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I know this going to sound grumpy, but... I agree with a lot of this and enjoyed reading their book in which they outline their philosophy on business and mana

I know this going to sound grumpy, but... I agree with a lot of this and enjoyed reading their book in which they outline their philosophy on business and management. But how many times are they going to scream and blog about this? It gets old. I get it, you're profitable and you think it's a good thing. But they've repeated this over and over and they sometimes go overboard in trying to pit themselves against VCs and the perceived waste of the SV tech culture.. Some of it is fair. Some of it just feels like marketing on their part...a way to write more blog posts by pitting themselves against an enemy. Companies that are profitable and doing well don't need to constantly blog about their profitability. Just my two cents.

simplehuman 10y ago
It's called content marketing. How do you think they have remained profitable?
- xwowsersx 10y ago
  Haha touché. I guess I just wanted to point that out...
  - simplehuman 10y ago
    Tbh, I am very impressed by their perseverance. As you say it was novel in the beginning years but it's tiring now. But they have kept going at it and not let themselves get tired. They have also motivated their employees to build a brand for themselves. Something to learn here...
    - benologist 10y ago
      What's really novel about it is their employees are not here manipulating our flow of news, that's the opposite of how most startups' blogs get to our front page more than once.
- smrtinsert 10y ago
  It'd be nice to not have marketing posted as news here.
  - ryanbrunner 10y ago
    You'd kill an awful lot of content on here, then. Every funding announcement, every technical article written by a developer under the banner of a company is content marketing.
amalag 10y ago
It is against the grain of startup culture and a lot of popular big businesses which is why they always mention it.
brilliantcode 10y ago
> Companies that are profitable and doing well don't need to constantly blog about their profitability. Just my two cents. Except it gets people every single time. Porn is addictive as hell.
gnaritas 10y ago
> a way to write more blog posts by pitting themselves against an enemy. That's exactly what it is, but they've been clear about that, picking an enemy is one of their "ideals" from their books.
hawkice 10y ago
And yet companies losing barrels of money get their "I'm even more in debt now" VC posts upvoted as news. The current situation creates an asymmetry, and that distorts how people think business is done, which in turn distorts how people think business _should_ be done. I think it's fair to have posts about businesses that don't have to burn through their own lifeblood to try and change enough to finally make some money. That's _way_ more normal.
- hueving 10y ago
  >And yet companies losing barrels of money get their "I'm even more in debt now" VC posts upvoted as news. Does this happen that often? The only times I can recall are when they are already really large companies and the comments are usually filled with people talking about how ridiculous it is.
  - hawkice 10y ago
    Almost all companies doing post-series-B are losing money at the time they finalize the round. While only some of the deals are explicitly structured as debt or debt-like (although, more and more, it seems), they are all pretty similar on a balance sheet. They are selling something which hurts the business as-is in order to get cash, to pump into a system that isn't making money. At the end of the day, the celebration is predicated on a denial of the business realities these companies are faced with. Now, in terms of how _frequent_ these posts are on hacker news... not as frequent as they used to be, for sure. But when they do pop up, nobody is saying it's not really news. That's my whole point.
basseq 10y ago
"Dissenting voices" against the screams of, "Growth at any cost!" and "Pets.com is the Uber for Facebooks! Unicorn!" are refreshing.
- austenallred 10y ago
  I honestly don't see very many of those voices around anymore

simplehuman 10y ago

It's called content marketing. How do you think they have remained profitable?

xwowsersx 10y ago
Haha touché. I guess I just wanted to point that out...
- simplehuman 10y ago
  Tbh, I am very impressed by their perseverance. As you say it was novel in the beginning years but it's tiring now. But they have kept going at it and not let themselves get tired. They have also motivated their employees to build a brand for themselves. Something to learn here...
  - benologist 10y ago
    What's really novel about it is their employees are not here manipulating our flow of news, that's the opposite of how most startups' blogs get to our front page more than once.
smrtinsert 10y ago
It'd be nice to not have marketing posted as news here.
- ryanbrunner 10y ago
  You'd kill an awful lot of content on here, then. Every funding announcement, every technical article written by a developer under the banner of a company is content marketing.

amalag 10y ago

It is against the grain of startup culture and a lot of popular big businesses which is why they always mention it.

brilliantcode 10y ago

> Companies that are profitable and doing well don't need to constantly blog about their profitability. Just my two cents. Except it gets people every single time. Porn is addictive as hell.

gnaritas 10y ago

> a way to write more blog posts by pitting themselves against an enemy. That's exactly what it is, but they've been clear about that, picking an enemy is one of their "ideals" from their books.

hawkice 10y ago

And yet companies losing barrels of money get their "I'm even more in debt now" VC posts upvoted as news. The current situation creates an asymmetry, and that distorts how people think business is done, which in turn distorts how people think business _should_ be done. I think it's fair to have posts about businesses that don't have to burn through their own lifeblood to try and change enough to finally make some money. That's _way_ more normal.

hueving 10y ago
>And yet companies losing barrels of money get their "I'm even more in debt now" VC posts upvoted as news. Does this happen that often? The only times I can recall are when they are already really large companies and the comments are usually filled with people talking about how ridiculous it is.
- hawkice 10y ago
  Almost all companies doing post-series-B are losing money at the time they finalize the round. While only some of the deals are explicitly structured as debt or debt-like (although, more and more, it seems), they are all pretty similar on a balance sheet. They are selling something which hurts the business as-is in order to get cash, to pump into a system that isn't making money. At the end of the day, the celebration is predicated on a denial of the business realities these companies are faced with. Now, in terms of how _frequent_ these posts are on hacker news... not as frequent as they used to be, for sure. But when they do pop up, nobody is saying it's not really news. That's my whole point.

basseq 10y ago

"Dissenting voices" against the screams of, "Growth at any cost!" and "Pets.com is the Uber for Facebooks! Unicorn!" are refreshing.

austenallred 10y ago
I honestly don't see very many of those voices around anymore