3 ms·

Not in my world and I live in the EU! People raise millions and 10s of millions here for stuff that is nonsense and cannot be done. As someone said already here

Not in my world and I live in the EU! People raise millions and 10s of millions here for stuff that is nonsense and cannot be done. As someone said already here: openai wrappers that do something intended in <5% of cases but the millions will solve that by insert-some-shite-fine-tuning-rag-bla. And when at meet-ups people actually tell me that investors will pay whatever for an ai wrapper demo (I saw a few last month that were not even that; just faked) and a few $ charts.

atoav 3y ago
I am not even sure if I find that good or bad. There are other things people invest into that have more problematic consequences. For example I'd like to have someone explain me how housing can be both a good investment for rich people and a commodity people can afford — the way I see it these are fundamentally incompatible goals. One is about making housing prices go up, so your one investment gives you more profit, the other is about building enough to keep the prices stable (or even going down).
- flakeoil 3y ago
  The problem is that currently (at least until the interest rates went up to a reasonable level) housing was a (too) good investment for the rich. Prices just went up and up without any added value. This made houses expensive for the ones who wanted to buy a house to live in. The main profit should instead only come from the actual building of the house, by a construction company, and selling it the first time to someone who wants to live there. This is where value add comes from. Higher interest rates fixes this.
  - consp 3y ago
    > Higher interest rates fixes this Yet prices keep going up and up and up and up. Just slap a massive fine (I mean tax of course but that is just semantics) on any profits from a second or higher house. And dont start with the "you can't change the rules of the game in play"; sure you can, you just dont like it.
    - flakeoil 3y ago
      > Yet prices keep going up and up and up and up. The thing is that the interest rates need to stay higher for a long time (many years). Many home owners and speculators have fixed interests on their loans. It is not until they have to be renewed that they feel the effect of the higher interest rates. So unfortunately it will take time.
    - atoav 3y ago
      I always wondered why law didn't rely more in mathematics to regulate such dynamics. It is trivially easy to describe a formula which gives you a tax that doesn't impact the many have-nots while preventing perverse accumulation and still leaving enough slack in the middle to incentivise people to take part in a market. And anyone who disagrees: you can tweak the formula to any cutoff point, you can make it grow linear, logarithmic or exponential etc. That being said, things like your solutions should always come with thorough check by a red team. E.g. what about the rich guy just forming a new company per property to evade that tax? So maybe it is smarter to bind that to an actual owner person. How will the shape of houses change if their count gets important (that could be how we get these cyberpunk-megabuildings)? Maybe it should be about rental units instead (or some other clever definition)? Sometimes I wonder if the best solution wouldn't be to prevent companies from owning housing alltogether..
  - chgs 3y ago
    Higher interest rates doesn’t fix this at all. The supply shortage is in available land (with the right permission/zoning/etc) Higher rates will reduce the profit the land owner can take, but they also increase the costs to the builder who has to pay the bank more to borrow to build (before repaying after selling). It doesn’t affect the affordability for the purchaser which is set as a given percentage of their monthly income.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Funny you'd say that, that's exactly the conclusion (the housing market, i.e. investment opportunities, being the cause of the housing crisis, i.e. lack of affordability) in this video essay from Philosophy Tube 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> I live in the EU! People raise millions and 10s of millions here for stuff that is nonsense Is it purely private money? I've noticed a lot of nonsense European start-ups are basically consulting gigs with a public grant writer.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  I am talking private money. Grants is a lot easier but are usually just tax breaks (you need to spend money first) so get vc money and then grants on top for the tax breaks.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    How far does millions or 10’s of millions get you in the EU? In Silicon Valley… that’s not a lot.
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      It depends on the startup I guess, but for software/saas a few million seed gets you off and away: wages, bonuses etc are all a lot lower than what I see for sv. Especially if you hire in the south.
    - yomly 3y ago
      10 years ago the entry level SWE salary for FANG was about 160k USD. Today, about 100K GBP or EUR are still "senior" SWE salaries at a lot of non-FANG tech companies around UK and Europe. In that time, the currencies have also cratered against the USD. The question is, which is it? Do engineers generate so much value that they should earn hundreds of thousands or are US engineers overpaid. Given that most the FANGs generate over 1.5M per employee I'm inclined towards the former. Europe/UK is just poor. Our markets are smaller, our dreams are smaller and we settle for lower salaries while around us everything else gets more expensive, land healthcare education and energy.
      - anonzzzies 3y ago
latenightcoding 3y ago
I’m actually shocked at the number of ChatGPT wrappers ycombinator has accepted recently
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Yeah, that. Are the pitches public and is there anyone who can openly explain why these have been accepted? I guess the answer is ‘we invest in people, not ideas’ but the quality of these has been dramatically bad (I think my 5% useful is pretty optimistic) so I feel I am missing something.
mnky9800n 3y ago
Who are they raising money from? I have plenty of ideas and if I can bank roll them with an fat investment on an open ai wrapper that I pivot away from all the better. Lol.

atoav 3y ago

I am not even sure if I find that good or bad. There are other things people invest into that have more problematic consequences. For example I'd like to have someone explain me how housing can be both a good investment for rich people and a commodity people can afford — the way I see it these are fundamentally incompatible goals. One is about making housing prices go up, so your one investment gives you more profit, the other is about building enough to keep the prices stable (or even going down).

flakeoil 3y ago
The problem is that currently (at least until the interest rates went up to a reasonable level) housing was a (too) good investment for the rich. Prices just went up and up without any added value. This made houses expensive for the ones who wanted to buy a house to live in. The main profit should instead only come from the actual building of the house, by a construction company, and selling it the first time to someone who wants to live there. This is where value add comes from. Higher interest rates fixes this.
- consp 3y ago
  > Higher interest rates fixes this Yet prices keep going up and up and up and up. Just slap a massive fine (I mean tax of course but that is just semantics) on any profits from a second or higher house. And dont start with the "you can't change the rules of the game in play"; sure you can, you just dont like it.
  - flakeoil 3y ago
    > Yet prices keep going up and up and up and up. The thing is that the interest rates need to stay higher for a long time (many years). Many home owners and speculators have fixed interests on their loans. It is not until they have to be renewed that they feel the effect of the higher interest rates. So unfortunately it will take time.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I always wondered why law didn't rely more in mathematics to regulate such dynamics. It is trivially easy to describe a formula which gives you a tax that doesn't impact the many have-nots while preventing perverse accumulation and still leaving enough slack in the middle to incentivise people to take part in a market. And anyone who disagrees: you can tweak the formula to any cutoff point, you can make it grow linear, logarithmic or exponential etc. That being said, things like your solutions should always come with thorough check by a red team. E.g. what about the rich guy just forming a new company per property to evade that tax? So maybe it is smarter to bind that to an actual owner person. How will the shape of houses change if their count gets important (that could be how we get these cyberpunk-megabuildings)? Maybe it should be about rental units instead (or some other clever definition)? Sometimes I wonder if the best solution wouldn't be to prevent companies from owning housing alltogether..
- chgs 3y ago
  Higher interest rates doesn’t fix this at all. The supply shortage is in available land (with the right permission/zoning/etc) Higher rates will reduce the profit the land owner can take, but they also increase the costs to the builder who has to pay the bank more to borrow to build (before repaying after selling). It doesn’t affect the affordability for the purchaser which is set as a given percentage of their monthly income.
hnbad 3y ago
Funny you'd say that, that's exactly the conclusion (the housing market, i.e. investment opportunities, being the cause of the housing crisis, i.e. lack of affordability) in this video essay from Philosophy Tube 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> I live in the EU! People raise millions and 10s of millions here for stuff that is nonsense Is it purely private money? I've noticed a lot of nonsense European start-ups are basically consulting gigs with a public grant writer.

anonzzzies 3y ago
I am talking private money. Grants is a lot easier but are usually just tax breaks (you need to spend money first) so get vc money and then grants on top for the tax breaks.
- adastra22 3y ago
  How far does millions or 10’s of millions get you in the EU? In Silicon Valley… that’s not a lot.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    It depends on the startup I guess, but for software/saas a few million seed gets you off and away: wages, bonuses etc are all a lot lower than what I see for sv. Especially if you hire in the south.
  - yomly 3y ago
    10 years ago the entry level SWE salary for FANG was about 160k USD. Today, about 100K GBP or EUR are still "senior" SWE salaries at a lot of non-FANG tech companies around UK and Europe. In that time, the currencies have also cratered against the USD. The question is, which is it? Do engineers generate so much value that they should earn hundreds of thousands or are US engineers overpaid. Given that most the FANGs generate over 1.5M per employee I'm inclined towards the former. Europe/UK is just poor. Our markets are smaller, our dreams are smaller and we settle for lower salaries while around us everything else gets more expensive, land healthcare education and energy.
    - anonzzzies 3y ago

latenightcoding 3y ago

I’m actually shocked at the number of ChatGPT wrappers ycombinator has accepted recently

anonzzzies 3y ago
Yeah, that. Are the pitches public and is there anyone who can openly explain why these have been accepted? I guess the answer is ‘we invest in people, not ideas’ but the quality of these has been dramatically bad (I think my 5% useful is pretty optimistic) so I feel I am missing something.

mnky9800n 3y ago

Who are they raising money from? I have plenty of ideas and if I can bank roll them with an fat investment on an open ai wrapper that I pivot away from all the better. Lol.