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We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

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Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#81

Post by paulhauggis »

driverdan wrote: post #7

Living in a Mission dump trying to sleep three people to a bed is not how you should be starting a business. Why do people think this is how you optimize for success?

Well, it also puts you in a desperate position and you make decisions (and possibly accept deals) that you normally wouldn't take.

I've been on both positions. When I had no money coming in, it was always in the back of my mind and my business ideas were short-sited, not creative, and rushed. They all failed.

I go to tons of startup events where new companies are presenting and the majority of business and products I see are exactly this. I'm not sure if it's because of a lack of experience of the reasons above.

I only became successful when I had money coming in and didn't have to worry at all about it. I could focus on my business goals with a clear head. The money was a part-time consulting job. I was able to quit it after a year because I was making more with my business. It's been going strong for 2 years now.

I guess I'm different. I don't think I would ever go h ycombinator. My first business idea involves very-little up front capital, but has nice returns. I'm going to use the proceedsa to invest in my next idea, that requires some capital. My ideas are always profit-centric. If it's cool, but has little chance of making money, I don't even consider it. I consider those hobby projects I might create for fun.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#82

Post by paulhauggis »

bsaul wrote: post #68

Is it just me or do other people also find the idea of pivoting after three months really troubling ? I've seen two kinds of people creating start ups so far : business school guys and "real job" guys. The first type are really focused to one thing : making money. The second type have a passion for their skills and had an idea on how to improve something in their field. The first type can pivot to about anything, bec…

money is the life blood of any startup. Many pivot because they weren't thinking enough about their profit model and realize it's not going to work.

I'm a mix of the two. I only work on products that I know fills a void, but are also profitable.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#83

Post by walshemj »

jeremyjh wrote: post #72
nrao123 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea." You may not realize that VCs are investing on behalf of the common man. Most of the LP's in VC funds are entities like pension funds who represent the common man's money.

I'm skeptical. Most of these funds disclose at least the categories of assets they invested in - what is this asset class called and can you point me to a prospectus that mentions it?

Er do you not know anything about how collective investment in things like pensions Unit trusts and Investment trusts work.

Most of the big main stream IT's have a proportion of there capital in pe/vc - read the annual reports

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#84

Post by walshemj »

willbonz wrote: post #41

This valley conceit is just astounding. Do some of you people who are obviously so smart at what you code and create really think that this is the only way to go about being a success? You look like trapped otters.

sorry 99.99% of hn commenters are not as cute as otters :-)

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#85

Post by walshemj »

jeffdavis wrote: post #60
tatterdemalion wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Nothing against this company and all the best to them, but what is the larger narrative this story is building? Its really exploitative to tell young people that they should come to one of the most expensive places in the world and sleep in their cars so they can have the privilege of giving equity to Y Combinator. It's something really dark in California's culture (I have lived my entire life here). From '49…

I could just as easily say that you are building a narrative wherein people should become dependent on modern material goods (many of which did not exist decades ago and most of which would be considered frivolous luxuries 100 years ago), and therefore always forced to work on someone else's idea. It might be more clear if you would describe utopia for us. If someone wants to try a zillion ideas without answering to…

100 years ago frivolous appliances like washing machines where unesercery because you had a maid to do the heavy work

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#86

Post by jeffdavis »

walshemj wrote: post #85
jeffdavis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could just as easily say that you are building a narrative wherein people should become dependent on modern material goods (many of which did not exist decades ago and most of which would be considered frivolous luxuries 100 years ago), and therefore always forced to work on someone else's idea. It might be more clear if you would describe utopia for us. If someone wants to try a zillion ideas without answering to…

100 years ago frivolous appliances like washing machines where unesercery because you had a maid to do the heavy work

What's your point? The author who was sleeping in tight quarters also had access to washing machines at a laundromat, and did not require a servant.

So what fundamental, basic aspect of life are the authors giving up by temporarily lowering their cost of living? Is whatever they are giving up so important that it undermines the freedom that they gain? Does it make it impossible to join the "normal" life later?

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#87

Post by rokhayakebe »

_reality_check_ wrote: post #34
rokhayakebe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I guess today you could call the Internet the city/town. There is also something to be said about what seems to be serendipity. When there is a high concentration of people doing the same thing, you are more likely to bump into people who can help you turn your vision in…

> From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I'm highly skeptical of this claim. Can you back it up?

Leave your email in your profile, and after doing some research I will send you info. This is a very good question.

Sorry for the late reply. I picked up a coffee table book titled "100 of the World's Most Beautiful Paintings," reading through it, I would quickly Google artists, and found a few lived close to each other and during the same era. I would have to go through it again, but surely I will add it here once I do.

Something more obvious would be Socrates -> Plato -> Aristotle.

Also Einstein's influential TOR work on the Atomic bomb when highly capable scientists advanced the same work in the United states at the same time.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#88

Post by nichtich »

j_lev wrote: post #66
kevin wrote: post #19

"We started in January 2012, and may still be the only Asian YC founders ever." So that is not true. 9gag is from Hong Kong. Semantics3 is from Singapore. Strikingly is from China. Memebox is from Korea. Cleartax is from India. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. That being said, I actually would love to see more Asian startups applying to Y Combinator. We should be funding one from each c…

My Chinese friend says that the reason there isn't a startup culture in China can easily be explained by guanxi. Specifically, for Chinese people there's no obligation to not rip off an investor (especially a foreign one), and the reverse is assumed true too.

The reason sounds interesting... But there is a startup culture in China.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#89

Post by SSH007 »

The problem I had with this article was that there was no substance on what they actually did to create the product and start a company. How did they arrive at the idea of AnyPerk, what did they do? Did sleeping in the TacoBell parking lot or sharing a bed in a $10/night hotel do something for their startup other than low burnrate. How did this help them? Seems they had a (wrong) idea in their mind on what you have to do to start a business in America and in the end they contributed more to that idea by only telling a story of sharing a bed/sleeping in a car. Someone naive may come along and think if I sleep in a car in a parking lot, and sacrifice my privacy I'll have a successful business. There was more to this story and this was their opportunity to state that. I wanted to hear about how the idea came about, how they created a site, then they spoke to and contracted with x number of vendors to provide these perks that they are essentially reselling.

Pretty weak article. I would have said that its not worth being on front page of HN, but comments are interesting.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#90

Post by johnnybazooka »

jeremyjh wrote: post #72
nrao123 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea." You may not realize that VCs are investing on behalf of the common man. Most of the LP's in VC funds are entities like pension funds who represent the common man's money.

I'm skeptical. Most of these funds disclose at least the categories of assets they invested in - what is this asset class called and can you point me to a prospectus that mentions it?

To add to that, university endowments are also a big component of VCs, in addition to pension funds.

I think a couple years ago a judge ordered Berekely to release the fund performance figures for the VCs they had money in, and most of them don't even do well (measured in terms of IRR).

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