestly believes that the marketplace is meritocratic. This is compounded by getting hounded by recruiters because your skills are in demand, it definitely helps your ego.
Ego breeds arrogance. Arrogance that is painfully annoying. Arrogance that makes this schaudenfreude so, so sweet.