O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups • Hacker News Board

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#41

Post by xyst » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

What ever happened to providing a good service? Why does everything have to be a "unicorn"? You greedy capitalists, and billionaires have sucked out the life of everything — tech, food, airlines.

VC culture, private equity, and "hyper-growth" mentality has screwed over many good companies that once provided good services to the community. Good paying jobs with excellent benefits and providing upward mobility.

Now the labor benefits are shrinking, company loyalty is gone, customers screwed over, labor exploited with minimal in return, rising cost of living, increasing wage disparity, abuse of powers.

One can argue the neoclassical/neoliberal economic theory and "Reagan-omics" that birthed PE/VC culture gave power to the idiocracy we see today.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#42

Post by nis251413 » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:20 PM UTC

danjl wrote: post #26

wavemode wrote: post #21

> An O(n) startup grows its key metric (revenue, users, etc.) roughly linearly with time—double the time, double the metric. An O(n^2) startup accelerates, with growth compounding super-linearly over time. Kind of a strange formulation to have n represent the key metric. In algorithm analysis, we would typically have n represent time (or some other cost). So we would say that the startup whose key metrics accelerate…

Normally, with big-O notation, the goal is to reduce complexity. The author's wording kinda reverses that assumption only to "surprise" you in the end? A somewhat forced irony.

Well, you may want to increase complexity in some contexts, eg in cryptography.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#43

Post by TypingOutBugs » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

curiousgibbon wrote: post #27

This is one of the myriad situations where Omega should have been be used, not O. What are they teaching in schools these days?

The author is an early CS bachelors student so… they might still learn this in school

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#44

Post by brap » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:22 PM UTC

sshine wrote: post #12

Since O(n^2) is used as a proxy for “something superlinear, but don’t get hung up on how much”, you might also choose O(n^(1+ε)), an upper bound characterised by some arbitrarily superlinear function.

Why not O(nlog*(n)) startups

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#45

Post by ark296 » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

VC-land is a strange place with strange laws. If you stay in it for too long, you forget that most of the world doesn't follow the power law, and that most of the VC-reasoning just does not help.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#46

Post by dvt » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

> I think many prospective founders, if their goal is money, should optimize for O(n) businesses from day 1.

Honestly, I don't think anyone "picks" the kind of business they want to run. You just kind of go with the flow. If you raise VC money, you follow their lead, if you're running a small bakery, you'll do whatever makes sense there.

So while this is a fun intellectual exercise, it's an exercise in hindsight. In the moment, you're really just trying to survive the day-to-day and not really "optimizing" for a specific growth pattern.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#47

Post by ocean_moist » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:28 PM UTC

sshine wrote: post #12

Since O(n^2) is used as a proxy for “something superlinear, but don’t get hung up on how much”, you might also choose O(n^(1+ε)), an upper bound characterised by some arbitrarily superlinear function.

Sure makes sense.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#48

Post by ocean_moist » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:31 PM UTC

danjl wrote: post #7

> O(n) companies can’t afford to hire the absolute best talent. O(n) companies tend to have more experienced founders and engineers in my experience. This is partly why they have "nice deadlines, clear SoW" and "understand their customers" enough to have PMF. The strength of their talent, experience and job networks often greatly outweighs the cash incentives, allowing them to hire top candidates. They do not just hi…

Experience != talent. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is that they hire the minimum needing to succeed in a well defined role. Startups aren't afforded this comfort as the roles are not well defined.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#49

Post by ocean_moist » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:36 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #11

Huh. Not working in the field, I assumed startups went like sigmoids (everything is a sigmoid after all). Exponential at first as word of mouth spreads, then linear as your users start bumping into each other and word of mouth stops working, and then you eventually start leveling off near carrying capacity (you’ve hit your addressable market). I thought the game was to try to get bought by some massive company while…

Yeah sigmoid is good. I kind of hint at this when I mention "saturate their TAM at some rate".

You can think about it like we are looking at the concave up portion of the sigmoid only. The early growth phase.

Re: O(n) vs. O(n^2) Startups

#50

Post by mgraczyk » Sun, May 18, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #11

Huh. Not working in the field, I assumed startups went like sigmoids (everything is a sigmoid after all). Exponential at first as word of mouth spreads, then linear as your users start bumping into each other and word of mouth stops working, and then you eventually start leveling off near carrying capacity (you’ve hit your addressable market). I thought the game was to try to get bought by some massive company while…

They are sigmoids, but for some the plateau is 30 years in the future with a 5T market cap.

For example Facebook's revenue is still increasing at an increasing rate, 21 years later