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GitHub's fake star economy

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Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#231

Post by panabee »

VCs are soccer stars, but founders play basketball.

It’s easy to dunk on VCs, but the herd effect is rational after considering the typical VC’s background, the intense competition for good deals, and the job requirements — to prudently deploy capital.

Who wants to pitch their boss on investing $1-10M in a product no one uses, built by a team of anons?

This is not to defend the process, but merely explain it. It’s not so different from customer marketing. To win a VC, first understand the VC.

Once hired, VCs cannot easily get fired yet they exert immense strategic control.

Nonetheless, many founders interview summer interns harder than VCs.

Heuristic: after removing capital, would you hire the VC to be your boss?

Great VCs are worth the equity and will turbocharge startups. When you find one, don't haggle. Get a fair deal, and get right back to coding.

Bad VCs will destroy companies the same way soccer stars would destroy basketball teams if made the head coach.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#232

Post by palmotea »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #230
palmotea wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think there's ever been an argument that anybody in a free market capitalist economy has to perform a "socially useful function"? That's a extremely strong statement, and may only be true in libertarian-land, where pure capitalism is a god to be worshiped and "good" has been redefined to be "whatever the unregulated free market does." But in the real world, capitalism is a tool to perform socially useful fu…

How is it strong or controversial? It's the open ideology of the times. I didn't say I agree with it.

> How is it strong or controversial? It's the open ideology of the times.

You said:

>>>> I don't think there's ever been an argument that anybody...

I just made a such an argument, and the fact that I'm not alone can be inferred from the actions of the government in regulating capitalism. Also, if you read the newspaper, it's fairly frequent to see an op-ed decrying some particular market entity, and advocating for something to stop what they're doing.

Also you'll note I wasn't arguing "everyone at all times needs to perform a socially-useful function," but rather "we've identified a particular important area where the social utility is too low, lets do something about that problem."

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#234

Post by Silamoth »

pascal-maker wrote: post #210

Very simply, you need to see VCs as branding companies who give people with many followers brand deals. VCs think that if you have a lot of stars, you must have hit product-market fit — or something close — because many developers have started using your open-source tool. This isn’t necessarily always the case. Every weekend project from Andrej Karpathy gets loads of stars because he is the most famous person on GitH…

> Andrej Karpathy…is the most famous person on Git Hub

Is he really? I’ve only heard of him because HN is obsessed with his “AI” takes. Is he really that popular outside of this bubble?

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#235

Post by cortesoft »

ernst_klim wrote: post #63

I think people expect the star system to be a cheap proxy for "this is a reliable piece of sorfware which has a good quality and a lot of eyes". I think as a proxy it fails completely: astroturfing aside stars don't guarantee popularity (and I bet the correlation is very weak, a lot of very fundamental system libraries have small number of stars). Stars also don't guarantee the quality. And given that you can read th…

The VCs looking to invest would naturally care more about popularity than quality, because popularity would be how you make sales.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#236

Post by jazzypants »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

It's strange that I don't even get defensive about people picking on the Browns anymore. Weirdly, them giving a serial rapist over $200,000,000 was actually good for my mental health long-term. After 30 years of tying myself in knots trying to explain away their idiocy, I don't have to be weighed down by their terrible decisions anymore.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#237

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

mkovach wrote: post #159
xnorswap wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow American Football so I don't know how coaching contracts work for you guys, but how does someone go 1W 15L one season, survive as head coach to go 0W 16L the next season, and still start the next season after that as head coach? Over here the fans would be singing "You're getting sacked in the morning" halfway through that first season. I guess not having relegation makes things slightly less ruthless…

The prevailing narrative here is that the team was actively looking to lose to acquire draft picks. Hugh Jackson was extremely good at losing, so he stayed. The owner of the Cleveland Browns uses the team to generate more revenue. For NFL teams, performance has little to do with their value or ability to generate additional revenue. There is no strong financial incentive to win in the NFL, aside from the owner's ego.…

> For NFL teams, performance has little to do with their value or ability to generate additional revenue.

Like an allegory for performative capitalism in America. Profit and quality completely decoupled in the wake of market capture (rent seeking).

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#238

Post by Applejinx »

No wonder I'm getting bombed with spammers: 0.1 fork/star ratio and 0.0527 watcher/star ratio for a 1.1kstar repo.

The thing is, they are all scammers whose emails go unopened… and the tragic thing is, most likely the VCs would require the same treatment if they did get all hyped up and try to get involved in my project.

There is nobody real who's desperately trying to reach me to extend a line of business credit. I'm not working in AI, rather the opposite, was not in crypto, etc etc, so I know it is just email scams from beginning to end, dozens every day.

It's kind of pitiful that if VCs tried to jump in, they would be indistinguishable from the scams.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#239

Post by LargeWu »

rib3ye wrote: post #225
kibwen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

this is compounded by young, newly rich tech workers (no kids, no mortgage, maybe not even a car) experimenting with being a VC because they've recently reached accredited investor status. and it's not just ZIRP. every recent IPO or liquidity event creates literally 500 more of these guys.

They say Silicon Valley was more of a documentary than a comedy, and now we have one more way life imitates art: A growing army of Erlich Bachmann's.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#240

Post by 4er_transform »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

No VC makes an investment off the star count. It’s a signal to identify opportunities in the noise.

Once surfaced, there’s other signals to filter if an initial conversation is even worth it.

Assuming everyone else is just stupid and it’s all luck is a good way to hold yourself back from your potential.

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