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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#381

Post by aleph_minus_one »

sofixa wrote: post #297
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #14

Concerning > 4. The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to find. I disagree: In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. I feel what rather changed is that with VC becoming big and mainstream, investors have become more risk-averse in investing into innovative ideas (that they don't real…

> In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. Such as? Can you name a few?

> > In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find.

> Such as? Can you name a few?

Naming them would need long explanations (and a lot of my thoughts are still in an early phase), but I can give you a rough sketch of one possible way how one can find them (but note that there exists an insane amount of other possible ways to find great innovative opportunities):

Simply read sophisticated scientific literature about mathematics and related areas, in particular about insanely deep results that were (possibly) honored with high awards (which gives you a strong evidence that there is indeed something deep to find in these results). Then find cool, exciting applications of these results in an area of your choice.

Why does this simple approach work? Answer: the state of the art in mathematics is in many cases simply working with science-fiction technologies from, say, 50 years in the future already today.

Honestly, this way I find raw ideas for possibly cool, exciting opportunities basically every few days.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#382

Post by nico »

auggierose wrote: post #336
nico wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were rejected from YC because we wouldn’t dilute to 0 some of the early people at the company They first told us we were in, but that we would need to adjust our cap table so that only 2 founders would have equity. They gave us a phone call, we pushed back, and later they sent us a rejection email

Interesting. Why would they care about something like that? Would it not just come out of the pockets of the 2 founders?

Your guess is as good as mine. My memory is a bit fuzzy about the details now, but I remember a very awkward phone call with one of the partners in which they were saying things like “the cap table is too busy” and that they only wanted founders having equity

We were willing to compromise to some degree, and the non-founders said they would give up most equity if that meant getting into YC

But after the call, we got a rejection email saying something weird like “your cap table seems to be in flux”, thus disqualifying us

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#383

Post by troupo »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #363
troupo wrote: post #83

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 That's the thing: there's literally no business idea in most startups beyond "sell to the highest bidder at 1B+ valuation". And the rest are hoping to coast on unlimited investor money. That's it. There are no business plans of, you know, building a sustainably profitable company.

For me the better question is: Why is anyone with enough money to invest in startups not just investing that money in a safe index fund or real estate instead?

Gambling is an addiction :)

Also, if you manage to get rich, you can afford more risks... in the hopes of getting even richer

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#384

Post by schappim »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #378
schappim wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of background, we sell STEM electronics hardware that has really low margin because it's designed to be excessively priced for education. This need to be extremely efficient has caused us to do all sorts of things, like create shipping and fulfillment robots that pick products from the shelf and help our pickers and packers out[1]. I found that it's a lot harder to do things with atoms than just software. As a…

>designed to be excessively priced for education. Do you mean accessibly priced?

A price low enough to be within reach of edu customers, without sacrificing value or quality.

This is achieved by reducing margins, and when you reduce margins, as a business you have to do more with less.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#385

Post by Dilettante_ »

knome wrote: post #376
dsugarman wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now, it's really sad to me. I went through YC in 2012 and I feel like the community here is unrecognizable, the quality of discourse is so low it feels hard to participate.

the only thing that I've seen growing that I hope is pushed back is the growing number of jokers. I see people posting here like it's reddit or slashdot. it's not, and that's part of what makes it valuable. every joke comment is a loss of signal in the forum. jokes are great, but unless it's a joke that has some truth squirreled away in it that's worth knowing and well transmitted by the joke, it shouldn't be here. e…

>every joke comment is a loss of signal in the forum.

I really needed to hear this, thank you.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#386

Post by schappim »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #378
schappim wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of background, we sell STEM electronics hardware that has really low margin because it's designed to be excessively priced for education. This need to be extremely efficient has caused us to do all sorts of things, like create shipping and fulfillment robots that pick products from the shelf and help our pickers and packers out[1]. I found that it's a lot harder to do things with atoms than just software. As a…

>designed to be excessively priced for education. Do you mean accessibly priced?

Yup, I mean "accessibly priced". Auto-correct or STT fail.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#387

Post by fuzzfactor »

schappim wrote: post #384
fuzzfactor wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>designed to be excessively priced for education. Do you mean accessibly priced?

A price low enough to be within reach of edu customers, without sacrificing value or quality. This is achieved by reducing margins, and when you reduce margins, as a business you have to do more with less.

>A price low enough to be within reach of edu customers,

That's what I thought, so do not say excessively since that would mean overpriced because it is excessive.

Accessively sounds like almost the same word but means something can be easily accessed, is more within reach or "not high priced".

Perhaps the best wording might be "affordable" for edu customers.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#388

Post by dnissley »

Analemma_ wrote: post #311
dsugarman wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now, it's really sad to me. I went through YC in 2012 and I feel like the community here is unrecognizable, the quality of discourse is so low it feels hard to participate.

I can understand complaining about cynicism, but it's dishonest to pretend it's not coming from a real place. All the complaints people are voicing elsewhere in this thread are true: - it's true that you will get jack squat if you're employee #4 or later (and in the process you'll work more hours with less job security than at a FAANG) - it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value t…

I'll just point out that you're presenting your view of the world and beliefs as if it were based on objective fact. The things you've listed here are all narratives pushed by the media, so I would be understanding that you and many others would feel because of this that they are indeed objective truths, but they are in actuality far from that. Even if these stories are made up of objective facts, they ignore many others which contradict them. For example, I also consider myself grounded in reality and I can think of ways in which these things you've listed as "true" could turn out to be far more complicated.

I like this comic / poem, which I feel captures the essence of what I'm trying to get across here:

Try as I might to live simply, my life tends towards complexity.

My ordered thoughts veer off track, once they turn inward I can't turn back.

The path forward twists and tangles, I lose myself at every angle.

The clear vision I hold inside me, fractures into something far more exciting.

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2019/05/disorder.html

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#389

Post by gsf_emergency »

finnthehuman wrote: post #361
copyleftdj wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of people who are here because they are generically interested in tech topics and not specifically startups. For me what hn use to be an interaction between art and tech in the theme of hackers & painters. Tech along is not so interesting IMHO unless it's in the context of art and/or humanity.

Maciej wrote "Dabblers and Blowhards" in 2005 (that was an eyeopening date to go check). Hackers and Painters was always for the fresh and easily impressionable to feel a sense of specialness.

I'm vibing that the original sin of HN is the shame in being a midwit. Maciej comes off as being an incurious blowhard too..

(Consider that the word "painter" itself has complementary high/low meanings)

Currently I'm low-key mulling about the possibly not-even-wrong idea that in some cultures, there simply isn't a clear distinction between high and low art.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42770351

The downside of that

1)YC and HN won't attract a lot of people from such cultures, at least not the ones they hope to get (the supposedly curious AND effective folks)

2) eternal September is inevitable, especially for folks who have Alan Kay in their pantheon of heroes

Separately, California seems like it could very well host a ommerist culture in a century. See the Oscars, very much a blowhard affair though you could almost call it "communal" (blowhards celebrating shitting in public?) -- Hollywood still has to go through the prepubescent phase of totally embracing their inner and utter philistine. (Compare Kaurismaki, maybe he got a bit enlightened by eastern filmmakers?)

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#390

Post by aworks »

jschveibinz wrote: post #261

Here are a few anecdotes from the U.S. that can hopefully add substance to this conversation: 1) I am an investor in startups, and I have slowed my investments to a trickle since the beginning of Covid. I have noted that this has been generally true of other investors like myself. 2) There are still tons of problems to solve through technology applications; but there needs to be a moat between your solution and what…

4) When assessing a startup, consider two things first: are the founders experienced in the industry and market they are attacking? Is the value of the solution obvious? i.e. people will likely willingly pay well to have the solution? --- I've worked at three start-ups. The answer was yes to the first question for all three. But the second question was really hard to answer going in. In hindsight, only of the companies had a valued solution. And I left 9 years before IBM bought them for big money.

I had a lot of fun and excitement but the financial uncertainty is tough.

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