It’s sad but at the same time reassuring to see more and more of your childhood “heros” revealing their ignorance and lack of wisdom.
If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
151–160 of 166 posts
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doordash for laundry.
Laundries have offered pickup and delivery since ... forever? It's like pizza. The markets are very local, and the growth opportunity is limited.
Taxis have offered pickup and delivery service since forever, and yet here we are.
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#153> "And if your competitor’s product does the task automatically while yours still waits for a human click, you no longer have a competitive product. The next generation of applications won’t just put information on a screen, they’ll act just like an employee."
Oh the joy of unbridled optimism!
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#154This article resonated with me, especially since I've noticed the fund raising hoopla's in my circle has dramatically dropped. Either investors are tightening the belt so founder-investor fit has crossed into the realm of disillusionment
It is the economy. Interest rates are up and that will hit startups first since investors have other options that are more likely to be better.
Interest rates hit their peak three years ago and have been falling since.
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is the economy. Interest rates are up and that will hit startups first since investors have other options that are more likely to be better.
Interest rates hit their peak three years ago and have been falling since. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-rate
They are still up compared to 5 years ago. We also seem to be in a recession (or if not a real recession at least a slow down)
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#156I think Blank's story is about a guy who missed a $20B market shift in defense VC, not a guy who failed to adopt AI. He's not saying "add AI to your product" or "use AI or die" but more that AI has shifted institutional assumptions about tech stacks, defensibility and fundability. The bottleneck moved up the stack from engineering to judgment, insight and design. Chris lost because he was heads down building while $2…
>> $20B in defense VC "defense VC budget" seems like a generous way of saying "USA attack budget". Not everyone wants to deal with moral implications of building automation for that.
Chris might have good reasons to avoid defense. But Blank's point is that he didn't even know the opportunity existed. The issue is not really about a moral choice, more generally it's a situational awareness problem.
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's gotten to the point where, when I see yet another Thought Leadership article about software development, I search the page for the word "will". If I see unqualified predictions of the future (AI will change this and Agents will do that and developers will need to do thus), I think I can safely ignore the article. Who has the hubris to make such strong and unwavering statements about a future nobody can see?
A local "thought leader" wrote a ridiculous piece about software leadership in a post-LLM world, when clearly they'd never actually used an LLM to build anything, or actually led a team using LLMs. Lots of hand-waving but obviously no real experience. As gp says, there's a big difference between theory and practice here, and a lot of the things we needed when we weren't using LLMs are still needed when we are, but it…
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Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
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What if I fold you... that using 1960s technology it would be easier to just go to the moon than it would be to fake it? Have you SEEN a 1960s movie with SFX?
The conspiracy theorists like to involve Kubrick, because he did such a good job on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Laundries have offered pickup and delivery since ... forever? It's like pizza. The markets are very local, and the growth opportunity is limited.
Taxis have offered pickup and delivery service since forever, and yet here we are.
OK, again, the context is a "laundromat" business. Laundry as a service with an app to schedule pickup and delivery? OK, people have tried that. Not that exciting, not that scalable. You still need a lot of facilites, machines, and humans to make that work. It's not something that exists as a virtual product that can be scaled up with an AI.
Re: If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taxis have offered pickup and delivery service since forever, and yet here we are.
OK, again, the context is a "laundromat" business. Laundry as a service with an app to schedule pickup and delivery? OK, people have tried that. Not that exciting, not that scalable. You still need a lot of facilites, machines, and humans to make that work. It's not something that exists as a virtual product that can be scaled up with an AI.
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