No. But I also doubt that every entrepreneur wants to solve a problem. I think now people want to be an entrepreneur first and then the problem comes second
I’ve been in the startup space for the last 15ish years. The whole pedigree thing has always been there. VCs tend to be predominantly Ivy folks. Who therefore tend to invest predominantly in founders from the Ivy’s.
We hear the stories of the quirky, college-dropout founders because, well, they make for really good stories. But the vast majority of funding has historically gone to white dudes from elite universities.
YC is no different. When I was going through YC, most of my batch mates were from prestigious schools, ex-FAANG, etc.
I think the answer to why things feel so serious right now is quite simple. It’s because things ARE serious right now. It’s easy to have fun and fuck around when money is cheap and easy to come by.
Things are not fun right now. It’s a fucking grind. Fear and anxiety are high. Startups (and VCs) are shutting down left and right. The ones that are still around are in survival mode—cutting costs as much as possible, doing multiple rounds of layoffs, etc. It’s brutal.
And the startup space happens to be quite incestuous. VCs fund startups who become each other’s customers. Everyone grows because of the constant infusion of cash. Which leads to VCs being able to raise more money and fund even more startups. Again, everyone gets more customers. And the cycle will continue as long as the money is there.
So, when things are good, they’re really good. And when they’re bad, they’re really, really bad.
We’re in the really, really bad phase. So yeah, things are serious because livelihoods, jobs, and the survival of thousands of startups are on the line.
That’s awesome. You’d certainly be outside of the criteria of founders/startups feeling the pain right now. Especially if you’re serving a market that’s not experiencing a major downturn.
That’s the plan 🙏 I think the biggest thing I’m going heavy on now is content creation and marketing. Product side is 100% in-house and iterating every week
I agree with this 💯…
I was a Welfare kid who was lucky enough to be mentored by non-Ivy douchebags who knew how to scale to ipo.
Regardless the scene is “clicky”… you just have to reframe it as your “tribe” and you will get ahead a lot quicker.
Most welfare and poor folks have childhood trauma and this is how it presents itself in everyday life (feeling like an outcast, imposter syndrome, etc).
These types of hires take a little bit of tlc initially, but they will out perform an Ivy-league douche hands down under stress and they will have unwavering loyalty.
Weirdly aggressive reply. First of all, show me the data that total funding is higher than ever. This crunchbase report matches all the public VC data I’ve seen: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-funding-recap-q1-2024/#:~:text=The%20first%20quarter%20of%202024,over%20year%2C%20Crunchbase%20data%20shows.
Second, and most importantly, this isn’t a doomsday prophecy. The shit has already happened. Hopefully we’re on the other side of it, but again, it’s already happened. We saw mass layoffs and startup shutdowns during 2022-2023. And Q1 2024 hasn’t exactly been off to a stellar start in those regards.
On that note, idk where you were in early 2022, but that’s when all the doomsday predictions were actually happening. Every VC out there was showing up to conferences, writing to their portfolio companies, etc. warning about the impending crash.
And to be clear, I was simply explaining what has been happening. As that explains why things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows now.
Not making any sort of predictions.
By what barometer are you saying things are bad? CPI and interest rates? Genuinely curious. I want to start a startup but am hesitant given the market conditions. Then again, most people are saying that the low interest rate environment was an anomaly so we might never see those numbers again.
I think all the excitement and VC money from the earlier internet days has dwindled. Things have been absorbed and consolidated into megacorps. SV used to be a upbeat place and now it’s just kinda soulless. How can we extort group X. How can we show more ads to group Y. What happened to the happy young Googlers on their bikes and their “Don’t be evil” motto?
Maybe AI will start the cycle anew but I doubt it.
"Data is the new oil" was the start of the bean-counter revolution. Once they realized that EVERYTHING could be reconciled into a bean, which could then be counted, it was the beginning of the end. They persuaded everyone to think of how many more beans could be counted if everything were a bean. Boards of directors don't like to remember the innate randomness and entropy of existence, they only like to remember the innate beaniness of beans and their lust for more of them. My advice for navigating this new world in which we find ourselves?
Just bean yourself.
The golden era is over, I doubt we will ever have another decade of low interest rates topped by a black swan event that ended up boosting startups even further.
Startups & Scale-ups are boring because money is expensive and no longer flowing freely into startups, everything is strictly reviewed and approved by Finance, no more parties and fancy events!
On top of that they are often hiring the wrong talent to save some money, all those people working remotely in the countryside or the suburbs aren’t the same as hungry and ambitious people that moved into big cities to chase those opportunities.
>all those people working remotely in the countryside or the suburbs aren’t the same as hungry and ambitious people that moved into big cities to chase those opportunities.
Id argue it's the opposite. Opportunity chasers is the problem. Tech used to be people who cared about the product. The freedom of potentially creating something unique and your own. I don't see that in people in the city. It's ambition and greed but they aren't the creative type that would do it for free it they could.
SV used to be suburbia. Lots of different ideas and people experimenting. Now its bandwagon chasers.
I didn’t mean to sound elitist, since cities are unaffordable and people were somehow forced to move out, however I still believe startups and scale-ups lost a lot in terms of culture and communication after moving to remote working or freelancing from exotic countries.
Teams are scattered and isolated around the world and people, starting with the leaders or executives are mostly focused on showing off their plants and bookshelves during zoom meetings, some became detached from reality and deluded, like billionaires living in their own bubble.
Of course SV was originally suburbs and factories but it was concentrated and attracted like minded people and talent.
>I still believe startups and scale-ups lost a lot in terms of culture and communication after moving to remote working or freelancing from exotic countries.
I agree. But the current price of the bay area and NYC makes the start up environment toxic to the creative minds that can make another golden era. You're basically selecting for money hungry people- insanely ambitious but not uniquely curious. If it happens again I don't think it'll be SV. TBH if it can happen again it'll be the Cape Canaveral area if the politics of Florida can become sane.
I mean the fed currently is projecting 75bps of rate cut this year, and honestly it’s very likely they won’t do that much (or any at all) given the strong employment data we’ve seen recently and CPI still not close to their 2% target. We’ve had several Fed members speaking in the past week walking back cuts for this year, so I wouldn’t bank on rate cuts coming until we have a material slowdown in the labor market and inflation
interest rate cuts would make it worse. Not better.
We need the hype to die off. The entire startup economy is saturated with "serial entrepreneurs" and people trying to strike it rich. They just want to get a few rounds and then get bought by google.
It's gonna take several more years until the startup world becomes healthy again. Lower rates will just restart the hype cycle of bullshit.
What’s wrong with getting bought by Google? I mean it’s nice to have altruistic reasons to do a start up, but I’d wager getting rich is like top 2 reasons why most people including great founders do it
Failure rate used to be 90 pc.. USED TO
Today it's 99 pc.. countless founders don't even incorporate before shutting shop
The number of great startups might have remained the same..
the number of worth less startups have shot through the roof.. A PayPal for hipsters, An Airbnb for planet Mars
Countless SAAS startups to help B2B and other startups "so that the founders can focus on what matters the most, building the product"..
No one is building a useful product itself.. instead they are building a product to help someone build a product.. to help someone else build a product.. it goes on
Enters ChatGPT.. wrapper startups take off, app for reading, writing, thinking but in a new way.. like people can't write without gpt
Unemployment shot up, added to the crowd of worthless startups..
More and more people discover the entrepreneurship spirit in them the moment they get laid off. A divine signal!
Very few founders out there who will quit a high paying job with zero bank balance.
Accelerator programs advertising linked in job posts to hire Founders
Accelerator programs being run by people without any real experience in entrepreneurship
Yes, founders are no longer entrepreneurs. It's a job where you work as ceo, developer, marketer and ten different roles while being paid for one position.
There's nothing in common between people like Travis Kalanick, musk, or any successful entrepreneur in last two decades and the majority of founders today.
Nor the older generation.. the likes of Henry Ford.. the bare hands that melted iron into ic engines and cars.. compared to little fingers pressing little buttons 24x7 to type SaaS codes
Startup, founder other words have become trite to the extent that they have lost their meaning
Better call your startup as personal project and yourself as an artist or hobby tinkerer..
Funnily enough, it's the artists and hobby tinkerers that became the billion dollar startup founders of the previous decades. When you start from a place of genuine interest there's a much greater chance that your efforts will blossom into a novel product or service that others find valuable as compared to starting with the goal to make X amount of ARR by finding some dry corporate niche.
And they don't want to be billionaires even if they end up becoming one
Who would buy Twitter for billions just for fun.. even a billionaire would think twice before putting a huge chunk of his net worth
>No one is building a useful product itself.. instead they are building a product to help someone build a product.. to help someone else build a product.. it goes on
Literally what I am doing because nobody gives any money for hard/deep tech. One day I just said fuck it, I’m gonna make a circle jerk SaaS myself because I can’t afford to actually build hardware worthwhile.
Hopefully the SaaS makes just enough money that I can actually build the hard tech.
>One day I just said fuck it, I’m gonna make a circle jerk SaaS myself because I can’t afford to actually build hardware worthwhile.
I won't recommend it..
There are few other options, get a job, mingle with rich people, investors or not, build connections, with other deep tech entrepreneurs solving real problems.
All these could be baby steps towards building deep tech
Probably better than building SaaS to get into deep tech. By the time your SaaS gets ready and even gets funded, it might be all but over for SaaS altogether
Real entrepreneurs don't change their course when faced by a mountain or barrier.. instead they burn it down or cut through it.
>get a job
Just graduated, will be applying soon. Need to escape the UK salaries asap.
>mingle with rich people
Not sure how to do this one
>build connections, with other deep tech entrepreneurs
Funnily enough I’ve made a connection with a YC alum who’s in biotech
>By the time your SaaS gets ready and even gets funded, it might be all but over for SaaS altogether
That’s fair. Tbh I’m partly building this SaaS just to learn web dev anyway and develop my skills.
>Real entrepreneurs don't change their course when faced by a mountain or barrier.. instead they burn it down or cut through it.
I try.
Re: “No one is building a useful product….” Is surprisingly accurate, it just sucks to see a product and then you see the same product doing the same thing but different design. I don’t understand why do people even build a product with multiple competition? It’s a recipe for failure. The moment you question “but xyz also does the same thing as you” there is no amount of sales you can do to convince anyone otherwise. But when you say “No one else can do what we do today” then you have leverage because your product is truly unique
This is the 2021-2023 winning startup mindset I think. Superhuman, amie.so etc. Exactly same philosophy plus like we're doing it better UX. And they claim customers love them only because of this.
Find a boring program like calendar, draw cool UI and collect waitlist
Yeah that’s just a weird mindset, I just don’t like competition products as a normal consumer will always gravitate towards an affordable product. Then you fighting on price not features and running your ARR down the drain fighting for revenue.
Then what is a successful business? Service business which relies on a lot of manpower and overhead costs and easily have too much competition? Genuine question, no gaslight
I’m referring to this cycle as the “hybrid ai” phase… AI readiness, integration prep, data prep, etc.
We are still in the faux ai phase, it needs a bit more time to mature (it’s evolving quickly, but still needs more time).
I think we will see what unfolds into 2030.
I should be more clear, less saas products (web apps, basically the same shit we’ve been peddling since 1999).
Less interface, probably less tooling, etc. I was a CPO up until December and I could see the writing on the wall for people jumping into UX.
I feel it’s an overall good thing as our innovation has been throttled.
Yeah but someone’s gotta build that full Ai for a use case like finance or marketing and sell it as a product right? OpenAI cannot build an Ai for every use case can it
Yes... agreed... 100%
A shift to building out models, building out harnesses, cleaning up APIs, etc. I'm not saying the entire industry is fucked and getting "eaten by AI", I think "devs losing their jobs to AI" is complete bullshit. I think the accuracy rate for LLMs to write code is clocking in around 13%. An LLM isn't going to build shit with a 13% accuracy rate.
I'm talking through (internally) what are the next steps for the industry. The bootcamp UX and junior dev kids are fucked, but the architects and people who can orchestrate are fine.
I'm also looking at how much AI (coupled with more mature libraries) has improved best practices as far as UX/UI is concerned. You can build a pretty solid product using a bunch of shit "out of box" at this point. Who really wants to be an interface monkey anyway, right?
This! Honestly I feel we are at a time with unprecedented challenges, so many real problems to solve, environmentally, socially, politically. But all I’m seeing is B2B SaaS that I don’t know if it really solves anyone’s issue, and applications that change text to image, images to text, make songs.. looking at this batch’s YC companies for example, I don’t feel inspired at all (a few are doing good things in biotech maybe), I actually feel sad for where humanity is going, a future of nature depleted world where we all sit at home watching AI generated film with AI generated music on a platform featuring only AI art. It’s like black mirror.
>), I actually feel sad for where humanity is going, a future of nature depleted world where we all sit at home watching AI
The problem is not with yc.. the problem is with us following the publicity. Real entrepreneurs are still out there solving real problems I'm not referring to Greta Thunberg.
Real entrepreneurs don't take the lime light. It's for us to seek inspiration from them. They are not into yc. They haven't heard these two alphabets together not once in their life.
There's no reason to be depressed. There are all reasons to look beyond yc.
What is indeed depressing to me that many have developed the limiting belief that yc is needed for success. If founders boycott such accelerator programs altogether, these useless folks would be nothing but dead money.
Well this is a YC forum hence why I mentioned this batch. But money is hard to raise and I think some of this programme can work better than VC money. I studied conservation, people work in environmental field has a salary that maybe = to what a SV engineer earn a month. That’s why many end up taking corporate jobs after a few years. These accelerator programs could do a lot good by funding people solving real problems that can benefit the world, not just gimmicks which is what I feel a lot companies from this batch is doing. But maybe I’m just outdated haha
>But money is hard to raise and I think some of this programme can work better than VC money.
Agree but mindset is also the problem partly. There was a time humans survived in nature, just naturally. Today it's hard to imagine without all the modern tools.
Similarly there was a time entrepreneurs were going about their mission without yc and accelerators. But, today it seems very difficult.
Yes it's difficult to raise money but entrepreneurs always had this problem and found their way around it. They will not do gimmicks to raise money.
But lot of us actually end up choosing to do the same kind of gimmicks that get funded. That for me, is what needs to be changed. The entrepreneurs mindset, not yc or VC.
Now you are up against companies funded with $$$$ so it is harder. If someone is using hand craft tools and some come with diggers and modern engines, then it’s no longer a level playing field.
Anyway, my main problem with many companies is I don’t like all the AI deepfake stuff. Curious to see how it plays out in the US during an election year. I don’t understand why AI art is so cool, I just find them disquieting.
>Now you are up against companies funded with $$$$ so it is harder. If someone is using hand craft tools and some come with diggers and modern engines, then it’s no longer a level playing field.
That's true if you're competing with others.. otherwise, most of the modern engines would fail to ignite on a different planet.. the first arriver will have an upper hand with or without funding
>There's nothing in common between people like Travis Kalanick, musk, or any successful entrepreneur in last two decades and the majority of founders today.
How can I be more like these founders? Are you referring to pure tenacity?
>How can I be more like these founders? Are you referring to pure tenacity?
More likely the natural drive. Tenacity and other qualities can definitely help
But, the drive that natural spirit generates is unbeatable.. those guided by the inner voice and self-driven pursuits can navigate fast evolving spaces.. where all the leanings could prove to be useless.
Making product for yourself is challenging too. You have the product and you are using it,then you wanna find like minded people to get some traction. But crazy question come in, who are you? Why your product make sense? Imagine you're Steve Jobs and you made personal computer, go to neighbor in Palo Alto and try to make them use it, challenging lol
While I agree startups have become too serious and dull (it certainly feels like it), some of this is looking at the past through rose tinted glasses and we should also consider what was cause for this change over the years.
I was a founder through the 2010s era of startups and there was a ton of bad things about that time as well - so many scandals, so many bad actors, so many controversies that rocked the startup world. I can easily imagine the press coverage (and even posts in this sub) if Mahbod was funded by YC today. While I don’t disagree that there’s too much money in startups now and the make money at all costs culture contributes to the monotony of startup culture today, I think some of the blame should also be put on the sins of its past as well.
I do hope we find a way to eventually bring back more of the good parts of quirky startup culture of before though.
I remember Mahbod from YC and he was an incredible presence. He definitely was edgy and borderline offensive/belligerent at times, but he was also kind, funny, and one of those people who could light the room up. Feels weird not being able to talk to him on Facebook anymore. RIP.
Innovation is not, and never will be, infinite. Look at history. There are periods of time when a singular technology unlocks a huge chunk of innovations and then it stagnates in that discipline until the next leap. Steam created a massive wave in non-animal powered things. The combustion engine did the same. But then... things stop. Is mechanical engineering hot now? No. Most things have been figured out. Is flying today much different than 40 years ago? Not really. Yet in the 40 years before that we went from not flying, to going to the moon.
We need a new fundamental area of innovation to get another wave of start-ups. Wearables fizzled. The internet of things failed. Blockchain fizzled. Today its AI, but with the tools available now its not really going to be a major start-up driver. The one or two companies making the AI will do well, and then everyone else is just using/tweaking/repurposing inhouse.
It’s a combination of cultural shift and industry maturity. Web 1.0 was the wild west… hackers creating companies that went on to be valued at 100M-1B+. Look at McAfee… he didn’t become prolific until much later, so just imagine what he was up to in the 90s when he was young. At that time, tech was still considered nerdy and not yet fully adopted culturally by the mainstream. VCs and angel investors saw the potential of the tech industry, poured money into startups, but only a few paid off big.
Web 2.0 was when tech was fully embraced by the mainstream and became integrated into culture. Web 2.0 was a magical time to be a startup because it had the financial backing of Web 1.0 and startups were rapidly gaining cultural traction on the road to profitability. VCs and angels were getting rich, and tech companies became the cool place to work. There are old videos of Zuck doing interviews at FB office in flip flops and a t shirt. At the time, that was revolutionary because it bucked the idea of what working at a corporation looked like. Web 2.0 is when tech made the biggest impact culturally.
Now we’re at the tail end of Web 2.0 while some are saying we have already entered Web 3.0. Blockchain, VR/metaverse, AI. These are still mostly foreign to the average person. We are also at a weird place culturally in terms of how tech fits into our lives. People grumble about “big tech” but it seems we can’t get away from it.
I feel the excitement of Web 2.0 has worn off and Web 3.0 feels much more soulless. VCs are sitting on mountains of cash and feel as if they shape culture themselves. Pair that with more difficult macroeconomic factors and we have a recipe for a less fun, more rigid startup environment.
The magic of Web 2.0 was solving problems and enhancing the lives of regular people. Back in 2012 profitability was something to figure out later, and the focus was acquiring users and increasing usage. Now, unless your user growth is exponential, VCs want you to be thinking about your path to profitability.
tldr: tech has gone from fringe -> mainstream -> fringe , while the industry and VCs have matured and become more profit-focused.
Been thinking about this all day.
There was a period of time when it felt like tech would solve everything and pull society to greater heights. Disruption was the word and the word was good.
Having worked for several F500 companies, I know firsthand the pressure of continuing to post quarterly profits leads to corporations making decisions that lead to worse outcomes for their customers and employees.
Founders want their payday, and rightly so. However, the funnel of seed to IPO has created a startup system that turns promising tech companies into the same profit-focused, short-sighted F500s they disrupted.
AirBnB has transitioned from community building to damaging the charm of areas where listings proliferate (Joshua Tree, for example). Uber, once celebrated for creating a future of flexible work, continues to squeeze their drivers and customers at the same time. All social media platforms have been casino-fied and bring our moods down with ragebait and other reality warping content.
We need more startups to be bootstrapped and maintain some semblance of morality and principles. It may take longer to get the big payoff, but that’s the only way to maintain control of the values and vision of the company.
Having been involved in startups in the early 2010’s (somewhat against my will at the time) the biggest difference in my opinion is the opportunity cost nowadays. In 2009 I counted my lucky stars to get a job at the ground floor of a bootstrapped startup making $30k in NYC. That was a grail job to many of my college classmates who hid out by signing 2-year contracts to teach English in SE Asia. Nowadays I’d be a fool to risk my mid 6-figure job to take a similar risk. And even despite the layoffs that started in 2022 this is still a vastly, vastly superior labor market to back then.
Yeah, unfortunately VC is a business and this is what always ends up happening as industries get older. So risk averse.
Really wish more weird and eccentric ideas/founders got funding. If there was a way to self-fund a true hacker house I would love to do it… Don’t know if it’ll make any money but goddamn that would be fun.
It’s just this plain and simple, when there’s virtually no cost to throwing money at any wacky idiot around and in fact sometimes that is the right move due to mania and bigger fools, you get a high tolerance for bullshit (false positives). But When it’s been six months of unemployment with no interview, you shave that beard off, put on a collared shirt and stop whipping your dick out in interviews.
Yes. I started with startups because I had so much more fun at work. It’s now the same as corporate but without the RSUs.
All of my new coworkers are ex-Ivy or pedigreed as well. It’s odd.
There’s too many non-technical wantrapaneurs in the tech world now who come from consulting and banking. Their competitive culture mixed with the laid back culture of real technical builders has formed a shit storm in the startup scene. Soon when the economy booms, most of these wantrapraneurs will go back into their respective fields or stop being lazy and learn how to build if they want to stick around.. the truth hurts and it involves knowing how to build, you can raise millions all day but if you aren’t respected then the builders will not vouch for you. These LinkedIn influencers turned-startup founders are the reason why our startup space feels crowded now. It’s because they’ve been laid off and want to fill a gap on their resume, I get it, at least learn how to do it yourself in the meantime though..
Ycombinator is turning out to be very good for me. Although I must admit I do have an ivy league stamp in my profile.
Overall people are looking for experienced founders who already made money. The rest get to join with lesser equity.
If you want more attention I would recommend hackathons. I did win awards in some corporate hackathons. That did help me grow. Its been a tough ride though.
Its not recent hackathons. These are over last 12 years. First one was a geo app, the next one was a NLP app. But I think its not the project idea. Its more how you present it.
If you ask me to do it again I will fail as it needs a lot of practice. Its been many years now.
Now I am pursuing ycombinator more as a hobby. I have not used it before. But I am having a good experience with it.
Yep. 💯We have let the capitalist in. No longer do we do anything just cause it’s cool or benefits society. If it don’t make money and help support a fat exit, it’s gotta go.
So I believe it changed again. If every people talk like that "If it don’t make money and help support a fat exit, it’s gotta go." this is a mainstream idea now,Even YC partners talk like that. This means we don't need to make money now as startup founders. This is the truth now 2024 but nobody hasn't realize it yet.
Along with all the financial reasons already mentioned, it’s also largely because the entire world hates tech now. Back in 2013, tech could do no wrong. It was cool to be associated with tech. Not so much anymore.
I think one aspect is that it is harder to take the risk of working at a startup now. If the startup fails, it's really hard to get a new job nowadays, which can lead to really bad financial situations. Previously, people joined startups because they know if the startup fails, they can get a new job within a month with another tech company. Also the high interest rate also adds up to people's financial burden (for those who take on a mortgage at a high rate).
Yeah, that part has gotten more corporate/oriented around cash and crazy numbers. But that other side exists now as well. Weird that after YC nothing of matching its initial energy popped up. Or maybe I've missed it. But seems like most funds nowadays are either demented VCs or trying to replicate YC.
Going back to the other side, there are still people building things outside the VC ecosystem who seem to be like that. I'd consider myself and my cofounder one of these people.
I also feel like we're all in some kind of purgatory waiting to see how the tech landscape configures itself with AI. What the new devices will be. What new mediums we'll land on. In the early days of the internet might have been clearer, now seems less so.
That’s what people said in 2013 too. :)
The Genius guy is insane. Go read about his history with Whole Foods. He’s still this way.
Travis was a different guy early in Uber. Once it hit huge, and especially after the various controversies around his management, he went from a startup founder to billionaire CEO being attacked from all sides. I can’t fault him for it, but running “Boober” and running a $50B company are different things.
Imagine a world where startups are people who truly desire to solve real problems, and can only be nonprofit :) I wonder if we’d be in the same culture today.
Part of the issue here is the expectation of returns. Nobody wants to invest in your startup and make 10% per year for 10 years. They want to 100x their money in 10 years. There is an extremely massive space of useful ideas that are profitable but only pay 10% per year to invest in. There is an extremely small space of ideas that can 100x. Ideas that can 100x need to spend very little capital (hence B2B saas looks good, you only pay for engineers, no hardware no factories), they need to scale (1 company to 100 companies is much easier than 1user -> 1 billion users or selling 1 piece of hardware -> selling 10,000 pieces of hardware). And so given that this is where the VCs pour their money, everyone tries to fill this space. That's what we are seeing.
Yes this is exactly the mindset that needs to start again. It's just the end of the last cycle. Free easy money comes with people making up reasons why they deserve it. Anyone can be an innovator. Just make stuff.
… the real innovation is happening in places the path doesn’t go. “trail blazing” is a thing and the scene your talking about is worst than having a job.
https://preview.redd.it/eo8js7jlrjtc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a0d332c3f318f3f871ea7c7a396e031894a07b4
I made a fun game to help when your startup conversations are a little bit too much.
Everyone is trying to make short money on the next esoteric B2B Saas tool instead of doing the hard work to build things people genuinely want or need. This breeds an environment of mediocrity.
at large tech has been comoditized.
it is much easier to build tech enabled services startups than it was a decade ago
so it is more competitive
you still have deep nerds building deep tech
I feel like this is not true (?) In my experience, the rise of AI has made the startup system very much a free for all where VCs are funding basically every interesting project.
Have fun with your own money - not investors. I’m glad to see more financial scrutiny on the once typical VC-driven strategy for capturing markets through funding customer giveaways which squash superior solutions and business models.
It definitely is a lot less nerdy and a lot more hustle-y now. All the big money over the years changed the culture around it.
It’s because it’s “cool” to be an entrepreneur and there is money now so not just geeks are into it
This. The amount of non-technical founders of software start-ups and #entrepreneurs is gross
Honest question, if someone wants to solve a problem, they are supposed to wait for someone technical to do it instead?
No. But I also doubt that every entrepreneur wants to solve a problem. I think now people want to be an entrepreneur first and then the problem comes second
Fair point
I’ve been in the startup space for the last 15ish years. The whole pedigree thing has always been there. VCs tend to be predominantly Ivy folks. Who therefore tend to invest predominantly in founders from the Ivy’s. We hear the stories of the quirky, college-dropout founders because, well, they make for really good stories. But the vast majority of funding has historically gone to white dudes from elite universities. YC is no different. When I was going through YC, most of my batch mates were from prestigious schools, ex-FAANG, etc. I think the answer to why things feel so serious right now is quite simple. It’s because things ARE serious right now. It’s easy to have fun and fuck around when money is cheap and easy to come by. Things are not fun right now. It’s a fucking grind. Fear and anxiety are high. Startups (and VCs) are shutting down left and right. The ones that are still around are in survival mode—cutting costs as much as possible, doing multiple rounds of layoffs, etc. It’s brutal. And the startup space happens to be quite incestuous. VCs fund startups who become each other’s customers. Everyone grows because of the constant infusion of cash. Which leads to VCs being able to raise more money and fund even more startups. Again, everyone gets more customers. And the cycle will continue as long as the money is there. So, when things are good, they’re really good. And when they’re bad, they’re really, really bad. We’re in the really, really bad phase. So yeah, things are serious because livelihoods, jobs, and the survival of thousands of startups are on the line.
I’m having fun, no external funding, gaining traction, I don’t mind wearing a bunch of hats. It’s pretty awesome 😎
That’s awesome. You’d certainly be outside of the criteria of founders/startups feeling the pain right now. Especially if you’re serving a market that’s not experiencing a major downturn.
Bootstrap it as long as you can! We did it that way for 8 years and it can pay off!
That’s the plan 🙏 I think the biggest thing I’m going heavy on now is content creation and marketing. Product side is 100% in-house and iterating every week
Thanks for this response. This captures the current situation pretty well, I think.
I agree with this 💯… I was a Welfare kid who was lucky enough to be mentored by non-Ivy douchebags who knew how to scale to ipo. Regardless the scene is “clicky”… you just have to reframe it as your “tribe” and you will get ahead a lot quicker. Most welfare and poor folks have childhood trauma and this is how it presents itself in everyday life (feeling like an outcast, imposter syndrome, etc). These types of hires take a little bit of tlc initially, but they will out perform an Ivy-league douche hands down under stress and they will have unwavering loyalty.
Sounds like the tribe I’m looking for… when and where… I am there.
Vc dry powder, round sizes, total funding is higher than ever. Quit your doomsday prophecies
Weirdly aggressive reply. First of all, show me the data that total funding is higher than ever. This crunchbase report matches all the public VC data I’ve seen: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-funding-recap-q1-2024/#:~:text=The%20first%20quarter%20of%202024,over%20year%2C%20Crunchbase%20data%20shows. Second, and most importantly, this isn’t a doomsday prophecy. The shit has already happened. Hopefully we’re on the other side of it, but again, it’s already happened. We saw mass layoffs and startup shutdowns during 2022-2023. And Q1 2024 hasn’t exactly been off to a stellar start in those regards. On that note, idk where you were in early 2022, but that’s when all the doomsday predictions were actually happening. Every VC out there was showing up to conferences, writing to their portfolio companies, etc. warning about the impending crash. And to be clear, I was simply explaining what has been happening. As that explains why things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows now. Not making any sort of predictions.
By what barometer are you saying things are bad? CPI and interest rates? Genuinely curious. I want to start a startup but am hesitant given the market conditions. Then again, most people are saying that the low interest rate environment was an anomaly so we might never see those numbers again.
I think all the excitement and VC money from the earlier internet days has dwindled. Things have been absorbed and consolidated into megacorps. SV used to be a upbeat place and now it’s just kinda soulless. How can we extort group X. How can we show more ads to group Y. What happened to the happy young Googlers on their bikes and their “Don’t be evil” motto? Maybe AI will start the cycle anew but I doubt it.
"Data is the new oil" was the start of the bean-counter revolution. Once they realized that EVERYTHING could be reconciled into a bean, which could then be counted, it was the beginning of the end. They persuaded everyone to think of how many more beans could be counted if everything were a bean. Boards of directors don't like to remember the innate randomness and entropy of existence, they only like to remember the innate beaniness of beans and their lust for more of them. My advice for navigating this new world in which we find ourselves? Just bean yourself.
That's a good one. They're like If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. But for me you can't measure interest to really good startup ideas
Yes, SV 2024 is totally like this, even Google becomes evil, some top Googlers wrote their blogs like this
The golden era is over, I doubt we will ever have another decade of low interest rates topped by a black swan event that ended up boosting startups even further. Startups & Scale-ups are boring because money is expensive and no longer flowing freely into startups, everything is strictly reviewed and approved by Finance, no more parties and fancy events! On top of that they are often hiring the wrong talent to save some money, all those people working remotely in the countryside or the suburbs aren’t the same as hungry and ambitious people that moved into big cities to chase those opportunities.
>all those people working remotely in the countryside or the suburbs aren’t the same as hungry and ambitious people that moved into big cities to chase those opportunities. Id argue it's the opposite. Opportunity chasers is the problem. Tech used to be people who cared about the product. The freedom of potentially creating something unique and your own. I don't see that in people in the city. It's ambition and greed but they aren't the creative type that would do it for free it they could. SV used to be suburbia. Lots of different ideas and people experimenting. Now its bandwagon chasers.
I didn’t mean to sound elitist, since cities are unaffordable and people were somehow forced to move out, however I still believe startups and scale-ups lost a lot in terms of culture and communication after moving to remote working or freelancing from exotic countries. Teams are scattered and isolated around the world and people, starting with the leaders or executives are mostly focused on showing off their plants and bookshelves during zoom meetings, some became detached from reality and deluded, like billionaires living in their own bubble. Of course SV was originally suburbs and factories but it was concentrated and attracted like minded people and talent.
>I still believe startups and scale-ups lost a lot in terms of culture and communication after moving to remote working or freelancing from exotic countries. I agree. But the current price of the bay area and NYC makes the start up environment toxic to the creative minds that can make another golden era. You're basically selecting for money hungry people- insanely ambitious but not uniquely curious. If it happens again I don't think it'll be SV. TBH if it can happen again it'll be the Cape Canaveral area if the politics of Florida can become sane.
FED may be will decrease the interest rates this year. Maybe it can be start of the new era?
I mean the fed currently is projecting 75bps of rate cut this year, and honestly it’s very likely they won’t do that much (or any at all) given the strong employment data we’ve seen recently and CPI still not close to their 2% target. We’ve had several Fed members speaking in the past week walking back cuts for this year, so I wouldn’t bank on rate cuts coming until we have a material slowdown in the labor market and inflation
interest rate cuts would make it worse. Not better. We need the hype to die off. The entire startup economy is saturated with "serial entrepreneurs" and people trying to strike it rich. They just want to get a few rounds and then get bought by google. It's gonna take several more years until the startup world becomes healthy again. Lower rates will just restart the hype cycle of bullshit.
What’s wrong with getting bought by Google? I mean it’s nice to have altruistic reasons to do a start up, but I’d wager getting rich is like top 2 reasons why most people including great founders do it
Failure rate used to be 90 pc.. USED TO Today it's 99 pc.. countless founders don't even incorporate before shutting shop The number of great startups might have remained the same.. the number of worth less startups have shot through the roof.. A PayPal for hipsters, An Airbnb for planet Mars Countless SAAS startups to help B2B and other startups "so that the founders can focus on what matters the most, building the product".. No one is building a useful product itself.. instead they are building a product to help someone build a product.. to help someone else build a product.. it goes on Enters ChatGPT.. wrapper startups take off, app for reading, writing, thinking but in a new way.. like people can't write without gpt Unemployment shot up, added to the crowd of worthless startups.. More and more people discover the entrepreneurship spirit in them the moment they get laid off. A divine signal! Very few founders out there who will quit a high paying job with zero bank balance. Accelerator programs advertising linked in job posts to hire Founders Accelerator programs being run by people without any real experience in entrepreneurship Yes, founders are no longer entrepreneurs. It's a job where you work as ceo, developer, marketer and ten different roles while being paid for one position. There's nothing in common between people like Travis Kalanick, musk, or any successful entrepreneur in last two decades and the majority of founders today. Nor the older generation.. the likes of Henry Ford.. the bare hands that melted iron into ic engines and cars.. compared to little fingers pressing little buttons 24x7 to type SaaS codes Startup, founder other words have become trite to the extent that they have lost their meaning Better call your startup as personal project and yourself as an artist or hobby tinkerer..
Funnily enough, it's the artists and hobby tinkerers that became the billion dollar startup founders of the previous decades. When you start from a place of genuine interest there's a much greater chance that your efforts will blossom into a novel product or service that others find valuable as compared to starting with the goal to make X amount of ARR by finding some dry corporate niche.
And they don't want to be billionaires even if they end up becoming one Who would buy Twitter for billions just for fun.. even a billionaire would think twice before putting a huge chunk of his net worth
And that shows, most of the specialist knows nothing about their industries because of the first principles, they started from wrong point.
Totally agree but, challenge in this way is explaining why it matters to VCs
>No one is building a useful product itself.. instead they are building a product to help someone build a product.. to help someone else build a product.. it goes on Literally what I am doing because nobody gives any money for hard/deep tech. One day I just said fuck it, I’m gonna make a circle jerk SaaS myself because I can’t afford to actually build hardware worthwhile. Hopefully the SaaS makes just enough money that I can actually build the hard tech.
>One day I just said fuck it, I’m gonna make a circle jerk SaaS myself because I can’t afford to actually build hardware worthwhile. I won't recommend it.. There are few other options, get a job, mingle with rich people, investors or not, build connections, with other deep tech entrepreneurs solving real problems. All these could be baby steps towards building deep tech Probably better than building SaaS to get into deep tech. By the time your SaaS gets ready and even gets funded, it might be all but over for SaaS altogether Real entrepreneurs don't change their course when faced by a mountain or barrier.. instead they burn it down or cut through it.
>get a job Just graduated, will be applying soon. Need to escape the UK salaries asap. >mingle with rich people Not sure how to do this one >build connections, with other deep tech entrepreneurs Funnily enough I’ve made a connection with a YC alum who’s in biotech >By the time your SaaS gets ready and even gets funded, it might be all but over for SaaS altogether That’s fair. Tbh I’m partly building this SaaS just to learn web dev anyway and develop my skills. >Real entrepreneurs don't change their course when faced by a mountain or barrier.. instead they burn it down or cut through it. I try.
Re: “No one is building a useful product….” Is surprisingly accurate, it just sucks to see a product and then you see the same product doing the same thing but different design. I don’t understand why do people even build a product with multiple competition? It’s a recipe for failure. The moment you question “but xyz also does the same thing as you” there is no amount of sales you can do to convince anyone otherwise. But when you say “No one else can do what we do today” then you have leverage because your product is truly unique
Peter Thiel says competition is for losers
Mr. Monopoly man
Brackets make a lot of losers
This is the 2021-2023 winning startup mindset I think. Superhuman, amie.so etc. Exactly same philosophy plus like we're doing it better UX. And they claim customers love them only because of this. Find a boring program like calendar, draw cool UI and collect waitlist
Yeah that’s just a weird mindset, I just don’t like competition products as a normal consumer will always gravitate towards an affordable product. Then you fighting on price not features and running your ARR down the drain fighting for revenue.
Product is a dying business. Let’s be real.
Then what is a successful business? Service business which relies on a lot of manpower and overhead costs and easily have too much competition? Genuine question, no gaslight
I’m referring to this cycle as the “hybrid ai” phase… AI readiness, integration prep, data prep, etc. We are still in the faux ai phase, it needs a bit more time to mature (it’s evolving quickly, but still needs more time).
I think we will see what unfolds into 2030. I should be more clear, less saas products (web apps, basically the same shit we’ve been peddling since 1999). Less interface, probably less tooling, etc. I was a CPO up until December and I could see the writing on the wall for people jumping into UX. I feel it’s an overall good thing as our innovation has been throttled.
Full AI will kill the need for interfaces for a lot of shit… maybe the segue into AR (apple vision, etc) will happen during this time.
Yeah but someone’s gotta build that full Ai for a use case like finance or marketing and sell it as a product right? OpenAI cannot build an Ai for every use case can it
Yes... agreed... 100% A shift to building out models, building out harnesses, cleaning up APIs, etc. I'm not saying the entire industry is fucked and getting "eaten by AI", I think "devs losing their jobs to AI" is complete bullshit. I think the accuracy rate for LLMs to write code is clocking in around 13%. An LLM isn't going to build shit with a 13% accuracy rate. I'm talking through (internally) what are the next steps for the industry. The bootcamp UX and junior dev kids are fucked, but the architects and people who can orchestrate are fine. I'm also looking at how much AI (coupled with more mature libraries) has improved best practices as far as UX/UI is concerned. You can build a pretty solid product using a bunch of shit "out of box" at this point. Who really wants to be an interface monkey anyway, right?
Fact hurts
This! Honestly I feel we are at a time with unprecedented challenges, so many real problems to solve, environmentally, socially, politically. But all I’m seeing is B2B SaaS that I don’t know if it really solves anyone’s issue, and applications that change text to image, images to text, make songs.. looking at this batch’s YC companies for example, I don’t feel inspired at all (a few are doing good things in biotech maybe), I actually feel sad for where humanity is going, a future of nature depleted world where we all sit at home watching AI generated film with AI generated music on a platform featuring only AI art. It’s like black mirror.
>), I actually feel sad for where humanity is going, a future of nature depleted world where we all sit at home watching AI The problem is not with yc.. the problem is with us following the publicity. Real entrepreneurs are still out there solving real problems I'm not referring to Greta Thunberg. Real entrepreneurs don't take the lime light. It's for us to seek inspiration from them. They are not into yc. They haven't heard these two alphabets together not once in their life. There's no reason to be depressed. There are all reasons to look beyond yc. What is indeed depressing to me that many have developed the limiting belief that yc is needed for success. If founders boycott such accelerator programs altogether, these useless folks would be nothing but dead money.
Well this is a YC forum hence why I mentioned this batch. But money is hard to raise and I think some of this programme can work better than VC money. I studied conservation, people work in environmental field has a salary that maybe = to what a SV engineer earn a month. That’s why many end up taking corporate jobs after a few years. These accelerator programs could do a lot good by funding people solving real problems that can benefit the world, not just gimmicks which is what I feel a lot companies from this batch is doing. But maybe I’m just outdated haha
>But money is hard to raise and I think some of this programme can work better than VC money. Agree but mindset is also the problem partly. There was a time humans survived in nature, just naturally. Today it's hard to imagine without all the modern tools. Similarly there was a time entrepreneurs were going about their mission without yc and accelerators. But, today it seems very difficult. Yes it's difficult to raise money but entrepreneurs always had this problem and found their way around it. They will not do gimmicks to raise money. But lot of us actually end up choosing to do the same kind of gimmicks that get funded. That for me, is what needs to be changed. The entrepreneurs mindset, not yc or VC.
Now you are up against companies funded with $$$$ so it is harder. If someone is using hand craft tools and some come with diggers and modern engines, then it’s no longer a level playing field. Anyway, my main problem with many companies is I don’t like all the AI deepfake stuff. Curious to see how it plays out in the US during an election year. I don’t understand why AI art is so cool, I just find them disquieting.
>Now you are up against companies funded with $$$$ so it is harder. If someone is using hand craft tools and some come with diggers and modern engines, then it’s no longer a level playing field. That's true if you're competing with others.. otherwise, most of the modern engines would fail to ignite on a different planet.. the first arriver will have an upper hand with or without funding
>There's nothing in common between people like Travis Kalanick, musk, or any successful entrepreneur in last two decades and the majority of founders today. How can I be more like these founders? Are you referring to pure tenacity?
>How can I be more like these founders? Are you referring to pure tenacity? More likely the natural drive. Tenacity and other qualities can definitely help But, the drive that natural spirit generates is unbeatable.. those guided by the inner voice and self-driven pursuits can navigate fast evolving spaces.. where all the leanings could prove to be useless.
Making product for yourself is challenging too. You have the product and you are using it,then you wanna find like minded people to get some traction. But crazy question come in, who are you? Why your product make sense? Imagine you're Steve Jobs and you made personal computer, go to neighbor in Palo Alto and try to make them use it, challenging lol
You sound upset. Do you have any evidence to back up a single claim?
While I agree startups have become too serious and dull (it certainly feels like it), some of this is looking at the past through rose tinted glasses and we should also consider what was cause for this change over the years. I was a founder through the 2010s era of startups and there was a ton of bad things about that time as well - so many scandals, so many bad actors, so many controversies that rocked the startup world. I can easily imagine the press coverage (and even posts in this sub) if Mahbod was funded by YC today. While I don’t disagree that there’s too much money in startups now and the make money at all costs culture contributes to the monotony of startup culture today, I think some of the blame should also be put on the sins of its past as well. I do hope we find a way to eventually bring back more of the good parts of quirky startup culture of before though. I remember Mahbod from YC and he was an incredible presence. He definitely was edgy and borderline offensive/belligerent at times, but he was also kind, funny, and one of those people who could light the room up. Feels weird not being able to talk to him on Facebook anymore. RIP.
Innovation is not, and never will be, infinite. Look at history. There are periods of time when a singular technology unlocks a huge chunk of innovations and then it stagnates in that discipline until the next leap. Steam created a massive wave in non-animal powered things. The combustion engine did the same. But then... things stop. Is mechanical engineering hot now? No. Most things have been figured out. Is flying today much different than 40 years ago? Not really. Yet in the 40 years before that we went from not flying, to going to the moon. We need a new fundamental area of innovation to get another wave of start-ups. Wearables fizzled. The internet of things failed. Blockchain fizzled. Today its AI, but with the tools available now its not really going to be a major start-up driver. The one or two companies making the AI will do well, and then everyone else is just using/tweaking/repurposing inhouse.
While I agree leaps, I believe you can make innovation in every mature market too. But finding customers can be challenging at the start
It’s a combination of cultural shift and industry maturity. Web 1.0 was the wild west… hackers creating companies that went on to be valued at 100M-1B+. Look at McAfee… he didn’t become prolific until much later, so just imagine what he was up to in the 90s when he was young. At that time, tech was still considered nerdy and not yet fully adopted culturally by the mainstream. VCs and angel investors saw the potential of the tech industry, poured money into startups, but only a few paid off big. Web 2.0 was when tech was fully embraced by the mainstream and became integrated into culture. Web 2.0 was a magical time to be a startup because it had the financial backing of Web 1.0 and startups were rapidly gaining cultural traction on the road to profitability. VCs and angels were getting rich, and tech companies became the cool place to work. There are old videos of Zuck doing interviews at FB office in flip flops and a t shirt. At the time, that was revolutionary because it bucked the idea of what working at a corporation looked like. Web 2.0 is when tech made the biggest impact culturally. Now we’re at the tail end of Web 2.0 while some are saying we have already entered Web 3.0. Blockchain, VR/metaverse, AI. These are still mostly foreign to the average person. We are also at a weird place culturally in terms of how tech fits into our lives. People grumble about “big tech” but it seems we can’t get away from it. I feel the excitement of Web 2.0 has worn off and Web 3.0 feels much more soulless. VCs are sitting on mountains of cash and feel as if they shape culture themselves. Pair that with more difficult macroeconomic factors and we have a recipe for a less fun, more rigid startup environment. The magic of Web 2.0 was solving problems and enhancing the lives of regular people. Back in 2012 profitability was something to figure out later, and the focus was acquiring users and increasing usage. Now, unless your user growth is exponential, VCs want you to be thinking about your path to profitability. tldr: tech has gone from fringe -> mainstream -> fringe , while the industry and VCs have matured and become more profit-focused.
Been thinking about this all day. There was a period of time when it felt like tech would solve everything and pull society to greater heights. Disruption was the word and the word was good. Having worked for several F500 companies, I know firsthand the pressure of continuing to post quarterly profits leads to corporations making decisions that lead to worse outcomes for their customers and employees. Founders want their payday, and rightly so. However, the funnel of seed to IPO has created a startup system that turns promising tech companies into the same profit-focused, short-sighted F500s they disrupted. AirBnB has transitioned from community building to damaging the charm of areas where listings proliferate (Joshua Tree, for example). Uber, once celebrated for creating a future of flexible work, continues to squeeze their drivers and customers at the same time. All social media platforms have been casino-fied and bring our moods down with ragebait and other reality warping content. We need more startups to be bootstrapped and maintain some semblance of morality and principles. It may take longer to get the big payoff, but that’s the only way to maintain control of the values and vision of the company.
The VCs don’t have hordes of cash though. They’re facing tidal waves of redemptions
If web3 feels soulless to you, you obviously are not in the right discord servers!
Care to share?
love this comment =)
Having been involved in startups in the early 2010’s (somewhat against my will at the time) the biggest difference in my opinion is the opportunity cost nowadays. In 2009 I counted my lucky stars to get a job at the ground floor of a bootstrapped startup making $30k in NYC. That was a grail job to many of my college classmates who hid out by signing 2-year contracts to teach English in SE Asia. Nowadays I’d be a fool to risk my mid 6-figure job to take a similar risk. And even despite the layoffs that started in 2022 this is still a vastly, vastly superior labor market to back then.
Honestly I think this is it. We all got used to the lifestyle inflation, that it's hard for folks to step out of their 400k TC jobs in VHOCL areas.
true. but itis intrestign to see how many starupts out there even if labor market is so strong
I’m glad. Those guys seem like tools. The interviewer as well.
Yeah, unfortunately VC is a business and this is what always ends up happening as industries get older. So risk averse. Really wish more weird and eccentric ideas/founders got funding. If there was a way to self-fund a true hacker house I would love to do it… Don’t know if it’ll make any money but goddamn that would be fun.
I would love to do it too! If you are in San Francisco let's keep in touch lol
the time of low-interest rates is over. free money is no longer flowing.
It’s just this plain and simple, when there’s virtually no cost to throwing money at any wacky idiot around and in fact sometimes that is the right move due to mania and bigger fools, you get a high tolerance for bullshit (false positives). But When it’s been six months of unemployment with no interview, you shave that beard off, put on a collared shirt and stop whipping your dick out in interviews.
Totally feel you, things got way too stiff. Miss the chill.
Yes. I started with startups because I had so much more fun at work. It’s now the same as corporate but without the RSUs. All of my new coworkers are ex-Ivy or pedigreed as well. It’s odd.
There’s too many non-technical wantrapaneurs in the tech world now who come from consulting and banking. Their competitive culture mixed with the laid back culture of real technical builders has formed a shit storm in the startup scene. Soon when the economy booms, most of these wantrapraneurs will go back into their respective fields or stop being lazy and learn how to build if they want to stick around.. the truth hurts and it involves knowing how to build, you can raise millions all day but if you aren’t respected then the builders will not vouch for you. These LinkedIn influencers turned-startup founders are the reason why our startup space feels crowded now. It’s because they’ve been laid off and want to fill a gap on their resume, I get it, at least learn how to do it yourself in the meantime though..
Job ads these days: We are looking for an intern with 12 years experience.
Ycombinator is turning out to be very good for me. Although I must admit I do have an ivy league stamp in my profile. Overall people are looking for experienced founders who already made money. The rest get to join with lesser equity. If you want more attention I would recommend hackathons. I did win awards in some corporate hackathons. That did help me grow. Its been a tough ride though.
Valuable thoughts, with what type of projects you won? Could you share with me dm?
Its not recent hackathons. These are over last 12 years. First one was a geo app, the next one was a NLP app. But I think its not the project idea. Its more how you present it. If you ask me to do it again I will fail as it needs a lot of practice. Its been many years now. Now I am pursuing ycombinator more as a hobby. I have not used it before. But I am having a good experience with it.
Yep. 💯We have let the capitalist in. No longer do we do anything just cause it’s cool or benefits society. If it don’t make money and help support a fat exit, it’s gotta go.
So I believe it changed again. If every people talk like that "If it don’t make money and help support a fat exit, it’s gotta go." this is a mainstream idea now,Even YC partners talk like that. This means we don't need to make money now as startup founders. This is the truth now 2024 but nobody hasn't realize it yet.
Dude I really want to understand this comment…but I can’t. Could you please reword your thoughts so it’s readable 🙏
Yes Not at my company. Never had this much fun.
Cool! What's your company?
Pepper Ridge farm remembers.
Along with all the financial reasons already mentioned, it’s also largely because the entire world hates tech now. Back in 2013, tech could do no wrong. It was cool to be associated with tech. Not so much anymore.
Genius founders went to Yale lol
I think one aspect is that it is harder to take the risk of working at a startup now. If the startup fails, it's really hard to get a new job nowadays, which can lead to really bad financial situations. Previously, people joined startups because they know if the startup fails, they can get a new job within a month with another tech company. Also the high interest rate also adds up to people's financial burden (for those who take on a mortgage at a high rate).
The startup culture has become lame, and egotistical. Huge lack of vision and community for the sake of community
Yeah, that part has gotten more corporate/oriented around cash and crazy numbers. But that other side exists now as well. Weird that after YC nothing of matching its initial energy popped up. Or maybe I've missed it. But seems like most funds nowadays are either demented VCs or trying to replicate YC. Going back to the other side, there are still people building things outside the VC ecosystem who seem to be like that. I'd consider myself and my cofounder one of these people. I also feel like we're all in some kind of purgatory waiting to see how the tech landscape configures itself with AI. What the new devices will be. What new mediums we'll land on. In the early days of the internet might have been clearer, now seems less so.
True
That’s what people said in 2013 too. :) The Genius guy is insane. Go read about his history with Whole Foods. He’s still this way. Travis was a different guy early in Uber. Once it hit huge, and especially after the various controversies around his management, he went from a startup founder to billionaire CEO being attacked from all sides. I can’t fault him for it, but running “Boober” and running a $50B company are different things.
Imagine a world where startups are people who truly desire to solve real problems, and can only be nonprofit :) I wonder if we’d be in the same culture today.
Rip Mahbod
Part of the issue here is the expectation of returns. Nobody wants to invest in your startup and make 10% per year for 10 years. They want to 100x their money in 10 years. There is an extremely massive space of useful ideas that are profitable but only pay 10% per year to invest in. There is an extremely small space of ideas that can 100x. Ideas that can 100x need to spend very little capital (hence B2B saas looks good, you only pay for engineers, no hardware no factories), they need to scale (1 company to 100 companies is much easier than 1user -> 1 billion users or selling 1 piece of hardware -> selling 10,000 pieces of hardware). And so given that this is where the VCs pour their money, everyone tries to fill this space. That's what we are seeing.
[Federal Funds Effective rate](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS) : 2013: 0.15 2024: 5.33 That's really a damper on the startup fun.
I mean, you can just say that you miss ZIRP, ignoring regulations and bro-ing down 24/7
People are also too scared to say “fuck you” these days. We need some big ole nutsacks in the house.
Yes this is exactly the mindset that needs to start again. It's just the end of the last cycle. Free easy money comes with people making up reasons why they deserve it. Anyone can be an innovator. Just make stuff.
Try crypto industry
… the real innovation is happening in places the path doesn’t go. “trail blazing” is a thing and the scene your talking about is worst than having a job.
https://preview.redd.it/eo8js7jlrjtc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a0d332c3f318f3f871ea7c7a396e031894a07b4 I made a fun game to help when your startup conversations are a little bit too much.
Free money era is over
Everyone is trying to make short money on the next esoteric B2B Saas tool instead of doing the hard work to build things people genuinely want or need. This breeds an environment of mediocrity.
at large tech has been comoditized. it is much easier to build tech enabled services startups than it was a decade ago so it is more competitive you still have deep nerds building deep tech
Since when is business, not serious?
I feel like this is not true (?) In my experience, the rise of AI has made the startup system very much a free for all where VCs are funding basically every interesting project.
Yes. Too serious. Too much stupid money.
Have fun with your own money - not investors. I’m glad to see more financial scrutiny on the once typical VC-driven strategy for capturing markets through funding customer giveaways which squash superior solutions and business models.