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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#121

Post by rUsHeYaFuBu »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
rUsHeYaFuBu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market thinkers here would say this is the market working as intended.

Free market thinkers should realize that market doesn't work as intended - it just works . POSIWID[0] and all. The workings of the market are sometimes aligned with the best interest of humanity, but not always, and they have no obligation to be, because at this point, we've long lost any control we had over it (if we ever had any). -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

I believe that's not really saying anything if the market is intended to work by the forces of the invisible hand. If it is, the it is working as intended.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#122

Post by hardwaresofton »

dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

Agree with all your points, just wanted to note:

> But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group

This miracle is probably just hard work in disguise -- dang et al. HN also has a self-censorship bias and some self-enforcement, but mostly not an abrasive kind -- people (mostly) gently remind each other of the rules, and sometimes viciously downvote comments that are not useful/in the spirit of HN.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#123

Post by the_af »

matwood wrote: post #104
KaiserPro wrote: post #17

I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory Unless you're a founder, you're unlikely to make any money, and predatory VC/backers using convertibles/senior debt to turn your equity into Zimbabwean dollars. Thats before any stats are calculated for lasting long enough to either IPO, make money or get bought out. As someone who did successfully exit, the stories of multiple-m…

> The only realy reason to join a startup is that you either believe in the "mission" or that you believe it will bring you joy to work in that way. If the goal is economic security (FU money) then the quickest path is to get a job at a big tech company. This requires engineering skills and also the ability to play the various corporate games (ugh). For the rest of us there's entrepreneurship and joining startups.

But there are plenty of "startup games" to be played at startups. Maybe slightly different to corporate games, but also unnerving.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#124

Post by mittermayr »

jcheng wrote: post #63
mittermayr wrote: post #26

I had one product that took off, made more money than at any of my previous (big-tech) jobs, and I thought the tales were true. If you work hard enough, catch a lucky wave and have the skills to ride it, you're free. The product peaked, and then very quickly dropped to zero in about two years, while I tried everything to prevent going out of business. Back at the bottom, a year or two of aimless wandering, I figured,…

It sounds like you were a bootstrapped solo founder in all of these cases? That’s the riskiest path, there are lots of other ways to navigate a career in startups that are not quite so brutal in odds or in emotional toll. (In the United States at least) I have had a decently long career in startups (closing in on 30 years) and never once was a founder, in part because I always wanted to make a decent salary. Being an…

Yeah all bootstrapped, that's correct. And you're absolutely right, it just makes growing/building unreasonably hard at the beginning because the only funds you have are your own, and it's prohibitively expensive to run ads for the first 100k users when self-funded. The crux with investments always seemed to be the shift of power around the second or third raise for those who weren't runaway successes, when founders start to realize that pressure is now coming from two or three sources, self-worth, investors and possibly clients that were sold on promises and now want to see them implemented. In any case, I agree that being not the first but among the first dozen of employees can be a rewarding and fulfilling choice, it shields from the harshest fire but also allows enough flexibility financially to move on the job as well as in your private life, I'd guess.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#125

Post by clumsysmurf »

yason wrote: post #43

I'd say starting a company to make something people want in order to sell it for money is still relevant. It's just that you're looking at working quietly, humbly, but perseverantly for the next 25 years, slowly growing the business and balancing the risks and opportunities along the way. You won't be looking for an "exit" because you want to take care of the company you built. That's a very different story from what…

> you're looking at working quietly, humbly, but perseverantly for the next 25 years

> That never was sustainable, I think

Another aspect with this being (un)sustainable is lack of affordable healthcare. I bet many people would take more risks if they didn't have to worry about this aspect of their lives.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#126

Post by TeMPOraL »

rUsHeYaFuBu wrote: post #121
TeMPOraL wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market thinkers should realize that market doesn't work as intended - it just works . POSIWID[0] and all. The workings of the market are sometimes aligned with the best interest of humanity, but not always, and they have no obligation to be, because at this point, we've long lost any control we had over it (if we ever had any). -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

I believe that's not really saying anything if the market is intended to work by the forces of the invisible hand. If it is, the it is working as intended.

If you believe that, you're effectively believing that a runaway system of feedback loops is right by definition. But that's basically just a religion that worships a non-personified deity.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#127

Post by hardwaresofton »

tossandthrow wrote: post #5

IMHO building startup became a status symbol which means that the payment in respect for making a courageous adventure is lost and commoditized. We are slowly seeing the same for academia. Point 2 resonates with me. Risk adjusted it is very unlikely that one will make a reasonable salary doing startups. So it is conviction and heart that needs to drive it. For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea ab…

> For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea about building something I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem. I think this is endemic - the entire sector is short sighted and profit obsessed.

Do you think some of this is idea related? If you're building software, many new ideas are not truly innovative in a way that would make execution seem like the place to focus?

An experienced person might hear the idea and instantly have a general idea of how to build it -- but know that the real hard parts are distribution, finding customers, talking to customers, and building the profit flywheel that lets you do more of the previous.

Taking AI as an example just because it's hot right now, but it's a very different conversation if your idea is building a alternative to the transformer (assuming you're talking to someone who could even speak authoritatively on the subject!), versus building an "chatgpt wrapper" app, even if it's very complex/tailored to an industry. Most people won't be able to discuss the industry specific bits so they focus on the tech bits, and then the differences seem to be mostly execution?

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#129

Post by InkCanon »

wslh wrote: post #71
InkCanon wrote: post #59

On the last point: "The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to find." It is a repeating pattern in history that people think technology and science have reached a dead end. Michelsen (falsely attributed to Kelvin) declared principles of physics were already established before quantum mechanics. Watson said there was de…

The point is about a specific technology, like software, not technology at all. For example, we continue to use the same vehicles (e.g. cars) with a well known technology while SpaceX is advancing on sending rockets to the space. Technology is advancing but some technology is well known. This is not to say that software is not evolving but most startups don't have an issue with building software but with business dev…

But there's still a ton of innovation going on in cars. Tesla and BYD are some of the biggest companies in the world. And conversely, rockets was regarded as a sleepy, government contracting business for a long time.

I don't particularly understand why (some) people say X technology has stagnated, like web or apps. There's a ton of innovation going on - off the top of my head, WebGPU and WASM will unlock huge amounts of performance for web apps, creating a lot of possibilities like much more powerful web game engines. There seems to be widespread beliefs that the market is "saturated" or "well developed". This always struck me like saying automotive startups won't work because rubber tyre technology has stagnated. Webs and apps are just the delivery mechanism for software.

I think there's two flawed reasons people think this. One is that they only perceive the change in people using it. So they think anything which has a lot of people already using it means it's saturated. Two, they as consumers don't perceive the vast, complex systems used to deliver those services. So a website is a website to most people, but they don't understand the massive changes it has undergone over the decades.

The only technology that really dies is very specific ones competing with others in a narrow field. For example vacuum tubes lost to the transistor.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#130

Post by throwaway9191aa »

laserlight wrote: post #79
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you join early, got plenty of stock options and the startup turns into a unicorn, those millions are totally possible. Until then, naturally, it's all paper money. A bet. Maybe an investment, of your time and effort. The majority of startups fail and the majority of startups having an IPO will not make anyone rich via stock grants. It's definitely a safer bet to find a high paying job in a stable company.

> If you join early, got plenty of stock options and the startup turns into a unicorn, those millions are totally possible. GP comment argues correctly that there's no guarantee that employee stock options will return a profit even in the case of successful exits. Valuation multiples, senior debt, clawback options (see Skype exit [0]), fractional stocks being rounded down to zero after stock splits have all been impl…

This is why I joined AWS 9 years ago, and left the startup world. I own (still?) 15% of a company as a founding engineer (with no voting rights). As part of a raise, the company sold its IP to another company for a 0.5% stake in that company. So now I own 15% of 0.5%....... I just didn't understand the business side of all this at the start. As I understand it, the raise wouldn't have happened and the original company would have folded if the deal wasn't done, so you can't really argue fraud.

Since then, I have seen similar things happen more than once to other friends. I can only imagine that as the number get larger, the problems become more complex.

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