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Hmmm. I'm an accredited investor. I'd have to be crazy -- or altruistic -- to invest in a typical SaaS / software / Sili Valley startup via crowdfunding. Why?

Hmmm. I'm an accredited investor. I'd have to be crazy -- or altruistic -- to invest in a typical SaaS / software / Sili Valley startup via crowdfunding. Why? * Waste: Absurdly high cost of living in places with startup culture means labor costs must be excessive or you can't get the people you want. * Focus: Not every software-style startup has Joel Spolsky or another leader with his kind of focus. * Unicorns. For investors they bring to mind the mid-20th century play by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. "No Exit." If I'm going to be altruistic I'll put my money into paying off student loans for young friends, to give them the freedom to make altruistic choices themselves.

sidlls 9y ago
"You can't the people you want" is itself a problem with these companies: often the people they want have credentials suggesting better suitability to academic or applied research when the job the need done suggests "average CRUD developer" credentials are just fine. This is, in fact, one reason I find the obsessive focus on the Valley as far as VC and other investment mechanisms a little perplexing. These companies have a giant misunderstanding about many aspects of software business, from basics like "who is best to hire" (as opposed to "how to hire the best") to really basic engineering processes and marketing. Maybe the point (from their perspective) of getting VC capital is to get the other benefits that come from it: a network of folks who (should) understand these things.
david927 9y ago
None of those reasons are exclusive to crowdfunding, though. I get that there are few good investment opportunities and a lot of cruft, but I wouldn't list the same reasons. For me the biggest issue is vision: All startups hope are chasing money, but some are chasing it to the exclusion of everything else. They don't see a different future, a better future; they simply see themselves richer. Funding such startups isn't even altruistic. The opposite, it's enabling a broken culture.
y_u_no_rust 9y ago
Thank you for your sanity.

sidlls 9y ago

"You can't the people you want" is itself a problem with these companies: often the people they want have credentials suggesting better suitability to academic or applied research when the job the need done suggests "average CRUD developer" credentials are just fine. This is, in fact, one reason I find the obsessive focus on the Valley as far as VC and other investment mechanisms a little perplexing. These companies have a giant misunderstanding about many aspects of software business, from basics like "who is best to hire" (as opposed to "how to hire the best") to really basic engineering processes and marketing. Maybe the point (from their perspective) of getting VC capital is to get the other benefits that come from it: a network of folks who (should) understand these things.

david927 9y ago

None of those reasons are exclusive to crowdfunding, though. I get that there are few good investment opportunities and a lot of cruft, but I wouldn't list the same reasons. For me the biggest issue is vision: All startups hope are chasing money, but some are chasing it to the exclusion of everything else. They don't see a different future, a better future; they simply see themselves richer. Funding such startups isn't even altruistic. The opposite, it's enabling a broken culture.

y_u_no_rust 9y ago

Thank you for your sanity.