4 ms·

How has the startup world devolved to the point that it's primarily about financial movements and shenanigans and not related to technology innovation? I feel w

How has the startup world devolved to the point that it's primarily about financial movements and shenanigans and not related to technology innovation? I feel we're so far past where technology innovation has come from, and now we simply trade startups as financial products.

gsibble 4y ago
I don't think it has. This was a once in a lifetime kind of thing. My other companies are all innovative technology companies, like you said.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Iridium Development - Iridium Development focused on making revolutionary iPhone apps > Distribute- Distribute aimed to be the Alibaba of the US, mostly with wholesale drop shipping. > Materialist - an e-commerce solution, [...] trying to bring wholesale housing products to market. > Dave - personal financial management app > Vizit - Image Analytics > txtsmarter - Communications Surveillance Service We might have different opinions on what counts as "innovative" I guess.
  - gsibble 4y ago
    I really don't think personal attacks are called for. Only Iridium was my company, which built a pretty unique app that was featured in the App Store in its very first year (of the App Store). You conveniently left out Omnivore.io, the only other company I built. Ask anyone in the restaurant industry in the US what it is. All the rest were just employers. edit: Since I can't reply below: Omnivore was the first company that offered API access to over 80% of the installed point of sale systems in the US, including direct injection of web orders into the POS instead of needing a tablet next to the POS with manual order entry. We allowed over 1,000 partner companies to bring unique and innovative solutions to the restaurant space. Thanks for not reading my LinkedIN profile, just what sector my company was in.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Ah, sorry... > Omnivore - PoS + hospitality services Definitely haven't been done before, you got me there :) > I really don't think personal attacks are called for. I don't think it's a personal attack, you brought up "My other companies are all innovative technology companies" so I was curious to see what you consider "innovative", thought others might be curious too, so listed what I found here.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - gsibble 4y ago
        Omnivore was the first company that offered API access to over 80% of the installed point of sale systems in the US, including direct injection of web orders into the POS instead of needing a tablet next to the POS with manual order entry. We allowed over 1,000 partner companies to bring unique and innovative solutions to the restaurant space. Thanks for not reading my LinkedIN profile, just what sector my company was in.
      - zamnos 4y ago
        You don't think adding > We might have different opinions on what counts as "innovative" I guess. might have made it seem like you were doing more than "simply listing" what you found? We might have differing opinions on what constitutes a personal attack, I guess.
        gsibble 4y ago
        Thank you.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      > edit: Since I can't reply below: For brand new comments that you want to comment on you want to click on the timestamp and comment from there. Otherwise you have to wait a couple of minutes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- rexreed 4y ago
  Just want to say that as a startup founder, running tech companies for the past many decades, this post makes me sad, not grateful or joyous. It makes me feel like there's plenty of money on the sidelines to fund $300M+ at-a-whim larks to bail out Startup founders who are mostly going to go bust anyways (those are just the facts of startup life), but meanwhile startup founders outside of that bubble can't raise a penny and go bust / layoff anyways. Layoffs.fyi tracker hasn't been slowing down. So it's just a feeling, but it's not of happiness - it's of profound sadness and disappointment.
  - chernevik 4y ago
    Then you aren't getting the concept. This isn't equity funding for a business idea. It's basically buying a claim on a bank in receivership. It doesn't matter if that claim is held by nextbigthing.com or Apple. Those claims are backed by SVB's portfolio of T-bonds and MBS so they are very solid. The benefit to users is acceleration of receipt and certainty. It's hardly a lark. The OP was planning to target this offering to startups, which are only fraction of SVB's depositor base. Someone saw their community in distress and thought to use their connections to put together a solution, for a modest profit. Sounds fine to me.
    - rexreed 4y ago
      I understand the concept of this particular fund raise / action. I totally get it. You don't understand my sadness. The money is there from wealthy individual investors to rescue SVB depositors who might miss a payroll or otherwise risk solvency, but it's not there to rescue other startups who are already going bust. Amazing that $300M just can appear like that over a weekend to save startups in one case, and yet doesn't exist in the other case. And it makes me sad. It's a feeling, and you might feel joy or even excitement. But I feel sadness, and that's just how I feel.
      - chernevik 4y ago
        These seem to me very different cases but of course you have a right to your own take
CityOfThrowaway 4y ago
Startups rely on a lot of infrastructure that society provides. Things like supply chains, energy grids, financial systems, and defense. When the infrastructure we rely on functions well, our community can be ignorant to the fact that we are reliant on this infrastructure. This past week we saw a breakdown in one of our critical inputs. As a result, you are now hearing stories from people that helped work to fix the problem at a layer in the stack we don't usually think about. Think about this more as a glimpse into a technical domain that has always been there, but you are generally able to be gleefully ignorant about. It's interesting!
- gsibble 4y ago
  Thank you :)
ip26 4y ago
now we simply trade startups as financial products Suddenly it strikes me that "startups" could fill a similar finance niche in this decade as "subprime mortgages" (of mortgage backed securities) once did. Only, the risk of subprime mortgages is knowable if you dig, whereas the risk of a startup is unknowable. This might be very attractive if you're a financier trying to create the illusion of high-grade securities.
BaseballPhysics 4y ago
Bad news: Technology is so deeply embedded in society, now, that it invariably gets tied up in "financial movements and shenanigans", not to mention politics, sociology, ethics, and myriad other seemingly-unrelated topics. This is what success looks like.
zamnos 4y ago
Because our society operates on money. The brilliant startup founder working on the next revolution in computing still needs to pay for breakfast, still needs to pay for drinks, still needs to make rent. Even if they don't pay out of their own pocket, there's money moving around somewhere. So when the money side has problems, thanks to the modern miracle of the Internet, you're gonna hear about the money side's problems. That doesn't mean the startup world's devolved, it just means that theres a big of problem on the money side of things. There was never a world where money wasn't involved in some way, even way back in the day when Apple started. They needed money to buy the parts to build the original Apple I and the money for that came from investors like Mike Markkula who was at Intel before he was at Apple. There is some cognitive dissonance that occurs when you realize your VC has investments in other companies that are very similar to yours, and that the money people are in it for the money, but that's nothing new. The worst thing about this is how many comments I read saying that startups shouldn't have kept their payroll money in a bank in excess of $250k. When your startup is a handful of people, who's really got time to focus on that, unless what you're really focusing on is financial movements and shenanigans, to the detriment of technological innovation.

gsibble 4y ago

I don't think it has. This was a once in a lifetime kind of thing. My other companies are all innovative technology companies, like you said.

capableweb 4y ago
> Iridium Development - Iridium Development focused on making revolutionary iPhone apps > Distribute- Distribute aimed to be the Alibaba of the US, mostly with wholesale drop shipping. > Materialist - an e-commerce solution, [...] trying to bring wholesale housing products to market. > Dave - personal financial management app > Vizit - Image Analytics > txtsmarter - Communications Surveillance Service We might have different opinions on what counts as "innovative" I guess.
- gsibble 4y ago
  I really don't think personal attacks are called for. Only Iridium was my company, which built a pretty unique app that was featured in the App Store in its very first year (of the App Store). You conveniently left out Omnivore.io, the only other company I built. Ask anyone in the restaurant industry in the US what it is. All the rest were just employers. edit: Since I can't reply below: Omnivore was the first company that offered API access to over 80% of the installed point of sale systems in the US, including direct injection of web orders into the POS instead of needing a tablet next to the POS with manual order entry. We allowed over 1,000 partner companies to bring unique and innovative solutions to the restaurant space. Thanks for not reading my LinkedIN profile, just what sector my company was in.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Ah, sorry... > Omnivore - PoS + hospitality services Definitely haven't been done before, you got me there :) > I really don't think personal attacks are called for. I don't think it's a personal attack, you brought up "My other companies are all innovative technology companies" so I was curious to see what you consider "innovative", thought others might be curious too, so listed what I found here.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - gsibble 4y ago
      Omnivore was the first company that offered API access to over 80% of the installed point of sale systems in the US, including direct injection of web orders into the POS instead of needing a tablet next to the POS with manual order entry. We allowed over 1,000 partner companies to bring unique and innovative solutions to the restaurant space. Thanks for not reading my LinkedIN profile, just what sector my company was in.
    - zamnos 4y ago
      You don't think adding > We might have different opinions on what counts as "innovative" I guess. might have made it seem like you were doing more than "simply listing" what you found? We might have differing opinions on what constitutes a personal attack, I guess.
      - gsibble 4y ago
        Thank you.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    > edit: Since I can't reply below: For brand new comments that you want to comment on you want to click on the timestamp and comment from there. Otherwise you have to wait a couple of minutes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rexreed 4y ago
Just want to say that as a startup founder, running tech companies for the past many decades, this post makes me sad, not grateful or joyous. It makes me feel like there's plenty of money on the sidelines to fund $300M+ at-a-whim larks to bail out Startup founders who are mostly going to go bust anyways (those are just the facts of startup life), but meanwhile startup founders outside of that bubble can't raise a penny and go bust / layoff anyways. Layoffs.fyi tracker hasn't been slowing down. So it's just a feeling, but it's not of happiness - it's of profound sadness and disappointment.
- chernevik 4y ago
  Then you aren't getting the concept. This isn't equity funding for a business idea. It's basically buying a claim on a bank in receivership. It doesn't matter if that claim is held by nextbigthing.com or Apple. Those claims are backed by SVB's portfolio of T-bonds and MBS so they are very solid. The benefit to users is acceleration of receipt and certainty. It's hardly a lark. The OP was planning to target this offering to startups, which are only fraction of SVB's depositor base. Someone saw their community in distress and thought to use their connections to put together a solution, for a modest profit. Sounds fine to me.
  - rexreed 4y ago
    I understand the concept of this particular fund raise / action. I totally get it. You don't understand my sadness. The money is there from wealthy individual investors to rescue SVB depositors who might miss a payroll or otherwise risk solvency, but it's not there to rescue other startups who are already going bust. Amazing that $300M just can appear like that over a weekend to save startups in one case, and yet doesn't exist in the other case. And it makes me sad. It's a feeling, and you might feel joy or even excitement. But I feel sadness, and that's just how I feel.
    - chernevik 4y ago
      These seem to me very different cases but of course you have a right to your own take

CityOfThrowaway 4y ago

Startups rely on a lot of infrastructure that society provides. Things like supply chains, energy grids, financial systems, and defense. When the infrastructure we rely on functions well, our community can be ignorant to the fact that we are reliant on this infrastructure. This past week we saw a breakdown in one of our critical inputs. As a result, you are now hearing stories from people that helped work to fix the problem at a layer in the stack we don't usually think about. Think about this more as a glimpse into a technical domain that has always been there, but you are generally able to be gleefully ignorant about. It's interesting!

gsibble 4y ago
Thank you :)

ip26 4y ago

now we simply trade startups as financial products Suddenly it strikes me that "startups" could fill a similar finance niche in this decade as "subprime mortgages" (of mortgage backed securities) once did. Only, the risk of subprime mortgages is knowable if you dig, whereas the risk of a startup is unknowable. This might be very attractive if you're a financier trying to create the illusion of high-grade securities.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago

Bad news: Technology is so deeply embedded in society, now, that it invariably gets tied up in "financial movements and shenanigans", not to mention politics, sociology, ethics, and myriad other seemingly-unrelated topics. This is what success looks like.

zamnos 4y ago

Because our society operates on money. The brilliant startup founder working on the next revolution in computing still needs to pay for breakfast, still needs to pay for drinks, still needs to make rent. Even if they don't pay out of their own pocket, there's money moving around somewhere. So when the money side has problems, thanks to the modern miracle of the Internet, you're gonna hear about the money side's problems. That doesn't mean the startup world's devolved, it just means that theres a big of problem on the money side of things. There was never a world where money wasn't involved in some way, even way back in the day when Apple started. They needed money to buy the parts to build the original Apple I and the money for that came from investors like Mike Markkula who was at Intel before he was at Apple. There is some cognitive dissonance that occurs when you realize your VC has investments in other companies that are very similar to yours, and that the money people are in it for the money, but that's nothing new. The worst thing about this is how many comments I read saying that startups shouldn't have kept their payroll money in a bank in excess of $250k. When your startup is a handful of people, who's really got time to focus on that, unless what you're really focusing on is financial movements and shenanigans, to the detriment of technological innovation.