13 ms·

Ask HN: Which startups are thriving in the downturn?

85 points by roberja90 4y ago

We have had nearly 6 months of economic gloom. Theres has been lots of hypothetical talk of who will win in these turbulent economic times. Does anyone know of actual companies who have had some explosive growth in recent months?

linseed_213 4y ago
With the drop in VC checks being written and overall interest rates, I'd expect revenue-based financing to have a good year. Pipe, Arc.tech, etc.
hoofhearted 4y ago
I don’t know if you can count them as a startup still, but Vercel seems to be doing all the right things during this downturn. Connecting up GitHub and watching it runs tests, build, and deploy without much configuration was very gratifying for me. I haven’t felt that feeling towards a tech product in years. It was so simple and easy, the same feeling I felt the first time I used Uber. The same feeling as our first Stripe transaction, or when we launched a stack on AWS.
- telesilla 4y ago
  Is this similar to Netlify? This has changed everything for me when it comes to deploying mini test sites or tools. No more nginx wrangling just to get a script available online.
  - hoofhearted 4y ago
    I believe Netlify is similar.. Next/Nuxt was created by Vercel though as far as I understand.
colincooke 4y ago
Less doing well because of the downturn, more doing well despite of it, but many players in climate tech are doing really really well lately (for example [1]). Longer term, with IRA [2] now law, the industry is poised to continue to grow faster and faster. [1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/climatetech-finance/investors-poured-more-than-half-a-billion-into-solar-software-in-the-last-week-alone https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/climatetech-finance/inv... [2] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/this-is-huge-major-climate-legislation-will-soon-become-law https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/this-is-hu...
jacob_rezi 4y ago
We have been growing like crazy - https://rezi.ai/ https://rezi.ai/
- lordgrenville 4y ago
  Ah man, that's what every CEO says.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
noodle 4y ago
SMB SaaS seems to be doing just fine.
- emmp 4y ago
  Yes the SMB space, and the MSP vendor space (aka "The Channel"), that sell through to SMBs, seem to have not missed a beat.
- hello_newman 4y ago
  In this context, do you mean SaaS for small and medium businesses? Or do you mean small and medium (sized) SaaS companies? Or is SMB in this context some other acronym I’m not thinking of?
  - noodle 4y ago
    > SaaS for small and medium businesses This one
rvz 4y ago
FTX exchange seems to be going great and doing fine. Tons of revenue, very low head count and lots of cash at their disposal. So much, that they are offering to take over other failing startups affected by the downturn. That is a sign of a company that will survive in the long term since they are thriving even in these conditions.
- EddySchauHai 4y ago
  They have a lot of cash, but SBF theoretically could close shop and cash out if he feels the amount of money he will be able to donate will be down for the longterm. The entire point of FTX, ultimately, is to take money from crypto traders and put it into Effective Altruism charities.
  - instakill 4y ago
  - smalldick 4y ago
    > The entire point of FTX, ultimately, is to take money from crypto traders and put it into Effective Altruism charities. The entire point of FTX is to profit from the unregulated crypto markets by front-running his clients with the FTX-Alameda combo and pump (to bring in new cows to milk) and dumping (to crash the markets and buy sinking companies on fire sale) the markets; while waving the altruism flag.
    - EddySchauHai 4y ago
      I am partially involved with the EA community and know he does indeed donate, I don't believe it's just a case of waving an altruism flag but completely genuine efforts.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      I mean both can be true. SBF has perhaps been too gung ho with his EA donations, burning enormous piles of cash down some very deep rabbit holes. And he got that money by using his market maker to front run his own exchange.
mycall 4y ago
Anyone getting rich off Federal funds.
- ta988 4y ago
  This is downvoted but there is a niche of companies that thrive under federal money from various agencies grants and contracts, and these didn't really go down much. I would disagree with the "getting rich" as they have a mandate to serve whatever mission from the agency that gave them money.
NickM 4y ago
I find the whole "economic gloom" sentiment a bit odd. We're at extremely low unemployment, and GDP took a small dip in Q1/Q2 but is projected to start growing again in the second half of the year. The S&P 500 is down less than 10% from it's all-time high. Inflation was an issue for a while, but a lot of that seemed to be driven more by temporary supply constraints in certain sectors than any actual currency devaluation, and inflation already seems to be dying down anyway. The recent interest rate hikes also didn't seem to have nearly as much impact on the markets as everyone feared they would. What exactly is everyone so scared about that we all seem to think the economy is headed for a major recession?
- AnEro 4y ago
  Knowing people that make under 60k a year, and how harder their lives got and how hard it is to pay back loans and other obligations they where ulitmately strong armed into taking to improve their position. Not to mention how alot of western nations have a large majority of people are pay check to pay check regardless of their tax bracket. Working class is a good litmus of how the economy is doing vs S&P because speculation can ultimately make it look like everything is fine until it isn't
  - dtdimond 4y ago
    It's always been hard for people in those income buckets. But if the question is: are we in a massive economic downturn over the past half year, it's really hard for me to look at the data and answer with a yes. One thing I'm looking at is: https://realtimeinequality.org/ https://realtimeinequality.org/ And that's showing that for the first time in over a decade, the bottom half is seeing real wage/wealth gains, even after recent inflation. Am I missing something? Because your sentiment is the more common one.
    - kradeelav 4y ago
      Charts can lie. Whether or not you can buy bacon* or gas is real. *substitute with whatever staple you wish. I used bacon here since it's historically a working class' person's meat.
baby 4y ago
Or better: which companies do you think will survive and continue to go strong as they exit the downturn (however long it is). I’m still long Meta, Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, etc.
avgDev 4y ago
I'm currently interviewing at a battery startup. Considering the current policies it seems like those companies should remain well funded for foreseeable future.
kube-system 4y ago
The availability of cheap and easy debt is the main thing that has changed in this economy. Startups that don't rely on debt for financing are still doing fine.
zxexz 4y ago
I work in the healthcare technology/interoperability space. A ton of startups here don’t seem to be affected. The one I work for is certainly thriving.
- kiliantics 4y ago
  I work in a healthcare startup too and can confirm that the interest in investing in innovative tech in this industry is only going up.
- cloudking 4y ago
  Can confirm, healthcare SaaS doing well.
taylorhou 4y ago
proptech is continuing to thrive. people need a roof over their heads whether it's to rent or own so startups solving problems surrounding renting/buying/managing/living in a home, apartment, condo, association, trailer, mobile park, co-op, furnished, short term, etc... will continue to thrive. btw, if anyone reading on HN is interested in joining a startup tackling the property management angle, hmu! my company helps manage 200k+ rental units across america and always interested in capable and enthusiastic folks to join.
0xfaded 4y ago
I've been on the interview loop with robotics companies. Out of 20, only two had hiring on hold. Many were either already in a cash strong position or had cash strong backers who are long on robotics. I personally am long on robotics. The longer time horizon to market does mean ROI takes a hit in a high interest rate world. But I think the statement "the future will have more robots" is less controversial than some of the future scenarios that other companies are predicated upon.
unixhero 4y ago
This is not a downturn.
kkielhofner 4y ago
In the crypto ecosystem the compliance and anti-fraud space is doing very well (it's about time): https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/doppel-helps-nft-projects-spot-scams-fraud-counterfeit-crypto-yuga-dapper/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/doppel-helps-nft-projects-... https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/20/ai-based-startup-optic-raises-11m-to-put-the-nf-in-nfts/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/20/ai-based-startu... https://www.theblock.co/post/159791/center-raises-11-million https://www.theblock.co/post/159791/center-raises-11-million Shameless plug - Doppel and Optic are direct competitors for what I've been building: https://fnftf.io/ https://fnftf.io/ (We're the only solution that's publicly available). Not to mention the various Know Your Customer, mixer detectors, etc such as Chainalysis, TRM Labs, etc. I know crypto isn't popular on HN - given the amount of fraud, etc I've certainly jumped in here and elsewhere with plenty of comments and my thoughts elaborating on just how bad things are in the space (I do live and breathe it every day). My take is regardless of where you stand on crypto we should all be able to get behind solutions that are trying to clean up the space. Fact is it is here and (little) people are getting ripped off and scammed left and right. On a side note (and probably worthy of an Ask HN) I've been self funding Tovera for a year and we have yet to land any investment after six months of trying and hundreds of hours (minimum) spent on the effort. Plenty to be said about the good and bad of where we are and how my motivation and mental health is doing. Our three direct competitors are all technically inferior and well behind us yet combined they've raised $27m... Classic story of the value of vision, pitch, and salesmanship vs tech.
- bruceb 4y ago
  I don’t know about much about the space but my first impression is the initial pitch is confusing. Fight NFT Fraud sounds like a service for company buying/selling NFTs, and needs to stop attacks on their system and is actually slightly vague. Seems like people can check if a specific NFT is stolen or improperly minted? Lead with that. CarFax for NFT (but even more important) Is that NFT Stolen? Check now. Then after the submission box can go into more detail.
  - kkielhofner 4y ago
    Thank you for the feedback! Yes, I'm glad the core sentiment and functionality comes across. One of the biggest issues in the space (for Tovera and FNFTF) is that the crypto ecosystem is so sleazy no one in our targeted user/customer base (slightly sophisticated users and beyond) trusts anything or anyone - and rightfully so. In reaching out on Twitter, etc getting anyone to engage with something like FNFTF to even upload a PNG/JPG is near impossible. Install a browser extension?!?! Yeah right. Our most common response is "Nice try, scammer". This is why we have "Show me a Random Ape" and "What have other people searched" buttons. It's practically all anyone who visits the site uses because of the issues I mentioned. So that's why we try to lead with something above the fold. It's a chicken/egg reputational issue for us. Granted all of this is the creator and collector space - the real customer is an NFT platform, marketplace, etc that would integrate us in the backend somewhere so a user that already trusts wherever they are would inherently trust us.
skrtskrt 4y ago
Anyone who’s offering good product at a cheaper price point than the tech companies that got bloated over the last 5 or so years (Twilio comes to mind)
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Traditionally companies involved with gambling do VERY well during recessions. It's not really an industry I want to be in but a lot of folks I knew who worked on or build slot machines/slot machine tech got huge bonuses during the last 08-10 years. Plenty of smaller companies in that space if you look for them.
- CSMastermind 4y ago
  Fanduel is hiring like crazy right now.
lmeyerov 4y ago
We and our peers have been busy: - Gov, especially cyber + analytics (we do graph ai + gpu viz stuff) - Supply chain: A slowdown is happening, but COVID, regional conflicts, etc. makes needs for manufacturing etc. companies here super burning - Cyber + fraud: The need hasn't gone away (more automated attacks every day!), though companies based around VC blitz and pushing their gaping tech + operational holes to acquirers are hurting as fewer people happy to give them free $ - Devops was hard and remains hard. Digital transformation is an ongoing process and still needs a lot of help.
leviathant 4y ago
commercetools is seeing incredible growth, and it's only going to become more prominent in the ecommerce space. Having worked in ecommerce for a while now, I noticed back in 2008 that ecommerce flourishes when the economy goes sour. It's not strictly recession-proof- during the economic disruption, you will see separation of the wheat and the chaff, but new ecommerce technology that works gets supercharged. A decade and a half ago saw the emergence of Magento, BigCommerce, and while Demandware (based on Intershop) had been around for a bit, they emerged from the recession with afterburners on full blast. Shopify would hit stride later, eating into Magento and Demandware's lunch around the time they each got bought up for billions of dollars by Adobe and Salesforce, respectively. There were plenty of companies in the space that fell apart during the great recession too, but their talent moved on to the dominating players. You're seeing that happen during the last couple of years too. There have been some infamously rapid collapses - the implosion of Fast, Shopify's stock prices making a rapid return to normalcy. I strongly suspect you'll see other VC-backed 'disruptors' in the space fall apart. A newer 'headless' platform that talks a big talk recently put out a press release trumpeting a new deal that comically only listed former customers in the name-drop brag section of a press release, not a great look when you're the new kid on the block. Commercetools is where enterprise companies go to get away from legacy ecommerce platforms like Oracle (RIP), Salesforce, SAP Hybris, and homegrown systems - but in the last year it has also increasingly brought on graduates from the Shopify Plus and BigCommerce ecosystems.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
Shameless plug: The startup I work for, Vivun, 4X'd our ARR over the course of our latest fiscal year and received a $75M Series C funding in May. https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/17/vivun-is-digitizing-pre-sales-and-just-got-75m-in-new-investment/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/17/vivun-is-digitizing-pre-sa...

D13Fd 4y ago

Having debt is not the worst thing in an inflationary period. The inflation reduces the value of your debt.

rxhernandez 4y ago
ONLY if your wages keep up with inflation.
- nickserv 4y ago
  Exactly. Unless of course your income is so high that day to day expenditures are basically a rounding error. Then you can profit handsomely from other people's misery. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer is particularly true during times of high inflation (so long as not catastrophic).
- D13Fd 4y ago
  Yes, that's true. But that's like saying "ONLY if you don't lose your job" or "ONLY if you don't get hit by a train."
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  Right. And the compensation changes associated with going to a different company are almost always better than letting your current company re-evaluate your pay. So if inflation causes people to jump ship to get market-adjusted pay, you now have formerly-productive people now in FNG-mode, which is a much more impactful phenomenon than inflation on its own.
nickserv 4y ago
This is true for investment debt like real estate. If you're taking on debt to pay for basic necessities because salary rises don't match inflation it's an altogether different situation.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  Yes, if you take on the debt after the inflation it does you no good. But if you take loans in 2015 dollars and repay them in 2022 dollars, you are better off in terms of repayment by having a lot of inflation during that period. It doesn't matter what purpose you took the loan for.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    People don't take payday loans so they can let the relative value of that loan drop.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    One has to maintain those debts in the interim, unless you’re suggesting banks are offering 7 year no payment loans or equally long deferrals. Being able to weather inflation in the rest of one’s life is the problem. I’d love 1000% inflation on the money I use to pay my mortgage, but 1000% inflation at the till would be devastating. For people even mildly leveraged high inflation is painful because everything but their debt gets more expensive. Low inflation helps ease large debt obligations, but even moderate inflation will see tens of thousands of people squeezed too hard causing defaults which creates more homeless people and deaths from treatable conditions. All this said, one can try to time the market by making foreseeable purchases before inflation takes root. It seems that this time has passed for most things, but those who bought houses and cars in 2019 likely saw significant free equity. Without incoming increasing at the pace of inflation people are being slowly forced into poverty by the machinations of the capital class and their stooges.
collegeburner 4y ago
depends if its fixed rate or not

dionidium 4y ago

> how hard it is to pay back loans and other obligations they where ulitmately strong armed into taking to improve their position It's been a while since I've been in that income bracket, but I don't remember ever being strong-armed into taking on unnecessary debt. What are you referring to here?

Mezzie 4y ago
Well, the big one is college debt, obviously. But another example that comes to mind (as someone who lives in that income bracket about half by choice and half not) are car repairs (you HAVE to pony up or you lose your job, so the question becomes 'borrow 1k or lose 100% of your income'). Oh, and any time childcare is fucked up for any reason. Kid can't go to daycare/school because they're sick for a week? Parents don't get PTO, so their only option is to eat a week's worth of wages, and since income in is close to or level with expenses out, that means making it up with debt. The 'strong arming' comes in because society is set up to make those your only options. (versus having public transit to rely on, walkable cities, or cheap car rentals, for example).
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
It doesn't have to be strong-arming, but what about propaganda? High schoolers are still being told "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!", yet a high schooler certainly can't pay the $15K+ per year to get a degree, so they take out student loans. And then, the same people who hounded them to get a degree then hound them when they beg for student loan forgiveness, telling them they shouldn't have taken out a loan they wouldn't be able to afford to pay back. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- dionidium 4y ago
  > "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!" I started college in 1999. The day my freshmen year started, jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that were already 60 years old. This argument is revisionist bunk, in other words. Everybody knows there are some degrees that are more valuable than others, that some degrees lead to higher pay and that some don't. Everybody knows this. They know it today and they knew it in 1999 and they knew it in 1979 and I categorically reject this weird, revisionist insistence that nobody could possibly have known it or that 18-year-olds are hapless dopes without any agency or even the most basic understanding of how the world works.
  - bobkazamakis 4y ago
    >I started college in 1999. >Everybody knows there are some degrees that are more valuable than others This has only been made more extreme, but you've been checked out for at least 20 years apparently.
  - glorified-html 4y ago
    How many teenagers really understand the practical implications of what they're signing up for? No one is saying teenagers lack agency, but there is definitely a problem when an outsized number are making decisions that are detrimental to their long-term future
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    - dionidium 4y ago
      We're in kind of a weird transitionary period with respect to our societal-level view of teenagers. Very often the same exact people are arguing that student loans are illegitimate, on the grounds that teenagers are not sophisticated enough to sign contracts, but on the other hand that the voting and/or drinking ages should be lowered, because teenagers are clearly capable of handling those responsibilities. I'm kind of happy to go either way on this, but I think we're probably going to have to pick one. If an 18-year-old can't sign a contract, then surely they shouldn't be allowed the vote.
      - robcohen 4y ago
        Furthermore, gun control is back in the spotlight after Uvalde. I just attended the TX Democratic convention and at least three speakers argued to raise the age for purchasing firearms to 21. I don’t actually have a problem with that, but we’ve gotta be consistent. There’s no way it’s justifiable to remove a constitutional right from an adult without due process.
        4y ago

rank0 4y ago

I think it’s easy to miss some of the very real pain lower income folks are experiencing right now if you’re not in their bracket. Inflation causes excess capital to flow into assets, which the poor don’t have and HN commenters do. The inflation issue is absolutely not solved. A single month from 9.1 -> 8.6 is FAR too soon for victory. I suspect the recent rally in the market comes from the assumption that the Fed will back off and that we have indeed already experienced peak inflation. CPI of 8.6 is still unacceptable and my guess is we’re gonna see more rate hikes and QT than the markets expect. That’ll mean mortgage rates go up, companies will have more difficulty servicing debt…etc We’re not in the clear quite yet!

Negitivefrags 4y ago
The move from 9.1 to 8.6 is due to a single month of zero. People forget that 11/12th of the data for the yearly number already happened when they see the new number each month. It’s not impossible that inflation is just 0% from here on out and yet it will still take a while for the yearly number to come down.
NickM 4y ago
I mean, I don't want to discount that many people are suffering, but real income growth for the bottom 50% of earners has gone up substantially over the last year (and, notably, have gone up more than for high-earners, percentage-wise). Rising prices are bad and all, but if wages go up more than prices, as they seem to have done, then on aggregate people should be doing better, not worse. Inflation causes excess capital to flow into assets, which the poor don’t have and HN commenters do. I'm not sure I agree with this, as inflation seems to have scared markets off of their peaks. I mean, they're not down that far, but I don't see a lot of upper middle-class folks profiting off of this situation. Maybe this is true for some assets, but unless I'm missing something, markets in general do not seem to be feeding off of inflation in the way you're describing here.
- rank0 4y ago
  It’s longer term. CPI just measures a weighted prices of a basket of goods/services. In reality, the purchasing power of the dollar moves quite a bit outside the CPI basket because people absolutely spend their capital outside that basket. > I don't see a lot of upper middle-class folks profiting off of this situation. Look around more! We’ve witnessed the greatest bull market in history and It’s largely due to the government pouring trillions of dollars into securities. Look at returns on equity and real estate since QE started in ‘08. Poor people aren’t the ones benefiting off our insane 14 yr rally.

th1s1sit 4y ago

Because what are we working on? Amazon is running out of people willing to work in its warehouses; gig work gets old fast. Low unemployment is unsustainable if it’s unfulfilling errand running. There’s little net new invention going on in entrenched big tech; Bezos and co are riding high on mathematical inference by accountants; it’s a math scam being forced upon people who can’t “see” how he’s not really invented anything new; distributed computing under unified api; wow. Capturing eyeballs is easy when the masses are oblivious; the biological quirk religion stumbled upon is being intentionally manipulated. Except for nation state prestige, there’s little net new coming out of all these tech companies; writing apps and todo lists? Come on. Video games? 40+ years old. Better chat bots? Meh. Story mode still rules; we’re iterating on the childhood nostalgia of 70-80s kids who also happen to be the early tech boom crowd; shock. Where is the net new? We’re getting faster with higher resolution. Propping up the dollar in lock step with history. Which is why I believe all the pipe dreams about singularity and rockets to nowhere will never happen; kids growing up with these things will see sooner than the elders who were mesmerized by this stuff that it’s all “nuclear powered rocket cars” again. Generational churn is what’s creating the rocky situation politically. Society will stabilize on a “new normal” as more of the 50+ crowd dies off. And the normal the 20-30s crowd wants is progressive; they’ve not lost their desire for political change as they age into their 30s like prior generations did as inequality still controls their life; prior generations lost their progressiveness as they bought houses and had families; something even 30 year olds cannot do; the elders have monopolized having a good life. The young want to be represented by like minded people and are just waiting out the resistance. 80% of last gens Fortune 500 are gone. Electoral turnovers flush corruption and open up economic gains for public: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 Same will happen as the elders with monopoly on politics die. Chip companies aren’t going anywhere, but HN is a filter bubble; there’s little dedication to these stupid software companies among the young; see FB use tanking among teens. No one I know under 40 cares about Metas verse, but it was on Today the other day! They’re gaming the clueless. The veil is pierced and frankly software as an industry deserves it; most is copy-paste work while everyone else grows their potatoes.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> Video games? 40+ years old. As a gamer, I find this is incredibly dismissive. There's still tons of new ideas in games being explored. Factorio introduced the factory building genre in 2014, and we're still seeing new takes on it. Satisfactory made it first-person and beautiful. Dyson Sphere Program made it multi-planet and interstellar. Captain of Industry made destructible and moveable terrain. The colony sim genre as we know it today did not exist 10 years ago. Now we have RimWorld, Banished, Oxygen Not Included, and more. Even puzzle games continue to innovate. Baba is You is probably the most unique puzzle game I've ever seen, and then there's all the Zachtronics games... So yeah...the product of "video games" might be 40+ years old, but it's silly to claim that there's nothing net new coming out.
- j2bax 4y ago
  I think OP was referring to major new verticals... Video game vertical is 40+ years old now. Sure still lots of innovation happening within the vertical, but anything that is going to change the trajectory of humanity?
  - MikeTheRocker 4y ago
    Virtual Reality is an increasingly popular vertical that's emerged in the mainstream in the last decade. Mobile gaming too.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    I think it's silly to expect every innovation to "change the trajectory of humanity". Sometimes people just want entertainment and that's fine. Based on the OP's response to my comment, I wonder if they consider leisure time to be wasted time.
    - th1s1sit 4y ago
      Humans went millions of years entertaining themselves without computers. Why keep chucking real resources down the drain for Zachtronics? If you want logic puzzles there are simple paper books full of them. This is peak entitlement; the future must cope with your leisure preferences. Not voting rights, or clean water; you are owed video games. You would defend until the end your right to not sacrifice any scrap of figurative identity. How incredibly dismissive of future peoples entire existence. Launch the nukes, Putin. If we’re just going to iterate like mindless dweebs into collapse of the species why not go out in a blaze of glory; that would truly be metal af
      - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        > Humans went millions of years entertaining themselves without computers. More like a couple hundred thousand years, not millions, but that's a moot point. Humans went thousands of years without a lot of things. This is not a convincing argument. > Why keep chucking real resources down the drain for Zachtronics? If you want logic puzzles there are simple paper books full of them. False equivalency. I could easily turn this around and ask why chuck resources on publishing puzzles on paper when I can do them digitally. > This is peak entitlement; the future must cope with your leisure preferences. Really? Enjoying spending my time on video games is "peak entitlement"? > Not voting rights, or clean water; you are owed video games. Textbook whataboutism. > You would defend until the end your right to not sacrifice any scrap of figurative identity. How incredibly dismissive of future peoples entire existence. Yes...I'm sure me playing a few rounds of Legion TD 2 or a couple hours of Final Fantasy is going to threaten the existence of the future. > Launch the nukes, Putin. If we’re just going to iterate like mindless dweebs into collapse of the species why not go out in a blaze of glory; that would truly be metal af You are either mentally ill, an extreme workaholic, or a troll. Please seek help.