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The very term "exit strategy" answers your own question: if you're committed to building a sustainable product, with long-term sustainable profits, caring for y
by feoren 5y ago
The very term "exit strategy" answers your own question: if you're committed to building a sustainable product, with long-term sustainable profits, caring for your employees and your customers, without any explicit plans to sell off your company to random megacorp, where it will be scrapped for parts, then you're a dumb loser trying to build a lifestyle business and you deserve to be shamed out of Silicon Valley! How dare you waste our precious venture capitalist time with that crap!?
I get it: venture capitalists are interested in the most efficient possible way to loot the economy, and funding non-viable startups until they're so overhyped that some other idiot buys the over-inflated toxic asset from them before it blows is a great way to do that.
Of course speaking out against VC and startup culture on Hacker News is going to get me downvoted to oblivion, so go ahead and mash that down arrow. Don't forget to dislike and unsubscribe!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cgrealy 5y agoI completely agree, but this isn't just a VC problem. The entire current economic system incentivises this.
- hedora 5y agoYeah. They also could have IPOed, but either way the fundamental issue is that people looking for long term investments are willing to pay 10x forward earnings. How do you compete with that without getting employees to make major personal sacrifices?
- Apocryphon 5y agoHN is a lot more jaded towards startups and founders’ games these days. Back in late 2019 there was this thread about a Garry Tan video where the tone of the discussion was fiercely against working for startups, saying it was better to join FAANG or start your own company instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065