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An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

siliconangle.net

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Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#31

Post by [deleted] »

arijo wrote: post #30
plinkplonk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that seems to be a reaction to an exaggeration of what Tim said. He clearly said(emphasis mine) "I was the tech lead responsible for scalability/reliability at IMVU for a long time, but eventually our bottleneck clearly shifted from reliability back to marketing/product development. " I read it as, " Once we got reliability sorted out, the bottleneck moved to marketing/product development." He never said IMVU could h…

I agree. However the point I was trying to make is that technology expertise continues to be a "scarce talent" which seems to be the opposite view of that supported by Tim's post.

[deleted]

Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#32

Post by RobGR »

plinkplonk wrote: post #10

"Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups. The scarce talent is business model engineering and product marketing" How true is this? Sounds like wishful thinking from a non programmer to me. (Please note : I am not saying that marketing/product engineering is not important. They (obviously) are. I just think "Technology, however, isn’t the driver any more for startups" is too broad a brush)

That remark, as well as the phrase "a business person who can’t code anymore" made me a little suspicious of this guy. But I agree that there is unmet need at the lower end of business investments.

Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#33

Post by RobGR »

patio11 wrote: post #3

Capital available in $200,000 chunks would be an interesting world: 1) You'd presumably want to make the offering mass-customizable, like a typical residential mortgage. There are a few levers to play with, sure, by 98% of the contract got vetted by the company lawyers once as being Good Enough and folks can take it or they can leave it. This allows you to close deals quickly, avoid spending much time teaching buyers…

I think without real collateral, banks should not get into this. It is very easy to file papers, slap up a web site and put some whiteboards up in cheap office, and have a "startup"; if you can get 200k a pop, vacuous startups will be manufactured at a great rate, very similar to how we manufactured $300k MacMansions for $100k a pop until that game blew up. The deposited money of ordinary citizens should not involved in something like you describe, and espeically not in collateralized startup obligations or insurance on the same or whatever else the dark-suited sociopaths will dream up.

However, a VC or hedge fund might get into it, as long the investors are millionaires who can afford the losses and presumably have or can buy the educated understanding of the risks.

On the other hand, if there were some sort of club or co-op I could join, that I could pay a small monthly fee, and that would then invest the aggregated fees in a new startup every couple of months, I might do that. Especially if I got to attend a monthly meeting, hear pitches from various people, network with other members and people in startups, and hopefully have an "in" should I ever apply for a job at one of the startups.

Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#34

Post by jf781 »

I really am enjoying the thread here on my post. Interesting to see some of the comments thinking that I'm anti-development with my quote about product mktg and validation is the scarce resource. Of course great architects and developer are the scare resource but I've seen many code a great solution right now a cul de sac of no market.

to me the biggest issue driving this counterculture that I'm seeing is "trust" of the capital markets. Especially since most of the productive actors in this marketplace have lived in a successful open source movement culture for 25 years. The capital markets (VCs) are at odds with this culture.

There are many other points in the post that I would be happy to discuss if there is interest.

Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#35

Post by lsc »

do you really think handling a (non-technical) investor will be less work/less distraction than contracting part time? Sure, contracting takes time away from what you want to do, but it's pretty easy, and clients don't push you to do things that may not be in the interest of your customers.

Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#36

Post by coryrc »

patio11 wrote: post #3

Capital available in $200,000 chunks would be an interesting world: 1) You'd presumably want to make the offering mass-customizable, like a typical residential mortgage. There are a few levers to play with, sure, by 98% of the contract got vetted by the company lawyers once as being Good Enough and folks can take it or they can leave it. This allows you to close deals quickly, avoid spending much time teaching buyers…

If you had an algorithm to define the solution set of future successful startups, then you could just hire employees to implement the ideas and make yourself filthy rich.

Re: An Entrepreneurial Counter Culture is Looming – The Startup Market is Not OK

#37

Post by sielskr »

danielrhodes wrote: post #11

I found the article was rather long and a bit confusing. I wanted to summarize and clarify it: There are more companies these days, but VCs are funding the same number of companies as before with the same huge expectations. Why not instead fund more companies with a lower amount of cash so as to not miss some opportunities. My answer: putting all your eggs in one basket in a competitive environment will likely lead t…

The writing in the parent is significantly better than the writing in the original post (the web page not on Hacker News). So, thanks, danielrhodes, for summarizing!
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