6 ms·

I’m amused by the large portion of the Hackernews userbase that seems to view venture capital as an absolute evil, given that this is YCombinator’s forum. Can

by akerl_ 5y ago

I’m amused by the large portion of the Hackernews userbase that seems to view venture capital as an absolute evil, given that this is YCombinator’s forum. Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service?

arepublicadoceu 5y ago
> Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service? I honestly can’t, do you mind sharing a few examples to prove your point? I have a long list of “stopped using because went to shit after VC was injected” 1. WhatsApp and Facebook relation 2. Twitter and the loss of control over my feed 3. Spotify and the podcasts shenanigans 4. Dropbox and their assholery against free users 5. Evernote and their assholery against free user, increasingly useless redesigns and lack of improvement on the basics Etc.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Were any of these companies bootstrapped? Weren't they all investor-funded creations from the start?
- absolutelymild 5y ago
  Twitter had a venture led Series A in July 2007 https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-secretive-twitter-financing/ https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-s...
- mbesto 5y ago
  Survivor bias at its finest. Dropbox, Spotify, and Twitter all used VC money to launch/improve their product. Just because you don't specifically like the traunch of VC money that was used prior to IPO doesn't mean all VC is blood-sucking. There are countless examples of products people use that have had some form or shape. In fact, I'd argue there are rarely apps that anyone uses here on a regular basis that didn't have some form of VC money injected into them. The only one that comes to mind is (1) Basecamp (but technically they took money from Bezos) and (2) Atlassian pre IPO (now public).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- pgwhalen 5y ago
  I’m confused about what the point is here. Isn’t every single one of these companies venture capital funded?
CosmicShadow 5y ago
I cannot and it's widely known how they ruin thing with example after example. I'm sure some VC has helped a few people inadvertently along the way (although it was likely the founders, to the chagrin of the investors, that did anything positive). The VC business is to make money, no matter how shitty they make things, by blowing them up or letting them die, they don't care for anything else, why would they. I would think most people view YC more in line with the Angel round, which is an entirely different view point; Angel's are actual helpful people who did something on their own to achieve success (not poser VCs) and/or are mentors and coaches who want to give back, but it's unfortunate that people need to go beyond angel to VC, and the expectation from the angels is that you must or they won't make their money. Just because we are on a YC forum doesn't mean we have to suck the industry's dick.
gen220 5y ago
I don't think the problem is with capital writ large, but rather the perverse influence of capital incentives as applied to a personal security product. The value one gains from a personal security product (data portability, availability, accessibility) is often at odds with the interests of capital, which lean towards moat construction and rent-seeking. Over time, in a for-profit company, capital will always "win". Trading equity for other peoples' cash investments only accelerates the process. For an adjacent example, LastPass never took a dime of VC money (afaict), but their structure as a for-profit company pushed them to lock down their product and charge rents, where they had not previously. If they had taken VC money or went public instead, it may have delayed the inevitable, but it only would have been a delay, not a solution. People in this thread are disappointed, because these companies began their lives with a compelling, free, and user-empowering invitation, and it is sad (although not at all unpredictable) to see those features taken away by the incentives of capital. I think it's understandable, and I wouldn't read it as an indictment of VC writ large.
- moises_silva 5y ago
  > For an adjacent example, LastPass never took a dime of VC money (afaict), but their structure as a for-profit company pushed them to lock down their product and charge rents, where they had not previously. If they had taken VC money or went public instead, it may have delayed the inevitable, but it only would have been a delay, not a solution. I do not understand. It's a business. Why would anyone expect important services to be free? during ramp up there's a benefit of providing free or discounted services while you grow, learn what users want, estimate your own costs, etc; It was a free ride and you can enjoy it while it lasts. Why would anyone expect a free ride to also last forever? In my opinion great products need a strong balance of capital and ideals. Capital incentives unchecked by a counter balance of leadership actually believing in the mission of the company can lead to bad outcomes. Pure idealism without adequate funding has another set of problems though.
  - gen220 5y ago
    > Why would anyone expect important services to be free? I think the "common person" does not see these as growth hacks. The internet is full of things that "appear" free, and have "appeared" free forever. You have x-ray vision for how these businesses work internally, and you describe the playbook very accurately, but most people do not have this kind of context. Which makes it hard for those people to distinguish "good people doing good work for the good of all" from the playbook you describe. It's especially hard when the company describes itself as the former externally. > Capital incentives unchecked by a counter balance of leadership actually believing in the mission of the company can lead to bad outcomes. This is true. As a customer, depending on the good-will of leadership to counterbalance the influence of capital is depending on humans, and even really good ones are fallible and temporal. A for-profit company blessed with good leadership today does not guarantee a for-profit company with good leadership tomorrow, a year from now, and so-on. Eventually, within the constructs of a for-profit company, capital always wins. > In my opinion great products need a strong balance of capital and ideals. Yep yep, value creation and openness are not mutually exclusive, and one does not have a monopoly on the other. However, I'd argue that value capture and openness are mutually destructive: only one wins in the end, and the total victory of either marks the death of a business (i.e. something that generates profits for shareholders). From a consumer's point of view, once an organization gets in the mindset of optimizing for value capture over value creation and openness, it's time to consider moving on. The paradigm-shift of software is that the victory of openness no longer means the destruction of customer value, because OSI-licensed software can outlive the business.
AlexandrB 5y ago
I think the big VC raise is often the moment that many companies' relationship with their users goes from friendly to adversarial. I suspect this is because the incentives become misaligned. A bootstrapped company needs to keep its users happy to keep the money coming in for operations and growth. User churn is expensive at this stage. A funded company has other options such as running at a loss to attract new users and outpace any churn in the existing user base.
addingnumbers 5y ago
Isn't this $620M investment about 5,000x the amount of a typical ycombinator investment?
scblock 5y ago
Viewed that way because it's the truth. It ruins everything it touches, but makes a few rich people along the way. For some that's the goal, but it's absolutely a net negative.
NineStarPoint 5y ago
I can think of many times where VC capital has improved a company, in two ways. The first is in allowing a company to scale far more quickly than it could have naturally. The second is in creating connections to other companies, essentially getting a foot in the door to convince those connections to use the company's product. But rarely improved the product. At best you have a company that does keep it's soul, and continues to improve the product as they would have on their own. Far more often, the product and pricing structure is made worse in the long run through VC investment. It's not necessarily VC interference that is solely to blame, the change in size and scope that tends to come with such investment is a massive hurdle on its own. Of course, taking VC capital is almost certainly necessary to continue to exist, given you are competing against others who will take that capital and quickly use it to out compete you if you do not. I just view this as unfortunate, when I find companies that grow at a more natural speed to generally create better products.
caskstrength 5y ago
I don't consider venture capital absolute evil (or evil at all), but don't understand why old profitable company with established user base needs to take such ludicrous amounts of money from VCs. What are they planning to do to return that investment? Grow by any means necessary and sell out with all our data to big tech company? As a long time 1Password user I have a bad feeling about this.

by akerl_ 5y ago

arepublicadoceu 5y ago

> Can you really not think of any examples where VC capital has improved a company, product, or service? I honestly can’t, do you mind sharing a few examples to prove your point? I have a long list of “stopped using because went to shit after VC was injected” 1. WhatsApp and Facebook relation 2. Twitter and the loss of control over my feed 3. Spotify and the podcasts shenanigans 4. Dropbox and their assholery against free users 5. Evernote and their assholery against free user, increasingly useless redesigns and lack of improvement on the basics Etc.

stickfigure 5y ago
Were any of these companies bootstrapped? Weren't they all investor-funded creations from the start?
absolutelymild 5y ago
Twitter had a venture led Series A in July 2007 https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-secretive-twitter-financing/ https://techcrunch.com/2007/07/29/more-information-on-that-s...
mbesto 5y ago
Survivor bias at its finest. Dropbox, Spotify, and Twitter all used VC money to launch/improve their product. Just because you don't specifically like the traunch of VC money that was used prior to IPO doesn't mean all VC is blood-sucking. There are countless examples of products people use that have had some form or shape. In fact, I'd argue there are rarely apps that anyone uses here on a regular basis that didn't have some form of VC money injected into them. The only one that comes to mind is (1) Basecamp (but technically they took money from Bezos) and (2) Atlassian pre IPO (now public).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pgwhalen 5y ago
I’m confused about what the point is here. Isn’t every single one of these companies venture capital funded?

CosmicShadow 5y ago

I cannot and it's widely known how they ruin thing with example after example. I'm sure some VC has helped a few people inadvertently along the way (although it was likely the founders, to the chagrin of the investors, that did anything positive). The VC business is to make money, no matter how shitty they make things, by blowing them up or letting them die, they don't care for anything else, why would they. I would think most people view YC more in line with the Angel round, which is an entirely different view point; Angel's are actual helpful people who did something on their own to achieve success (not poser VCs) and/or are mentors and coaches who want to give back, but it's unfortunate that people need to go beyond angel to VC, and the expectation from the angels is that you must or they won't make their money. Just because we are on a YC forum doesn't mean we have to suck the industry's dick.

gen220 5y ago

I don't think the problem is with capital writ large, but rather the perverse influence of capital incentives as applied to a personal security product. The value one gains from a personal security product (data portability, availability, accessibility) is often at odds with the interests of capital, which lean towards moat construction and rent-seeking. Over time, in a for-profit company, capital will always "win". Trading equity for other peoples' cash investments only accelerates the process. For an adjacent example, LastPass never took a dime of VC money (afaict), but their structure as a for-profit company pushed them to lock down their product and charge rents, where they had not previously. If they had taken VC money or went public instead, it may have delayed the inevitable, but it only would have been a delay, not a solution. People in this thread are disappointed, because these companies began their lives with a compelling, free, and user-empowering invitation, and it is sad (although not at all unpredictable) to see those features taken away by the incentives of capital. I think it's understandable, and I wouldn't read it as an indictment of VC writ large.

moises_silva 5y ago
> For an adjacent example, LastPass never took a dime of VC money (afaict), but their structure as a for-profit company pushed them to lock down their product and charge rents, where they had not previously. If they had taken VC money or went public instead, it may have delayed the inevitable, but it only would have been a delay, not a solution. I do not understand. It's a business. Why would anyone expect important services to be free? during ramp up there's a benefit of providing free or discounted services while you grow, learn what users want, estimate your own costs, etc; It was a free ride and you can enjoy it while it lasts. Why would anyone expect a free ride to also last forever? In my opinion great products need a strong balance of capital and ideals. Capital incentives unchecked by a counter balance of leadership actually believing in the mission of the company can lead to bad outcomes. Pure idealism without adequate funding has another set of problems though.
- gen220 5y ago
  > Why would anyone expect important services to be free? I think the "common person" does not see these as growth hacks. The internet is full of things that "appear" free, and have "appeared" free forever. You have x-ray vision for how these businesses work internally, and you describe the playbook very accurately, but most people do not have this kind of context. Which makes it hard for those people to distinguish "good people doing good work for the good of all" from the playbook you describe. It's especially hard when the company describes itself as the former externally. > Capital incentives unchecked by a counter balance of leadership actually believing in the mission of the company can lead to bad outcomes. This is true. As a customer, depending on the good-will of leadership to counterbalance the influence of capital is depending on humans, and even really good ones are fallible and temporal. A for-profit company blessed with good leadership today does not guarantee a for-profit company with good leadership tomorrow, a year from now, and so-on. Eventually, within the constructs of a for-profit company, capital always wins. > In my opinion great products need a strong balance of capital and ideals. Yep yep, value creation and openness are not mutually exclusive, and one does not have a monopoly on the other. However, I'd argue that value capture and openness are mutually destructive: only one wins in the end, and the total victory of either marks the death of a business (i.e. something that generates profits for shareholders). From a consumer's point of view, once an organization gets in the mindset of optimizing for value capture over value creation and openness, it's time to consider moving on. The paradigm-shift of software is that the victory of openness no longer means the destruction of customer value, because OSI-licensed software can outlive the business.

AlexandrB 5y ago

I think the big VC raise is often the moment that many companies' relationship with their users goes from friendly to adversarial. I suspect this is because the incentives become misaligned. A bootstrapped company needs to keep its users happy to keep the money coming in for operations and growth. User churn is expensive at this stage. A funded company has other options such as running at a loss to attract new users and outpace any churn in the existing user base.

addingnumbers 5y ago

Isn't this $620M investment about 5,000x the amount of a typical ycombinator investment?

scblock 5y ago

Viewed that way because it's the truth. It ruins everything it touches, but makes a few rich people along the way. For some that's the goal, but it's absolutely a net negative.

NineStarPoint 5y ago

I can think of many times where VC capital has improved a company, in two ways. The first is in allowing a company to scale far more quickly than it could have naturally. The second is in creating connections to other companies, essentially getting a foot in the door to convince those connections to use the company's product. But rarely improved the product. At best you have a company that does keep it's soul, and continues to improve the product as they would have on their own. Far more often, the product and pricing structure is made worse in the long run through VC investment. It's not necessarily VC interference that is solely to blame, the change in size and scope that tends to come with such investment is a massive hurdle on its own. Of course, taking VC capital is almost certainly necessary to continue to exist, given you are competing against others who will take that capital and quickly use it to out compete you if you do not. I just view this as unfortunate, when I find companies that grow at a more natural speed to generally create better products.

caskstrength 5y ago

I don't consider venture capital absolute evil (or evil at all), but don't understand why old profitable company with established user base needs to take such ludicrous amounts of money from VCs. What are they planning to do to return that investment? Grow by any means necessary and sell out with all our data to big tech company? As a long time 1Password user I have a bad feeling about this.