> I'm not arguing that the startup industry isn't shady, I'm arguing that it is and, much like the shady used car industry, and much like you said, you can tota

> I'm not arguing that the startup industry isn't shady, I'm arguing that it is and, much like the shady used car industry, and much like you said, you can totally find good deals if you know what you're doing. Are you familiar with the term Lemon Market?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons I suspect this is what's happening in the startup industry. At least back when I was involved, there were a handful of startups that were really good, and a vast majority that were really bad. As time goes by, people become more aware of this. You yourself agree that most startups are awful, so most people with startup experience don't have many good things to say about that experience. You see that reflected in HN threads, including this one. This leads to negative evaluation of all startups, since it's hard to tell which are good and which are bad - and mostly they are bad. Theoretically, a Lemon Market ultimately collapses. This isn't inescapable fate. If the industry reestablishes some ground rules, mostly obvious ones that already existed in early startup culture, then it can get on the path to recovery. For example, equity should be meaningful, instead of the scam it has become. There are way too many stories of companies enjoying a good exit while nobody benefits except the founders and the VCs. There's a lot of skilled people who will not go anywhere near a startup again because they and all their friends have been burned by this and similar endemic issues. Startups heavily recruit naive fresh grads for that very reason, but that pool is shrinking for them as profitable tech companies pay more and more competitively. Right now I think most of the top grads want to go to top tech, not to startups. If all the best engineers, especially senior ones, ditch the startup lemon market, that will be very bad for us here in the US. Our economy and culture has benefited immensely from startups like Google that became huge success stories because they offered meaningful equity, attracted top talent, and truly disrupted their market. Unless startup reposition themselves to attract this kind of talent, this won't happen anymore.