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A Postmortem of a Startup

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Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#31

Post by belinder »

margorczynski wrote: post #25

I think the problem with startups (from a business perspective) is that they're ego-driven and instead of looking at the business reality in an objective fashion they mostly try to "revolutionize" and "make a difference". It isn't as sexy as doing the next Facebook or disrupting global healthcare but just copying an existing archaic & expensive product and doing it better can yield a great and stable business. There'…

Now where to get a list of such companies and products to decide what to build...

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#32

Post by flessner »

bad_username wrote: post #9
pyb wrote: post #3

A good question to ask before starting a startup is : "Do I see myself working 10 years on this problem?". Looks like they ran out of steam, rather than out of runway.

Why 10 years? Is it not typical with startup founders to plan a lucrative exit in a much shorter time frame?

> "Good startups usually take 10 years." - Sam Altman

It also aligns with other Y Combinator teachings, such as targeting growing markets.

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#33

Post by mytailorisrich »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #29
mytailorisrich wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply is somewhat constrained and demand is also artificially inflated (at national level it is 100% caused by immigration, which is kept high by the successive governments). Everyone relies on the property market going up. Beyond the obvious reasons, another important one is that fixed rate mortgages are not fixed for the life of the mortgage but only for, usually, 2 to 5 years after which rates jump so everyone is…

It's curious to think about what house prices in the UK would be like without immigration. With a sustained negative fertility rate over the past few decades, there could've feasibly been stable prices with no new houses built at all.

The UK population would have started to decrease naturally I believe around 2024 without immigration. It so happens that the past few years have also seen record high immigration and population growth...

Obviously the property market would be looking very differently if population was decreasing. The whole economy would.

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#34

Post by rhubarbtree »

AJRF wrote: post #4

Thanks for writing this! > Housing in Britain is expensive because getting planning permission is difficult. Isn't the real problem that supply is artificially constrained because house prices and the economy are interlinked in a way in a special way in the UK economy, such that the majority of home owners don't want it changed (because more supply == downward pricing pressure) I think the only entity that could mean…

I’ve posted this before, but I think the reason house prices are expensive in the UK is that they are an asset. If the rich can buy that asset and make a return, they will buy it. So price equilibrium is where rents are at an absolute maximum that can be born by tenants. As the price is determined the potential yield, the price then rises as high as possible.

Building more houses won’t change this situation until the number of houses is greater than the number of tenants. At the point where the number of tenants equals the housing supply, the returns can still be made and prices will be bid up.

The problem is that is a competition between the rich buying as an asset vs the rest of us buying as a home. The only solutions are to reduce or eliminate the possible returns for the rich.

And as posted if the prices are then allowed to fall, the whole economy is in danger, because it is based on the creation of illusory wealth via asset inflation. Remortgaging a house that has risen in price feeds money into the economy, despite no wealth actually being created. And the entire economy is based on this, because the rest of the economy has been destroyed by neoliberalism.

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#35

Post by djoldman »

I looked for a source for this statement in the article:

> Granting permission takes the median hectare of land from £20,000 to £2.4 million - a 139x uplift.

I couldn't find one. However, I did run into some interesting viewpoints by a certain Paul Cheshire, Professor Emeritus of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics... "one of the world’s pre-eminent housing economists"

He has this to say about "Green Belts":

> Britain imposed its first Green Belt in 1955 and now, if re-zoned for building, farmland at the built edge of London has an 800-fold mark-up. There was no secular trend in housing land prices in Britain until the mid-1950s, but after Green Belts were imposed real prices increased some 15-fold. More than houses because you can substitute land out of house production. There is a similar pattern in Canada, New Zealand or the West and East coasts of the United States where policies restrict land supply.

https://www.newgeography.com/content/006358-lse-economist-pa...

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#36

Post by spacebanana7 »

froddd wrote: post #28
philipallstar wrote: post #24

> Housing in Britain is expensive because getting planning permission is difficult. It's true that planning departments are very expensive, don't do much positively, and still seem to allow awful-looking things to be built, and I'd probably happily do away with them, but the fundamental driver is the incredible onboarding of people from overseas for years that crushes the combination of the existing population and th…

Reducing the problem to ‘people coming from overseas’ is an equally reductionist argument. There are properties going unused, for very many reasons. Second homes, holiday homes, etc. This also drives the price of properties up. This is one of the inputs to the problem. Planning permission laws is another input. The size and change of size of the people needing housing is another input.

Is it not the dominant factor, at least in the short term? It's much faster for 150k people to enter/leave the UK than for a corresponding number of homes to built/demolished.

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#37

Post by madmask »

belinder wrote: post #31
margorczynski wrote: post #25

I think the problem with startups (from a business perspective) is that they're ego-driven and instead of looking at the business reality in an objective fashion they mostly try to "revolutionize" and "make a difference". It isn't as sexy as doing the next Facebook or disrupting global healthcare but just copying an existing archaic & expensive product and doing it better can yield a great and stable business. There'…

Now where to get a list of such companies and products to decide what to build...

A decent 3d CAD and multiphysics FEM (cheap comsol) would be a good start

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#38

Post by drdrek »

bad_username wrote: post #9
pyb wrote: post #3

A good question to ask before starting a startup is : "Do I see myself working 10 years on this problem?". Looks like they ran out of steam, rather than out of runway.

Why 10 years? Is it not typical with startup founders to plan a lucrative exit in a much shorter time frame?

7-10 years is the realistic time frame for a moderately successful exit, usually those that are "Bought" after 1-3 years are actually failed ventures with all or most of the money going back to the investors to recoup their loses.

Re: A Postmortem of a Startup

#40

Post by immibis »

dzonga wrote: post #13

well written. I think your fatal mistake even though you folks are smart was not understanding the complete value chain of your business. What I mean by understanding the economics of the value chain is you've to understand how your customers make money, how their customers make money & how their suppliers make money. From there - you can workout your value proposition - are you saving your customers money (means the…

Success is when you get paid. If the product is unprofitable, you lose out on a bunch more money, and your investors lose out on most of their money, but you did your job and got paid for that, and as long as it was a reasonable rate, what's the failure on your part?
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