good riddance
Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
241–250 of 431 posts
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#242I 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…
This. FAANG and adjacent pays so well, it's a better and more guaranteed outcome than startups - for people that have that option.
Dan Luu wrote about it over a decade ago: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
The math is not in favor of working at a startup, if you do it, don't do it for the money. People finally wised up to this.
Even as the founder, working at a FAANG usually works out better financially and is much less stressful. VC's do all kinds of horrible things to founders, like firing them, forcing them to sell at a price that means they get $0 (VC's get preference usually up to 2x their investment - if the sale price is lower than 2x the investment, founders and employees alike get wiped out.) People are also wising up to this.
If you're going to found a company think really hard about joining YC and/or going the VC funded route.
I think it'd be a lot more pleasant to found a company worth $10 million after 10 years, and own 100% of it, than to found a company worth $100 million after 10 years and own 10% of it.
VC is only really for when you've found real product market fit and your biggest problem every day is meeting the insane demand. Everything is just falling over and you can't scale fast enough and you're leaving piles of money on the floor because you just don't have the resources to serve those customers. Then maybe it becomes a good tradeoff.
You definitely don't have that in the beginning, and most companies never experience that.
I used to drink the koolaid, I applied to YC multiple times. I'm still trying to start stuff on the side of my day job, but I no longer apply to YC and fully intend to bootstrap a smaller but profitable software business.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#243HN has become a very conservative forum (in the temperamental, not political sense). There is far more skepticism of new technologies in the comments, and a much stronger status quo bias than there used to be.
But I think this is more reflective of a shift in the makeup of HN commenters than of society as a whole. The people I work with today don’t seem any different, on average, than the people I worked with 20 years ago.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
> entire sector is short sighted and profit obsessed If you're in for-profit sector, I don't see why being concerned with the main goal first and foremost would be a bad thing. No one's doing business or lending money to not see a return on that. So if the problem is worth solving in this ecosystem it's worth it because it does actually turn a profit instead of some fantasy that it will magically appear at some imagi…
Well, it is a narrow understand. I also don't focus solely on the fact that I earn money from my job, when I speak to my colleagues - no, I wouldn't be on that job, if it didn't pay. > No one's doing business or lending money to not see a return on that. This is a very specific understanding of startups as entities receiving foreign capital or debt. The act of doing entrepreneurship or stating up is inherently devoid…
> The act of doing entrepreneurship or stating up is inherently devoid from profit motives
I am assuming one is operating in the for-profit sector.
If one is NOT operating in that sector then yes it is all the more reasonable to assume that the enterprise should be focused on solving a problem or creating some sort of intangible value.
We can observe this is well with the open-source community, where profit motivation is not the main driving factor.
However, I reiterate, if the venture is to operate for-profit then it's potential to be profitable should be for most the aim otherwise it's not solving a problem because it will fail.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Swedes sure seem to think so. Per capita Swedish entrepreneurship is like 7x the rest of the euro zone, and they’re convinced that it’s that aspect of the social safety net that help prop up that high level of personal risk taking.
> Per capita Swedish entrepreneurship is like 7x the rest of the euro zone That sounds worthy of deeper investigation, but healthcare is unlikely to be the factor?
The swedes do claim this is one of the things that leads to higher entrepreneurship, but yeah, it's certainly not an explanation in and of itself. Good contrary example is the UK - they also have the NHS, but real estate is so expensive that they can't generally acquire premises for HW labs.
I'm on mobile and can't search well but it's a topic that's been discussed on HN many times before.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#246I believe the main change is just that Hacker News went from being a very specific subset of the population to becoming much more mainstream. Ten years ago it was, at least in my opinion, mostly early adopters of internet technology and in general people who had enough funds that they could fail without being devastated. Nowadays, in addition to the traditional VC route, there's also the indie hackers movement. Those…
I can't say I agree. There were a lot of app developers on HN even as far back as 2009.
You should watch the Arstechnica homepage then. They have authors who essentially get all their writing assignments based on how popular a story is ranking on this website. That is pretty mainstream.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#247I'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…
But at that point, does it fit a startup definition? In my view, startups always involve rapid growth and VC money to achieve it. If the company doesn't meet that criteria, isn't that simply a regular business?
I agree however it's the 'Paul Graham' definition. i.e. a trade off must be maintained between the bottom line and growth and a startup is a business that prioritises growth over basic financial sustainability.
I've seen economists argue the opposite saying a startup is no different to a regular business. It depends on which definition you wish to subscribe to.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually, the only engineer who has any chance of making a significant amount of money is the technical co-founder, often called the CTO. The rest of the money belongs to the MBAs and the bankers. It's always been their money, it will always be theirs.
Yes, that's probably true. Investors, or people who take a risk, get the payoff from the risk. If you join as a salaried person, you're taking zero risk (other than that you might need to get another job if the place folds, but then all the money's gone anyway), as you're just getting paid a salary each month regardless of how the company's doing, so you don't get an outsized reward.
Generally this is not true - the "risk" taken by these people is very small, because of how wealthy they or their parents are.
If I had $1M and lost it, I would be devastated.
If I had $1B and lost $1M, it would be a rounding error.
I don't have any money, so how do I even get to $1M? And neither does my parents.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#249I think it should be noted that a lot of people do startups for reasons other than money. I was recently down in SF for an interview at a YC startup and later in the day, the two founders shared with me their salaries at their previous jobs. One was making 900k a year and the other was making 450k a year, but they ultimately decided to leave their big tech jobs to start their startup.
Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
#250You have to be crazy to start a startup, and I mean this in a good way.
I'm currently working on a startup, completely bootstrapped and taking no VC funds. I know what my odds are and I know that the company will most likely fail, but I still do it. That's what makes startup founders "crazy", because you have to realize how low your odds are and at the same time say "fuck it" and keep going.
IMO there will always be startup founders because there will always be folks that want to scratch that itch.