12 ms·

I think the backlash against tech comes from many years of tech celebrating themselves and being celebrated as “disrupters” for a lot of bullshit startups. And

I think the backlash against tech comes from many years of tech celebrating themselves and being celebrated as “disrupters” for a lot of bullshit startups. And the amounts of money made with companies hat have no real business is just astonishing. It would be nice if it went back to focusing on creating sustainable businesses that make useful products that benefit their users and aren’t just another vehicle for mass surveillance.

jjulius 4y ago
It's this. I would also like to point out that it's perfectly okay to simultaneously take pleasure in an industry being culled of precisely what you described, while also feeling bad for some of those who may lose their jobs as a result. Ain't nuance neat?
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  > I would also like to point out that it's perfectly okay to simultaneously take pleasure in an industry being culled of precisely what you described, while also feeling bad for some of those who may lose their jobs as a result. Ain't nuance neat? Absolutely. What's surprising to me is the absolute lack of that nuance on HN. It's all just BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND over the last few days.
  - urbanhole 4y ago
    Internet people are garbage, and HN is not special in this regard. This is because people are garbage. People love tearing others down. This is the rule.
    - layer8 4y ago
      This comment is amusingly self-referential. (As is this one, I guess.)
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Yes. We're absolutely not interested in seeing the US government bail out banks yet again, especially not banks that just happened to get fucked by their "safe investment strategy". I really have no idea why you are surprised.
    - idopmstuff 4y ago
      But what you're saying here is unrelated to the reality of the situation. Yellen has already said there will be no bailout of the bank. A bailout would be something that rescues equity holders. What people are talking about here is making sure depositors don't lose their money.
      - matheusmoreira 4y ago
        I don't see "depositors" as a special class of people at all. They're equivalent to shareholders to me. They all poured money in and expected dividends. The true reality of the situation is that these people lent their money to the bank. To bail them out is equivalent to bailing out shareholders.
        wrs 4y ago
        You’re expecting dividends from your checking account?
        matheusmoreira 4y ago
        I do expect interest payments from any money of mine that's not in my physical posession. Checking accounts don't pay interest so I don't use them. They're just a temporary register for my "pay bills" and "invest" operations.
        wrs 4y ago
        I don’t know where you’ve been banking for the last ten years or so, but I wish I did — interest payments on liquid deposits weren’t a thing for a long time. And startups don’t “invest”, they only “pay bills”.
  - startupsfail 4y ago
    This is the community that claims that it will save the world. While it behaves with such shortsightedness that it can’t even save their piggy bank. Should it be trusted with more money and power (that the bailout gives)?
  - stuckinhell 4y ago
    Alot of people are rightfully upset because the banking industry cannot seem to get its shit together. Why do so many banking/financial crisis's keep occurring ? Why are executives not being put in prison for ruining so many lives ? People are reaching their limits.
    - endtime 4y ago
      > Why do so many banking/financial crisis's keep occurring ? This one, AFAICT, happened because the government greatly restricted what banks could do with their funds. One of the only options available in large volumes is a government instrument subject to risk from the Fed raising rates rapidly. > Why are executives not being put in prison for ruining so many lives ? I hope people only get put in prison for breaking actual laws. And if the SVB execs broke laws then yes, they should go to prison. But I haven't heard it alleged by anyone that they have.
      - mp2 4y ago
        > This one, AFAICT, happened because the government greatly restricted what banks could do with their funds. One of the only options available in large volumes is a government instrument subject to risk from the Fed raising rates rapidly. So the solution to just let banks do whatever they want? A bank that is prevented from taking excessively risky action becomes insolvent, and your answer is to allow them to take even more risk? The Fed has been signaling for a year that rates are going to keep rising, it is eminently predicable what that means to professionals in the industry. Hubris at its best. Have you even heard of Glass–Steagall, or have a basic understanding of the last 100 years of economic theory? > I hope people only get put in prison for breaking actual laws. And if the SVB execs broke laws then yes, they should go to prison. But I haven't heard it alleged by anyone that they have. A laughably naïve thing to say in more than a few ways.
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  This isn’t nuanced. It’s confused. If startups were going under because it turns out that they were pointless and there was no market, and they ran out of runway… then sure. But this is their house catching on fire and all of their money just vanishing through no fault of their own. It doesn’t distinguish between good startups and dumb ones, real businesses and nonsense — how could you root for this beyond pettiness?
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > But this is their house catching on fire and all of their money just vanishing through no fault of their own. You can choose to hold money in multiple banks. There are services that will happily set up laddered CDs across many institutions for you to diversify exposure and maximize insurance. To use your tortured analogy: if my neighbor's house burned down, and he didn't buy fire insurance... I would be sad, but I don't exactly think it's my problem (or the government's) to pay to make him whole. > If startups were going under because it turns out that they were pointless and there was no market, and they ran out of runway… then sure. I know we all like to believe we control our own destiny. Tiny little inconsequential-seeming choices wobble startups between success and failure every single day. Having a good product is such a tiny piece of it all.
    - jagraff 4y ago
      But if your neighbor’s house is currently burning down, you probably want the fire department to put it out before it spreads to your house…
      - Jtsummers 4y ago
        Which is what's being done. Insured amount going out on Monday, dividends based on liquidation of assets going out over time. The fire is being managed, it's not like nothing is happening here. People are just pissed that the government and FDIC are doing what they've said they would do instead of something more, which was never promised.
        4y ago
reb 4y ago
Plenty of startups fit that bill and will nonetheless be impacted by SVB’s failure, while the most pointless businesses surf by on their founders’ access to inherited wealth and political power. Any revenge on them will be short-lived and will have serious, lasting consequences for middle class workers throughout the industry. For anyone reading this who doesn’t already know: startups aren’t all snotty trust fund kids making $300k+ selling AI deodorant on the blockchain. As I said on another post this weekend, I’ll remember the comments I’m reading here for the rest of my life.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  Nailed it. If people get whatever short term vengeance they're looking for, the contagion will cause a whole lot of collateral damage to people who aren't in tech.
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    What contagion? How is this going to spread to the rest of the US that isn't actually dependent upon any of these startups or this bank? No other banks have yet popped up with similar risk exposure so its not a systemic issue like 15 years ago and startups are not that big a part of the US economy.
    - idopmstuff 4y ago
      SVB was the sixteenth largest bank in the US. When businesses see that their money isn't safe in the sixteenth largest bank, they're going to cause bank runs on all the smaller banks as they attempt to move all of their money to the top three or four. > No other banks have yet popped up with similar risk exposure so its not a systemic issue like 15 years ago and startups are not that big a part of the US economy. That doesn't matter in the slightest. Companies don't do deep evaluations of the financial risks of their banks (as clearly evidenced by what's happening right now). They'll flee from what they perceive as unsafe into what they perceive as safe, regardless of balance sheet realities.
      - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
epistasis 4y ago
I think this mostly comes from the PayPal mafia sort of attitude: libertarian when it helps me, bail me out when it helps me, start a bank run when it helps me. There was a time when tech did seem like a better business movement. Certainly better than the financial sectors, or heavy industry, or pharma. But then we let Thiel and Musk become the face, with Sachs and Calacsnais (or however you spell his name) become their media toadies, and we got fucked on the PR front. We need to reject these guys a bit harder. Thiel's bank run was unnecessary. He should have picked up the phone and got the numbers from SVB instead of destroying an institution that's so helpful for small founders. Founders are now more dependent on Thiel and his ilk, and less independent.
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  > or however you spell his name Sacks is spelled with a CK.
- startupsfail 4y ago
  Yes, it seems that the antisocial defectors are going to win in the short term and may have more power in the long term. Any suggestions onto how to inject some discipline and long-term thinking into this?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I am not smart enough to have a full solution, but I think part of it must include some honest examination of all the players here, including the big ones whose mere opposition has a chance of crushing new founders. So a lot of that has to come from other established players in the space. Maybe being a little bit less eager to hop on to rounds led by these folks. Use soft power at a minimum. But what do I know, I'm just a nobody in the space! Others who have more power, wealth, and wisdom will be able to handle this better. (And I should point out that I don't absolve SVB of their errors here either, it's just that I think their errors are more about miscommunication about a bad situation of their own doing that had a clear solution ).
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    Having more people with leftwing/progressive politics involved and less libertarians would help.
whimsicalism 4y ago
I think it has to do with Nietzschean slave morality and a media angered by losing advertising revenue to strong competitors. The media is literally competitor in the attention economy, of course they will attack their biggest foes.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Nietzsche over Marx, really? Why skip?
- larksimian 4y ago
  You're begging for money from the government to compensate you for your own personal failures. I think you need to re-read your Nietzsche if you think this makes the people saying no to that corrupted by ressentiment. They're just trying to help you overcome your shackles of dependence on the sweet teat of Uncle Sam. Get some bootstraps and climb out of this hole on your own merit!
dpweb 4y ago
It’s from the hubris and excesses of recent SV culture. And most Americans have no conception of being able to have 250k in a checking account. The vengeance attitude can be taken too far however but as depositors are ultimately made 80-100% whole seems a reasonable outcome. Bottom line uninsured means uninsured. Read your contracts. Although shouldn’t be angry if they can be made whole.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Most Americans work for a company that does in fact have $250K in a checking account like SVB...
  - prewett 4y ago
    GP's point was that they have no conception of that, so it affects how they think about things, and their proposed solutions. The fact that the situation they have no conception of happens frequently, even near them, means that their proposed solutions are likely to be inapplicable.
deepGem 4y ago
People in general who are not good at something or didn't find success in that field, in order to feel their salt's worth have 2 options - either build something that's far greater than what they are not good at, or disparage what they you are not good at. The latter is a lot easier.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hgsgm 4y ago
> And the amounts of money made with companies hat have no real business is just astonishing. Maybe they wasted investor money on salaries. Oh no! And certainly no reason to steal the money they didn't waste.
closeparen 4y ago
This is confused in many ways. The only people who care about “mass surveillance” are tech insiders. It’s incoherent to be mad about fake business models and too much money being made at the same time - if startups are stupid then VCs are losing their shirts (and if we hate them, then we should help them do it even bigger and faster). If Silicon Valley is an engine of runaway wealth inequality then objectively speaking, the business model works. Making things people want generates profit, which is always and inherently evil according to communists, and enriches investors/executives/employees faster than the average person, which according to anyone who is committed to “income inequality is bad” also makes the world worse.
dehrmann 4y ago
It's just that rather than them failing because their product was bad or they're working on a bullshit idea, they might fail because their bank failed? And not some fancy crypto bank, a regular, government-regulated bank? Even if you want to see the startup space fall, that's a rather unsatisfying way for it to happen. It's not a SBF moment.
Zetice 4y ago
That’s an insane argument to make while using the tech that came from SV to make it. “Sustainable” businesses are not how American economy differentiates itself in the world, what you’re asking for is to crush the way of life yourself used to in America, to make your own life substantially worse. It’s nonsensical, bitter, and petty. If that’s the argument you want to make, grow up.
gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago
There's another layer to this: many of these bullshit startups are in crypto, which spent the past 5+ years undermining trust in centralized banking and the Fed. Now this world is crying out for a bailout. It's just so rich. Like why would I want to support a16z's businesses in a time like this?
bobthepanda 4y ago
also, a lot of them pooh-poohing the need for regulations because it interferes with their risky startup work. It turns out, you can experience the downside of risk.
beebmam 4y ago
Simply put, I think this kind of attitude is based in economic resentment. There's a whole part of the US that hasn't seen much benefit from the unbelievably successful startup world. I remember when people used to go build something useful themselves instead of complaining about the success of others. Why don't we try to get back to that kind of culture?
- kortilla 4y ago
  Because it’s a heck of a lot easier to do nothing and complain about people who do “try hard”.
- gbcfghhjj 4y ago
  It's more than not seeing a benefit, there's many parts of the US where people rightly or wrongly blame tech salaries plus remote work for pricing them out of being able to afford a home and other basic life necessities. Of course the situation is more nuanced than that in reality but tech workers have a tendency to show up in once reasonably priced areas, buy up houses for cash and drive around in fancy luxury cars, which doesn't help the perception. There's also a perception that much of this money is coming via proximity to wealthy financiers and 15 years of ZIRP rather than true hard work.
kortilla 4y ago
I think that sentiment is directed against a strawman that doesn’t really exist. The reality is that startups with “no real business” just fail after burning through investor cash and nobody gets anything.

jjulius 4y ago

It's this. I would also like to point out that it's perfectly okay to simultaneously take pleasure in an industry being culled of precisely what you described, while also feeling bad for some of those who may lose their jobs as a result. Ain't nuance neat?

idopmstuff 4y ago
> I would also like to point out that it's perfectly okay to simultaneously take pleasure in an industry being culled of precisely what you described, while also feeling bad for some of those who may lose their jobs as a result. Ain't nuance neat? Absolutely. What's surprising to me is the absolute lack of that nuance on HN. It's all just BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND over the last few days.
- urbanhole 4y ago
  Internet people are garbage, and HN is not special in this regard. This is because people are garbage. People love tearing others down. This is the rule.
  - layer8 4y ago
    This comment is amusingly self-referential. (As is this one, I guess.)
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Yes. We're absolutely not interested in seeing the US government bail out banks yet again, especially not banks that just happened to get fucked by their "safe investment strategy". I really have no idea why you are surprised.
  - idopmstuff 4y ago
    But what you're saying here is unrelated to the reality of the situation. Yellen has already said there will be no bailout of the bank. A bailout would be something that rescues equity holders. What people are talking about here is making sure depositors don't lose their money.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      I don't see "depositors" as a special class of people at all. They're equivalent to shareholders to me. They all poured money in and expected dividends. The true reality of the situation is that these people lent their money to the bank. To bail them out is equivalent to bailing out shareholders.
      - wrs 4y ago
        You’re expecting dividends from your checking account?
        matheusmoreira 4y ago
        I do expect interest payments from any money of mine that's not in my physical posession. Checking accounts don't pay interest so I don't use them. They're just a temporary register for my "pay bills" and "invest" operations.
        wrs 4y ago
        I don’t know where you’ve been banking for the last ten years or so, but I wish I did — interest payments on liquid deposits weren’t a thing for a long time. And startups don’t “invest”, they only “pay bills”.
- startupsfail 4y ago
  This is the community that claims that it will save the world. While it behaves with such shortsightedness that it can’t even save their piggy bank. Should it be trusted with more money and power (that the bailout gives)?
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  Alot of people are rightfully upset because the banking industry cannot seem to get its shit together. Why do so many banking/financial crisis's keep occurring ? Why are executives not being put in prison for ruining so many lives ? People are reaching their limits.
  - endtime 4y ago
    > Why do so many banking/financial crisis's keep occurring ? This one, AFAICT, happened because the government greatly restricted what banks could do with their funds. One of the only options available in large volumes is a government instrument subject to risk from the Fed raising rates rapidly. > Why are executives not being put in prison for ruining so many lives ? I hope people only get put in prison for breaking actual laws. And if the SVB execs broke laws then yes, they should go to prison. But I haven't heard it alleged by anyone that they have.
    - mp2 4y ago
      > This one, AFAICT, happened because the government greatly restricted what banks could do with their funds. One of the only options available in large volumes is a government instrument subject to risk from the Fed raising rates rapidly. So the solution to just let banks do whatever they want? A bank that is prevented from taking excessively risky action becomes insolvent, and your answer is to allow them to take even more risk? The Fed has been signaling for a year that rates are going to keep rising, it is eminently predicable what that means to professionals in the industry. Hubris at its best. Have you even heard of Glass–Steagall, or have a basic understanding of the last 100 years of economic theory? > I hope people only get put in prison for breaking actual laws. And if the SVB execs broke laws then yes, they should go to prison. But I haven't heard it alleged by anyone that they have. A laughably naïve thing to say in more than a few ways.
flappyeagle 4y ago
This isn’t nuanced. It’s confused. If startups were going under because it turns out that they were pointless and there was no market, and they ran out of runway… then sure. But this is their house catching on fire and all of their money just vanishing through no fault of their own. It doesn’t distinguish between good startups and dumb ones, real businesses and nonsense — how could you root for this beyond pettiness?
- mlyle 4y ago
  > But this is their house catching on fire and all of their money just vanishing through no fault of their own. You can choose to hold money in multiple banks. There are services that will happily set up laddered CDs across many institutions for you to diversify exposure and maximize insurance. To use your tortured analogy: if my neighbor's house burned down, and he didn't buy fire insurance... I would be sad, but I don't exactly think it's my problem (or the government's) to pay to make him whole. > If startups were going under because it turns out that they were pointless and there was no market, and they ran out of runway… then sure. I know we all like to believe we control our own destiny. Tiny little inconsequential-seeming choices wobble startups between success and failure every single day. Having a good product is such a tiny piece of it all.
  - jagraff 4y ago
    But if your neighbor’s house is currently burning down, you probably want the fire department to put it out before it spreads to your house…
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      Which is what's being done. Insured amount going out on Monday, dividends based on liquidation of assets going out over time. The fire is being managed, it's not like nothing is happening here. People are just pissed that the government and FDIC are doing what they've said they would do instead of something more, which was never promised.
      - 4y ago

reb 4y ago

Plenty of startups fit that bill and will nonetheless be impacted by SVB’s failure, while the most pointless businesses surf by on their founders’ access to inherited wealth and political power. Any revenge on them will be short-lived and will have serious, lasting consequences for middle class workers throughout the industry. For anyone reading this who doesn’t already know: startups aren’t all snotty trust fund kids making $300k+ selling AI deodorant on the blockchain. As I said on another post this weekend, I’ll remember the comments I’m reading here for the rest of my life.

idopmstuff 4y ago
Nailed it. If people get whatever short term vengeance they're looking for, the contagion will cause a whole lot of collateral damage to people who aren't in tech.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  What contagion? How is this going to spread to the rest of the US that isn't actually dependent upon any of these startups or this bank? No other banks have yet popped up with similar risk exposure so its not a systemic issue like 15 years ago and startups are not that big a part of the US economy.
  - idopmstuff 4y ago
    SVB was the sixteenth largest bank in the US. When businesses see that their money isn't safe in the sixteenth largest bank, they're going to cause bank runs on all the smaller banks as they attempt to move all of their money to the top three or four. > No other banks have yet popped up with similar risk exposure so its not a systemic issue like 15 years ago and startups are not that big a part of the US economy. That doesn't matter in the slightest. Companies don't do deep evaluations of the financial risks of their banks (as clearly evidenced by what's happening right now). They'll flee from what they perceive as unsafe into what they perceive as safe, regardless of balance sheet realities.
    - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

epistasis 4y ago

I think this mostly comes from the PayPal mafia sort of attitude: libertarian when it helps me, bail me out when it helps me, start a bank run when it helps me. There was a time when tech did seem like a better business movement. Certainly better than the financial sectors, or heavy industry, or pharma. But then we let Thiel and Musk become the face, with Sachs and Calacsnais (or however you spell his name) become their media toadies, and we got fucked on the PR front. We need to reject these guys a bit harder. Thiel's bank run was unnecessary. He should have picked up the phone and got the numbers from SVB instead of destroying an institution that's so helpful for small founders. Founders are now more dependent on Thiel and his ilk, and less independent.

flappyeagle 4y ago
> or however you spell his name Sacks is spelled with a CK.
startupsfail 4y ago
Yes, it seems that the antisocial defectors are going to win in the short term and may have more power in the long term. Any suggestions onto how to inject some discipline and long-term thinking into this?
- epistasis 4y ago
  I am not smart enough to have a full solution, but I think part of it must include some honest examination of all the players here, including the big ones whose mere opposition has a chance of crushing new founders. So a lot of that has to come from other established players in the space. Maybe being a little bit less eager to hop on to rounds led by these folks. Use soft power at a minimum. But what do I know, I'm just a nobody in the space! Others who have more power, wealth, and wisdom will be able to handle this better. (And I should point out that I don't absolve SVB of their errors here either, it's just that I think their errors are more about miscommunication about a bad situation of their own doing that had a clear solution ).
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  Having more people with leftwing/progressive politics involved and less libertarians would help.

whimsicalism 4y ago

I think it has to do with Nietzschean slave morality and a media angered by losing advertising revenue to strong competitors. The media is literally competitor in the attention economy, of course they will attack their biggest foes.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Nietzsche over Marx, really? Why skip?
larksimian 4y ago
You're begging for money from the government to compensate you for your own personal failures. I think you need to re-read your Nietzsche if you think this makes the people saying no to that corrupted by ressentiment. They're just trying to help you overcome your shackles of dependence on the sweet teat of Uncle Sam. Get some bootstraps and climb out of this hole on your own merit!

dpweb 4y ago

It’s from the hubris and excesses of recent SV culture. And most Americans have no conception of being able to have 250k in a checking account. The vengeance attitude can be taken too far however but as depositors are ultimately made 80-100% whole seems a reasonable outcome. Bottom line uninsured means uninsured. Read your contracts. Although shouldn’t be angry if they can be made whole.

hgsgm 4y ago
Most Americans work for a company that does in fact have $250K in a checking account like SVB...
- prewett 4y ago
  GP's point was that they have no conception of that, so it affects how they think about things, and their proposed solutions. The fact that the situation they have no conception of happens frequently, even near them, means that their proposed solutions are likely to be inapplicable.

deepGem 4y ago

People in general who are not good at something or didn't find success in that field, in order to feel their salt's worth have 2 options - either build something that's far greater than what they are not good at, or disparage what they you are not good at. The latter is a lot easier.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hgsgm 4y ago

> And the amounts of money made with companies hat have no real business is just astonishing. Maybe they wasted investor money on salaries. Oh no! And certainly no reason to steal the money they didn't waste.

closeparen 4y ago

This is confused in many ways. The only people who care about “mass surveillance” are tech insiders. It’s incoherent to be mad about fake business models and too much money being made at the same time - if startups are stupid then VCs are losing their shirts (and if we hate them, then we should help them do it even bigger and faster). If Silicon Valley is an engine of runaway wealth inequality then objectively speaking, the business model works. Making things people want generates profit, which is always and inherently evil according to communists, and enriches investors/executives/employees faster than the average person, which according to anyone who is committed to “income inequality is bad” also makes the world worse.

dehrmann 4y ago

It's just that rather than them failing because their product was bad or they're working on a bullshit idea, they might fail because their bank failed? And not some fancy crypto bank, a regular, government-regulated bank? Even if you want to see the startup space fall, that's a rather unsatisfying way for it to happen. It's not a SBF moment.

Zetice 4y ago

That’s an insane argument to make while using the tech that came from SV to make it. “Sustainable” businesses are not how American economy differentiates itself in the world, what you’re asking for is to crush the way of life yourself used to in America, to make your own life substantially worse. It’s nonsensical, bitter, and petty. If that’s the argument you want to make, grow up.

gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago

There's another layer to this: many of these bullshit startups are in crypto, which spent the past 5+ years undermining trust in centralized banking and the Fed. Now this world is crying out for a bailout. It's just so rich. Like why would I want to support a16z's businesses in a time like this?

bobthepanda 4y ago

also, a lot of them pooh-poohing the need for regulations because it interferes with their risky startup work. It turns out, you can experience the downside of risk.

beebmam 4y ago

Simply put, I think this kind of attitude is based in economic resentment. There's a whole part of the US that hasn't seen much benefit from the unbelievably successful startup world. I remember when people used to go build something useful themselves instead of complaining about the success of others. Why don't we try to get back to that kind of culture?

kortilla 4y ago
Because it’s a heck of a lot easier to do nothing and complain about people who do “try hard”.
gbcfghhjj 4y ago
It's more than not seeing a benefit, there's many parts of the US where people rightly or wrongly blame tech salaries plus remote work for pricing them out of being able to afford a home and other basic life necessities. Of course the situation is more nuanced than that in reality but tech workers have a tendency to show up in once reasonably priced areas, buy up houses for cash and drive around in fancy luxury cars, which doesn't help the perception. There's also a perception that much of this money is coming via proximity to wealthy financiers and 15 years of ZIRP rather than true hard work.

kortilla 4y ago

I think that sentiment is directed against a strawman that doesn’t really exist. The reality is that startups with “no real business” just fail after burning through investor cash and nobody gets anything.