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VC isn't VC anymore

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Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#241

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#242

Post by vivzkestrel »

crote wrote: post #240
vivzkestrel wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

well the reason i asked is because chat gpt and others claim to have bazillions of users and you are saying most of that demand is fake, so what are these users? actual people or bots?

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#243

Post by palata »

carlosjobim wrote: post #236
palata wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

> 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 did not. I joined a startup as a young graduate without thinking about what stocks meant at all.

> Which is your decision, but don't cry later

My decision was "let's join an exciting startup, probably those stocks won't ever have any value". I don't even care about the fact that I did not get more than I did: I never counted or even hoped for it.

But what wasn't clear to me back then was that I was being abused by the founders.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#244

Post by palata »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #229
palata wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this day and age, if you don't understand dilution before you join, it's entirely on you. I don't know what to tell you. Young graduates get an offer to work at a startup, nobody tells them how it works. They are just excited, as I was. And they don't think about "what happens if the startup is successful" because they do know it probably won't be. And when the startup is successful (happened to me) is when they…

>That does not say AT ALL that the founder gets rich when you get nothing. It says "be careful, most startups fail, so make sure you get a salary". That one is covered under the standard advice of "comparison is the thief of joy". >Usually that salary is subpar. If it was subpar, then the salary would not have been accepted.

> If it was subpar, then the salary would not have been accepted.

Turns out it was. Young graduate excited with the mission, and all that bullshit.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#245

Post by Karrot_Kream »

danaris wrote: post #217
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this forum has a lot of values and don't think it's been libertarian in outlook in a long time based on what gets upvoted here so appealing to that is a bit silly but anyway I don't think this is a fruitful conversation so have a good day.

I think we're running into (or at least pretty close to) a Two Guys Fallacy here: There's still a strong libertarian streak in HN posters, in a variety of ways. However, there are also (mostly) different posters who have more vocally shifted the site's Overton window to the left. These days, I find it fairly common to, for instance, make a comment that points out the very obvious problems the Republican Party has cre…

I generally operate with the understanding that HN today has lots of groups, with an overall "left" lean (as much as anyone can flatten politics into a single axis.) Libertarians, leftists, liberals, nationalists, everyone is here. Appealing to one "enemy" group strikes me as a cheap blow; it's sure to increase engagement for your post with little added discourse value. IMHO at least.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#246

Post by sulmon7 »

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?

This is a really dumb take. You're relying on a straw man (nobody claimed the CEO adopted his beliefs; they're talking about brand risk) and a category mistake (treating a high-level corporate photo-op like bumping into someone at a coffee shop). You can do better.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#247

Post by 4er_transform »

danaris wrote: post #218
conqrr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it. Sustainability. Not everything has to be about more money quickly. You don't even need VCs for that. More win to bootstrappers! I see a lot of folks bootstrapping in the LLM era, but that can be defeaned in the VC noise.

Exactly. And the dangerous mindset tends to be worse than just "more money quickly": it's far too commonly "if this can't become the next Facebook/iPhone/ChatGPT, it's not worth doing." The only options are "take over the world" or "fail"; there's no room (in many people's heads) for a product that makes a decent, steady profit and continues to do so over the course of many years.

There is, is just different capital for those companies (debt, growth equity, angels, grants) and less attention. There’s far more of these types of companies too.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#248

Post by exceptione »

blasphemers wrote: post #238
exceptione wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The shit happens from how these funds are bound by their statutes to buy into index funds. A while back, there has been some insightful commentaries here on HN regarding the spacex IPO and the subversion of stock exchange.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#249

Post by otterley »

sulmon7 wrote: post #246
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?

This is a really dumb take. You're relying on a straw man (nobody claimed the CEO adopted his beliefs; they're talking about brand risk) and a category mistake (treating a high-level corporate photo-op like bumping into someone at a coffee shop). You can do better.

People have the responsibility to say what they mean and make their arguments clear and well understood.

He said that being a Zionist is a brand risk. The implication is that the CEO of Vercel is a Zionist.

Re: VC isn't VC anymore

#250

Post by slowin »

otterley wrote: post #249
sulmon7 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really dumb take. You're relying on a straw man (nobody claimed the CEO adopted his beliefs; they're talking about brand risk) and a category mistake (treating a high-level corporate photo-op like bumping into someone at a coffee shop). You can do better.

People have the responsibility to say what they mean and make their arguments clear and well understood. He said that being a Zionist is a brand risk. The implication is that the CEO of Vercel is a Zionist.

The CEO of Vercel is a Zionist:

https://x.com/rauchg/status/1972669025525158031

Also your original comment was a non sequitur. I replied to a VC saying they could make their own lane by being ethical and being anti-Zionist and you replied asking about business fundamentals, which had nothing to do with what we were discussing.

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