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Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

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Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#41

Post by mittermayr »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #29
mittermayr wrote: post #26

I had one product that took off, made more money than at any of my previous (big-tech) jobs, and I thought the tales were true. If you work hard enough, catch a lucky wave and have the skills to ride it, you're free. The product peaked, and then very quickly dropped to zero in about two years, while I tried everything to prevent going out of business. Back at the bottom, a year or two of aimless wandering, I figured,…

This resonates. Trying to get back into a tech job and they all need Kubernetes experience because microservices. I've spent 10 years developing MVPs that never scaled past 100 users, let alone anywhere large enough to need K8s.

It's a fifty/fifty, isn't it, part of it is actually exciting. Everytime I have a foot in a "proper" company (usually for a consulting gig), I'm always excited to learn about a bunch of stuff that I never had a moment to work with (because, as you say, it's usually a waste of time when there's less than a 100k users on it). The other part, however, is the insane slowdown of progress this usually brings with it. Everything, is, so, incred-ibly-slow at these corps. And policy and asking for permission and nobody wanting to be responsible unless upper management and and and...

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#42

Post by scarface_74 »

digitcatphd wrote: post #11

All of the arguments presented in this were equally true in 2013 as they are in 2025 and there are many more dimensions than you are taking into consideration. For instance, the demographics of HN users could have changed, or the economic climate is cyclically more defensive and 'risk off', which is well known. I suspect this is more related to economic cycles than a cultural paradigm shift and would suggest the auth…

In 2013, the Ponzi scheme of VC investing still existed. The VCs could pawn off their money losing companies to the public market, sell their equity fast and watch the stock either quickly decline or stay flat.

The public got wise.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#43

Post by yason »

I'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 whatever vibe it is that startups acquired after the dotcom boom, i.e. find something that hasn't been done before, scales quickly, and sell the company after a few years for 1000x, and then something.

That never was sustainable, I think, and effectively it became a glorified hiring process for big tech who bought the best toy companies to get to the people behind. And now even big tech figured it's cheaper to just hire the talent directly and not buy their token company for a few million first just to get the guys in.

Not saying a good company with a good idea and execution at the right time couldn't still make it big quick: there always were some lucky ones and there will always be. But the process isn't repeatably stable enough that there's a lot of wasted effort to make a few shooting stars. And everybody seems to be slowly accepting that. Go for it if the opportunity arises but if you spend 10 years trying and trying without the fish biting you're likely better off saving off from a decent salary when those years have passed.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#44

Post by fxtentacle »

KaiserPro wrote: post #17

I 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…

"Sell for half a billion and get nothing (2021)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598903

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#45

Post by belter »

tossandthrow wrote: post #5

IMHO building startup became a status symbol which means that the payment in respect for making a courageous adventure is lost and commoditized. We are slowly seeing the same for academia. Point 2 resonates with me. Risk adjusted it is very unlikely that one will make a reasonable salary doing startups. So it is conviction and heart that needs to drive it. For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea ab…

We all run a Startup. It's called your own Career...

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#46

Post by Oras »

Starting a startup is about long-term goals. If feedback (positive or negative) can affect this journey, then this is a trace of the status quo and trying to please people, which is against the core of starting a startup.

The only validation a startup should seek is paying customers or revenue. Everything else is a vanity metric.

What HN comments say is irrelevant, whether positive or negative.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#47

Post by checker659 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #8

I 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.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#48

Post by aleph_minus_one »

bell-cot wrote: post #2

Obvious addition: 5. 1 != 6 I have doubts about #2. Weren't Big Tech companies paying senior engineers $300K+ - in 2025-adjusted dollars - back in 2013? If you know any history, #4 is how many new areas of technology go. A couple ordinary guys built the first working airplane in their bicycle shop. Intel was founded with less than $1M, and fabbed its own chips. Vs. what would be the ante, today, to get into either of…

> A couple ordinary guys built the first working airplane in their bicycle shop.

The problem typically is government regulations.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#49

Post by jajko »

dcminter wrote: post #10

> What's changed? Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much. But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of peopl…

This is just another public website, various people come here since its interesting and discussions engaging. Its one of the last places which is free/public and discussions don't immediately turn primitive, political and emotional unlike rest of internet. People from various backgrounds come and have interesting things to say, which is often refreshing and enlightening (at least to this fella).

Many if not most of folks at this point have nothing to do with neither startups nor hacking. Neither do I for example, and I am here for a decade+.

Re: Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith

#50

Post by jillesvangurp »

A few problems with this view:

1) Big corporations continue to struggle with doing in house innovation. Hiring more people doesn't seem to work. Just look at the infamously long and ever growing list of failed Google stuff. They are spending billions on this stuff. And most of it fails. Most large companies struggle with doing big new things in house.

2) There continue to be successful startups challenging/disrupting those big companies and occasionally scaring them into action (like acquisitions). And some of these startups are well funded.

3) Most Big Tech companies have been downsizing over the last few years. Job security maybe isn't that amazing if layoff rounds are a regular thing. And bigger salaries also means more scrutiny when layoffs happen. Also see #1: if projects aren't working out, layoffs are quick way to cut the losses. Getting caught up in one of these doomed corporate innovation things is maybe not great as a job security plan.

Also, post covid, the notion of physically locating development teams close to San Francisco is no longer that much of an automatic thing. I see a lot of startups here in Berlin that only have a token presence in the US (not necessarily Silicon Valley) and do all/most of their tech in Europe. It used to be that startups would physically move to the Valley after raising money. That seems to happen much less these days. Mostly, US presence for such companies is limited to sales and marketing.

And there are also lots of US startups setting up teams abroad. Why pay a premium for commodity development teams? Especially if you just raised a few million, you are on the spot to deliver. Going on a spending spree in the Valley maybe isn't the best way to do that.

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