4 ms·

Counterpoint: Blog posts like this one are useful, because the VC-funded companies you named are so successful at dominating our thoughts, conversations, and ne

Counterpoint: Blog posts like this one are useful, because the VC-funded companies you named are so successful at dominating our thoughts, conversations, and news feeds (HN included) that many founders never see any examples of people following an alternative path. It can be inspiring to a lot of people to simply hear about the possibility of building a small, revenue-generating business or side project. I've been running Indie Hackers for the past year and a half, interviewing hundreds of developers about their small businesses[0], and it feels like every day I talk to someone who's never even considered bootstrapping to be an option. Spreading awareness is valuable, especially considering that venture capital is only a viable option for a small minority of companies, and the ways in which it can cause an otherwise healthy business to fail are rarely discussed by VCs themselves. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses

birken 9y ago
I disagree that this blog post is giving an interesting counterpoint. As I said, I'm not diminishing their success, but this blog post isn't about their story, it's about knocking other styles of companies they disagree with. For example, the VC thing: > Therefore, VCs often push companies to grow too quickly, before they’ve nailed down product-market fit and monetization [citation needed] > Staying small keeps you focused on a small number of high-impact features. [citation needed] > This is not just a few bad actors: the behavior is wide-spread, including by many well-known and ultra-wealthy investors [citation needed] ------- I'm not going to get on some high horse here defending VCs, but these aren't original lines of argument and when unsupported I'm not sure what value they are providing. For example, YC is a VC. Do you think these 3 things apply to them? Again, good for this company, I'm really happy they are succeeding and I'm glad they are doing it without VCs or other trends they don't like. This blog post is very shallow marketing though, I don't see how this is adding to the accumulated knowledge of creating a startup.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  I don't think a citation is needed for the proposition that VCs often push companies to grow too quickly, before they've nailed down product-market fit and monetization. You could argue that VCs want to see product-market fit before they invest, but this is certainly not true of monetization.
jdoliner 9y ago
> it feels like every day I talk to someone who's never even considered bootstrapping to be an option It's mind-boggingly to me that this can be an option that people have never considered but I totally believe you. I've seen people have the "epiphany" that companies can spend revenue in much the same way they spend VC money. I guess their model is that only after that money is distilled into an up-and-to-the-right graph and put in front of VCs and they give you money do you actually get something you can spend.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
delhanty 9y ago
+1 >because the VC-funded companies you named are so successful at dominating our thoughts, conversations, and news feeds (HN included) Right - HN's corporate sponsor is YC Combinator, so it's kind of inevitable that the VC narrative dominates. The good thing about Indie Hackers being acquired by Stripe in April [0] (congratulations!) is that, even though you now have a corporate sponsor too, in the short term at least nothing really changes. You wrote that >Stripe wants to grow the GDP of the internet so having 1,000,000 Indie Hackers starting companies is completely aligned with Stripe's corporate interests and that at least provides a counterpoint to HN and YC Combinator. Further out, if Stripe Atlas grows big enough then we could end up with an Amazon Marketplace situation where small companies are forced to take whatever terms "Darth Vader" (#patio11) offers. But we're a long way from that point yet. A 3rd way is not to start a business at all. As Vincent Woo said in his recent podcast with you [1]: >Right, so readers at home, if you can start a business, do that, but also maybe don't. It's not easy, it's a lot of work and there are a lot of things that valuable in life that have nothing to do with money, that's how I'd put that. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by-stripe https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by-stripe [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/041-vincent-woo-of-coderpad https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/041-vincent-woo-of-code...
- dang 9y ago
  The "VC narrative" doesn't dominate HN. Quite the opposite. Most everyone thinks it does, but that only makes it more untrue.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    Seeing as you're associated with HN that can hardly be an objective claim.
    - dang 9y ago
      Oh indeed, but seeing as we work on HN every day, we're more steeped in the data than anyone else is, and to us this is a pretty obvious observation. I'm saying 'we' because I'm sure all the moderators agree. The HN community stopped being based in SV many years ago, if it ever was to begin with. It's heavily international, widely distributed even in the US, and significantly more sympathetic to boostrapper/indiehacker narratives than to VC ones. Which is pretty easy to understand if you think about who the users are and how many of them there are. In terms of comment quality, the cynical end of anti-VC sentiment is a problem because it's so knee-jerk and predictable. Solid critique is welcome, but alas, there isn't much. As a moderator I don't care what people like or hate but I do care about getting the best insights from all sides, and this is one area where we don't, really. Or rather, we do, but it's drowned out by Dunning-Kruger and reversion to the mean and all the other phenomena that make internet forums suck.

birken 9y ago

I disagree that this blog post is giving an interesting counterpoint. As I said, I'm not diminishing their success, but this blog post isn't about their story, it's about knocking other styles of companies they disagree with. For example, the VC thing: > Therefore, VCs often push companies to grow too quickly, before they’ve nailed down product-market fit and monetization [citation needed] > Staying small keeps you focused on a small number of high-impact features. [citation needed] > This is not just a few bad actors: the behavior is wide-spread, including by many well-known and ultra-wealthy investors [citation needed] ------- I'm not going to get on some high horse here defending VCs, but these aren't original lines of argument and when unsupported I'm not sure what value they are providing. For example, YC is a VC. Do you think these 3 things apply to them? Again, good for this company, I'm really happy they are succeeding and I'm glad they are doing it without VCs or other trends they don't like. This blog post is very shallow marketing though, I don't see how this is adding to the accumulated knowledge of creating a startup.

gnicholas 9y ago
I don't think a citation is needed for the proposition that VCs often push companies to grow too quickly, before they've nailed down product-market fit and monetization. You could argue that VCs want to see product-market fit before they invest, but this is certainly not true of monetization.

jdoliner 9y ago

> it feels like every day I talk to someone who's never even considered bootstrapping to be an option It's mind-boggingly to me that this can be an option that people have never considered but I totally believe you. I've seen people have the "epiphany" that companies can spend revenue in much the same way they spend VC money. I guess their model is that only after that money is distilled into an up-and-to-the-right graph and put in front of VCs and they give you money do you actually get something you can spend.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

delhanty 9y ago

+1 >because the VC-funded companies you named are so successful at dominating our thoughts, conversations, and news feeds (HN included) Right - HN's corporate sponsor is YC Combinator, so it's kind of inevitable that the VC narrative dominates. The good thing about Indie Hackers being acquired by Stripe in April [0] (congratulations!) is that, even though you now have a corporate sponsor too, in the short term at least nothing really changes. You wrote that >Stripe wants to grow the GDP of the internet so having 1,000,000 Indie Hackers starting companies is completely aligned with Stripe's corporate interests and that at least provides a counterpoint to HN and YC Combinator. Further out, if Stripe Atlas grows big enough then we could end up with an Amazon Marketplace situation where small companies are forced to take whatever terms "Darth Vader" (#patio11) offers. But we're a long way from that point yet. A 3rd way is not to start a business at all. As Vincent Woo said in his recent podcast with you [1]: >Right, so readers at home, if you can start a business, do that, but also maybe don't. It's not easy, it's a lot of work and there are a lot of things that valuable in life that have nothing to do with money, that's how I'd put that. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by-stripe https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/acquired-by-stripe [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/041-vincent-woo-of-coderpad https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/041-vincent-woo-of-code...

dang 9y ago
The "VC narrative" doesn't dominate HN. Quite the opposite. Most everyone thinks it does, but that only makes it more untrue.
- delhanty 9y ago
  Seeing as you're associated with HN that can hardly be an objective claim.
  - dang 9y ago
    Oh indeed, but seeing as we work on HN every day, we're more steeped in the data than anyone else is, and to us this is a pretty obvious observation. I'm saying 'we' because I'm sure all the moderators agree. The HN community stopped being based in SV many years ago, if it ever was to begin with. It's heavily international, widely distributed even in the US, and significantly more sympathetic to boostrapper/indiehacker narratives than to VC ones. Which is pretty easy to understand if you think about who the users are and how many of them there are. In terms of comment quality, the cynical end of anti-VC sentiment is a problem because it's so knee-jerk and predictable. Solid critique is welcome, but alas, there isn't much. As a moderator I don't care what people like or hate but I do care about getting the best insights from all sides, and this is one area where we don't, really. Or rather, we do, but it's drowned out by Dunning-Kruger and reversion to the mean and all the other phenomena that make internet forums suck.