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VC isn't VC anymore

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Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#231

Post by slowin »

otterley wrote: post #228
slowin wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us care about the ethics of those we work with. Being a Zionist is also a brand risk. Just look at Vercel when their CEO met with Netanyahu. Many people canceled their accounts and now will never use Vercel. Mainly I don't want to work with people who are enthusiastic about committing genocide, as so many VCs are.

I don’t follow the logic. Since when does the act of meeting with someone mean you’ve adopted their beliefs? Do you adopt the beliefs of everyone you’ve met? What if you've met both a Zionist and an anti-Zionist? What does that make you?

Raising money from someone and putting them on your board is more than "meeting with them".

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#232

Post by otterley »

slowin wrote: post #231
otterley wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t follow the logic. Since when does the act of meeting with someone mean you’ve adopted their beliefs? Do you adopt the beliefs of everyone you’ve met? What if you've met both a Zionist and an anti-Zionist? What does that make you?

Raising money from someone and putting them on your board is more than "meeting with them".

For sure. But that's not what you said before. And Netanyahu isn't on Vercel's board, nor did Netanyahu raise money for him. The only news I see about this is a brouhaha over a selfie and a meeting in NYC with different tech business leaders.

So I don't quite know what you're on about.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#233

Post by jmalicki »

andix wrote: post #164

I think tech founders need to think smaller. Build software for a few thousand people and make a profit from it. Something niche. Something that is sustainable with a small team. VC eats up everything that's becoming bigger. And they will kill it. Their goal is not to run a healthy business that serves their customers. They try to take out as much money as possible and then trash it.

> Something that is sustainable with a small team.

These days, it can be sustainable for a tiny team, named Claude and Luna.

Why doesn't every engineer have a side project or three for small market things of this caliber in 2026?

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#234

Post by jmalicki »

crote wrote: post #213
throwawayffffas wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that environment the founder has no hope or reason to go public, making equity in the company worthless. VC used to push to public exits in order to maximize the founders and VCs stake which turned employees equity to a liquid asset. Truly aligning everyones interests, nowadays not so much.

You're forgetting about dividend, and off-market trade. If a company is worthless if it isn't public, then IKEA would be absolute garbage. Quite strange for a company making hundreds of millions in profit for its owners.

The insane valuations for selling a dream are what make VC worthwhile.

TSLA would be worth crap if it were a private company giving off dividends. It is really truly about the insane valuations driven by collective delusion.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#235

Post by andix »

jmalicki wrote: post #233
andix wrote: post #164

I think tech founders need to think smaller. Build software for a few thousand people and make a profit from it. Something niche. Something that is sustainable with a small team. VC eats up everything that's becoming bigger. And they will kill it. Their goal is not to run a healthy business that serves their customers. They try to take out as much money as possible and then trash it.

> Something that is sustainable with a small team. These days, it can be sustainable for a tiny team, named Claude and Luna. Why doesn't every engineer have a side project or three for small market things of this caliber in 2026?

Because you still need a good sales and product team. Speak with potential customers, understand their problems. Building the software was never the hard part.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#236

Post by carlosjobim »

palata wrote: post #226
carlosjobim wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said that you worked for a low salary at startups and feel scammed because of that. You could have worked somewhere else instead for a higher salary if you weren't gambling. Or if nobody would have hired you for a higher salary somewhere else, then maybe your salary at the startups wasn't so low after all?

If you want to go with that tone... I wonder if you did not understand my English or if you lack basic logic? I did not say that I felt scam because of my low salary. I said that I felt scam because the founders got rich and what I got didn't compensate the low salary. Said differently, the founders got rich and I didn't get much at all. When I say "not much", it means "not nothing, but not a lot".

You took a gamble on a lower salary with the expectation that it would be compensated by your company stock going up in value.

I told you that there is no such guarantee, the only thing guaranteed is the salary you agree on. Everything else is speculative = gambling. Which is your decision, but don't cry later that you got scammed and that VC are cancer and so on.

But there's no reason for me to teach you, because you already learned it the hard way.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#237

Post by mcv »

Henchman21 wrote: post #34
bix6 wrote: post #25

I’m a VC and agree with much of this. The mega firms have totally warped VC and the desire for massive cash appreciation has led to a host of bad characters getting involved. I still love working with early stage companies but it is hard to cut your own lane when these mega groups control so many aspects of the stack and have such outsized capital and political influence. There are so many issues destroying early sta…

Y'all need ethics is what ya need.

I'm afraid the only ethics some of them believe in is the Friedman Doctrine.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#238

Post by blasphemers »

exceptione wrote: post #46
bko wrote: post #18

[flagged]

> And did you know pension funds invest in this stuff?(which is bad?) Not if this were something healthy. This wouldn't be the first time joe average is holding the bag when the rich set the house on fire again. The USA economy is particularly brittle (as in: not diversified) in that regard. I can understand how the article might conflict with personally held notions and thus might look odd, especially as the weird d…

It's not like pension funds are forced to invest in VC funds. It's the unions decision too, so ultimately if they are bad investments, it's average joe union workers fault they voted for shitty leadership.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#239

Post by slowin »

otterley wrote: post #232
slowin wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising money from someone and putting them on your board is more than "meeting with them".

For sure. But that's not what you said before. And Netanyahu isn't on Vercel's board, nor did Netanyahu raise money for him. The only news I see about this is a brouhaha over a selfie and a meeting in NYC with different tech business leaders. So I don't quite know what you're on about.

Oh yes, I wouldn't ever work with anyone who met with Netanyahu. That's ridiculous. Vercel's CEO even went to Israel to do it (that wasn't in NYC -- not that that would make it ok). I'll never use one of their products.

Would you work with someone who took a selfie with Hitler? This is the 21st century equivalent.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#240

Post by crote »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #216
crote wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge chunk of the demand is already fake. It's why there are so many auto-enabled "helpers", blinking nag buttons, and popups begging you to pleasepleaseplease use their new AI feature. The vast majority of people are simply ambivalent about the vast majority of AI integrations, so companies have to take increasingly-desperate measures to artificially keep their MAU up and pretend that they haven't wasted a huge am…

I am going to need a little more evidence for your claim that says "a huge chunk of demand is fake"

How many of the apps you use on a daily base have some form of AI integration? In my experience, outside of FLOSS software it is approaching 100%. How many of those did you intentionally enable it? In my experience, basically 0%. Even worse, after manually disabling it many of them re-enable it after an update!

If, say, Google publishes a claim that "95% of Google Search users have adopted AI", that does not mean that 95% of Google Search users think AI is a core feature of Search they would potentially pay extra for - which is what the massive valuations are based on. The AI Mode is auto-enabled, so the only thing it tells you is that 5% of users are annoyed enough by it that they take the time to disable it.

Some people of course genuinely like it and would indeed pay extra for AI-enhanced search, but a huge chunk of users simply does not care either way. They wouldn't pay a dime for AI, just like they wouldn't pay a dime for the ability to re-arrange the letters in the Google logo into "Oggoel". If AI were default-off, they would not bother enabling it. That is fake demand.

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