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It's odd how this comment appears so frequently on HN and yet each time someone makes it they seem to be under the impression they're making a novel observation

by pg 14y ago

It's odd how this comment appears so frequently on HN and yet each time someone makes it they seem to be under the impression they're making a novel observation. It's like the comment that copying music isn't stealing, or the comment that when women say no they mean no. There may be a pattern here. Perhaps the pattern is that these statements are emptily true: they're either truisms if taken literally, or miss the point otherwise. It may be the latter disconnect with reality gives the commenter the impression that they have discovered some new insight that needs to be mentioned. I.e. a truism that was also true when applied to the world would clearly be something that everyone else also believed, and thus wouldn't be worth mentioning.

tptacek 14y ago
I think you may unintentionally be implying that there aren't lots of people in the "startup culture" that do in fact consider getting funding to be an intrinsically important achievement. That seems like a meme worth quashing. I agree that the comment has become very boring. It is especially annoying to see it injected into conversations that don't really involve VC funding.
- pg 14y ago
  It's an achievement of a sort. It's kind of like winning a medal: the metal disc in itself is unimportant, but it matters because it's a sign someone was impressed with you for something. As with medals, how much it matters depends on who was impressed with you and for what. Later rounds converge on measuring revenue, which is what people who think companies shouldn't be celebrating fundraising usually think they should be celebrating instead.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    It's interesting to observe that the VC rounds that are most often casually mocked on HN --- the huge rounds like Benchmark and then DST's in Twitter --- are, as proxies for earnings expectations presumably based on some very compelling inside information, a more meaningful milestone than many of small first rounds, which are often blue-sky. As usual, even when the conventional wisdom of HN is on to something, it's for the wrong reasons and rapidly reaches the wrong conclusions.
  - ebbv 14y ago
    The difference being that it's just the amount of money involved that is driving the reprinting of the press release, not the worthiness of the recipient or the track record of the VC. It's just "Oh millions of dollars! Let's repost this!" Like I said originally; I'm happy for anyone who gets funding to pursue their project. Great for them. But it doesn't affect me at all, especially since so many of them are so early in their development they don't have anything to talk about it. It's just a waste of anyone's time who's not involved.
  - dkrich 14y ago
    I disagree with that analogy. A medal is, in and of itself, the award you are seeking to win. Yes, there may be an intermediary goal involved, swimming 200 meters faster than anybody else, or having an invention that is viewed as the most innovative in a field. But the medal represents your accomplishment. A funding round, as I understand it, is financing to enable a certain goal. I don't knock companies that seek funding, and I would congratulate any that received it IF that is something that they deemed necessary. I think this notion that it is an "achievement of sort" is the type of thinking that elicits these types of repetitive comments that remind people, an investment round is awarded to make possible a goal by increasing its access to resources.
    - mikeryan 14y ago
      A medal is, in and of itself, the award you are seeking to win I think you're missing the distinction between the symbol and the act. A medal is not what you are seeking to win. Its a representation of what you have achieved (which seems to be pg's point). You can take away all of Michael Phelps medals and it won't in one way diminish the fact that 18 times he was the fastest guy in the pool at the Olympics.
      - dkrich 14y ago
        And if I take away your 4 rounds of funding have I changed the viability of your product in the market place? Conversely if I fund you, does that in any way validate your product? Nope. Paying customers do that I'm afraid. To suggest that a round of funding is an achievement in and of itself is to put it in the same camp as winning a business plan competition. Sure it might show that One person likes your idea, but that's pretty much worthless compared to paying customers.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        dkrich 14y ago
        Heh, you guys are hilarious. Bring up disagreements about the BS funding train in this echo-chamber and get downvoted to hell as if that makes the statements any less valid. Hahahahaha, downvote away.
- mikeryan 14y ago
  I think you may unintentionally be implying that there aren't lots of people in the "startup culture" that do in fact consider getting funding to be an intrinsically important achievement. It seems to me that raising a large VC round does have an intrinsic and lasting value, I'm not sure whether it should. Kevin Rose is a great example of this type of success. He's started 4 or 5 companies that I'm aware of, out of those AFAIK Revision3 is the only one that I believe had an exit based on the merits of the company (Milk, was a successful exit but seemed like an acqui-hire). We also continually get messaged that having founded a company once even if it fails is going to be a leg up when raising money for your next venture. Anyway its hard to say "raising money" doesn't have intrinsic value, when Silicon Valley (and I don't mean "startup culture" I mean the players actually doing deals in SV) continually signals that it does.
lbrandy 14y ago
It seems to me to just be the HN version of the "SO BRAVE" post. http://reddipedia.com/So_Brave http://reddipedia.com/So_Brave We invent a "startup culture" archetype (and strawman) to which to ascribe things that no one actually believes and are easy to disagree with. We then disagree with it. And then we, and everyone who upvotes us, feels like clear-thinking contrarians for pointing out the obvious flaws that lots of people (read: no one) believe.
- ebbv 14y ago
  Wait, are you implying that nobody actually thinks VC funding round press releases are newsworthy? Because that's obviously not true based on the fact that they get posted and upvoted regularly. Yeah nobody might be out there going "Geez I'd love to see more stories about VC funding.", but people are reprinting them and upvoting them. And that's the behavior I was saying should stop.
ebbv 14y ago
First of all, congratulations on your achievements in the field of condescension. I know how hard you and your team worked this year to reach new heights, and it has really paid off. Second; at no point did I think it was a novel complaint. I'm well aware that it's an opinion that is both widely held and has been previously stated. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be restated. Because the reality is that content-free blurbs about funding rounds continually get posted, upvoted, reprinted, etc. all over the tech industry as though they mean anything to anyone who is not directly involved in the operations of the company in question. This should be called out as the meaningless crap that it is, and it should be replaced by actual content.
- mattdeboard 14y ago
  > This should be called out as the meaningless crap that it is, and it should be replaced by actual content. Meanwhile it seems to have eluded you that the whole point of this thread is that your original comment was meaningless crap devoid of any actual content.
  - ebbv 14y ago
    Except that it obviously did, because I spent an hour or two yesterday going back and forth with people about that content. But hey, it's cool if you wanna be really wrong.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Perhaps the difference is that the population of people reading HN who have closed a funding round is so small relative to the general population. Start ups are by their nature a few founders and many more employees, so unless someone actually goes out and tries to get funded they don't understand what is at stake. Sort of like saying "Woo hoo, you got through hell week in your Seal training, didn't 20 other guys get through too?"

by pg 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

I think you may unintentionally be implying that there aren't lots of people in the "startup culture" that do in fact consider getting funding to be an intrinsically important achievement. That seems like a meme worth quashing. I agree that the comment has become very boring. It is especially annoying to see it injected into conversations that don't really involve VC funding.

pg 14y ago
It's an achievement of a sort. It's kind of like winning a medal: the metal disc in itself is unimportant, but it matters because it's a sign someone was impressed with you for something. As with medals, how much it matters depends on who was impressed with you and for what. Later rounds converge on measuring revenue, which is what people who think companies shouldn't be celebrating fundraising usually think they should be celebrating instead.
- tptacek 14y ago
  It's interesting to observe that the VC rounds that are most often casually mocked on HN --- the huge rounds like Benchmark and then DST's in Twitter --- are, as proxies for earnings expectations presumably based on some very compelling inside information, a more meaningful milestone than many of small first rounds, which are often blue-sky. As usual, even when the conventional wisdom of HN is on to something, it's for the wrong reasons and rapidly reaches the wrong conclusions.
- ebbv 14y ago
  The difference being that it's just the amount of money involved that is driving the reprinting of the press release, not the worthiness of the recipient or the track record of the VC. It's just "Oh millions of dollars! Let's repost this!" Like I said originally; I'm happy for anyone who gets funding to pursue their project. Great for them. But it doesn't affect me at all, especially since so many of them are so early in their development they don't have anything to talk about it. It's just a waste of anyone's time who's not involved.
- dkrich 14y ago
  I disagree with that analogy. A medal is, in and of itself, the award you are seeking to win. Yes, there may be an intermediary goal involved, swimming 200 meters faster than anybody else, or having an invention that is viewed as the most innovative in a field. But the medal represents your accomplishment. A funding round, as I understand it, is financing to enable a certain goal. I don't knock companies that seek funding, and I would congratulate any that received it IF that is something that they deemed necessary. I think this notion that it is an "achievement of sort" is the type of thinking that elicits these types of repetitive comments that remind people, an investment round is awarded to make possible a goal by increasing its access to resources.
  - mikeryan 14y ago
    A medal is, in and of itself, the award you are seeking to win I think you're missing the distinction between the symbol and the act. A medal is not what you are seeking to win. Its a representation of what you have achieved (which seems to be pg's point). You can take away all of Michael Phelps medals and it won't in one way diminish the fact that 18 times he was the fastest guy in the pool at the Olympics.
    - dkrich 14y ago
      And if I take away your 4 rounds of funding have I changed the viability of your product in the market place? Conversely if I fund you, does that in any way validate your product? Nope. Paying customers do that I'm afraid. To suggest that a round of funding is an achievement in and of itself is to put it in the same camp as winning a business plan competition. Sure it might show that One person likes your idea, but that's pretty much worthless compared to paying customers.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - dkrich 14y ago
        Heh, you guys are hilarious. Bring up disagreements about the BS funding train in this echo-chamber and get downvoted to hell as if that makes the statements any less valid. Hahahahaha, downvote away.
mikeryan 14y ago
I think you may unintentionally be implying that there aren't lots of people in the "startup culture" that do in fact consider getting funding to be an intrinsically important achievement. It seems to me that raising a large VC round does have an intrinsic and lasting value, I'm not sure whether it should. Kevin Rose is a great example of this type of success. He's started 4 or 5 companies that I'm aware of, out of those AFAIK Revision3 is the only one that I believe had an exit based on the merits of the company (Milk, was a successful exit but seemed like an acqui-hire). We also continually get messaged that having founded a company once even if it fails is going to be a leg up when raising money for your next venture. Anyway its hard to say "raising money" doesn't have intrinsic value, when Silicon Valley (and I don't mean "startup culture" I mean the players actually doing deals in SV) continually signals that it does.

lbrandy 14y ago

It seems to me to just be the HN version of the "SO BRAVE" post. http://reddipedia.com/So_Brave http://reddipedia.com/So_Brave We invent a "startup culture" archetype (and strawman) to which to ascribe things that no one actually believes and are easy to disagree with. We then disagree with it. And then we, and everyone who upvotes us, feels like clear-thinking contrarians for pointing out the obvious flaws that lots of people (read: no one) believe.

ebbv 14y ago
Wait, are you implying that nobody actually thinks VC funding round press releases are newsworthy? Because that's obviously not true based on the fact that they get posted and upvoted regularly. Yeah nobody might be out there going "Geez I'd love to see more stories about VC funding.", but people are reprinting them and upvoting them. And that's the behavior I was saying should stop.

ebbv 14y ago

First of all, congratulations on your achievements in the field of condescension. I know how hard you and your team worked this year to reach new heights, and it has really paid off. Second; at no point did I think it was a novel complaint. I'm well aware that it's an opinion that is both widely held and has been previously stated. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be restated. Because the reality is that content-free blurbs about funding rounds continually get posted, upvoted, reprinted, etc. all over the tech industry as though they mean anything to anyone who is not directly involved in the operations of the company in question. This should be called out as the meaningless crap that it is, and it should be replaced by actual content.

mattdeboard 14y ago
> This should be called out as the meaningless crap that it is, and it should be replaced by actual content. Meanwhile it seems to have eluded you that the whole point of this thread is that your original comment was meaningless crap devoid of any actual content.
- ebbv 14y ago
  Except that it obviously did, because I spent an hour or two yesterday going back and forth with people about that content. But hey, it's cool if you wanna be really wrong.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Perhaps the difference is that the population of people reading HN who have closed a funding round is so small relative to the general population. Start ups are by their nature a few founders and many more employees, so unless someone actually goes out and tries to get funded they don't understand what is at stake. Sort of like saying "Woo hoo, you got through hell week in your Seal training, didn't 20 other guys get through too?"