6 ms·

Small online business owner here, chiming in. I believe the overuse of the word startup comes from a certain kind of pretentiousness, a want to associate one's

Small online business owner here, chiming in. I believe the overuse of the word startup comes from a certain kind of pretentiousness, a want to associate one's own small-business, small-market, technically trivial, mom-and-pop online business with world leaders like Facebook and Google. Making the linguistic link is good for the founder's ego, and even better for convincing naïve investors to fund barely viable visions. If you're one of the many non-technical teams who cannot build products yourselves and have an idea with dubious money-making prospects then you can have a great adventure on half a million euro of dumb money, and believe me many founders in Berlin are. I've lived in Berlin since January and during that time I witnessed a rising hipster startup culture. Unskilled and unexperienced college graduates with big egos raise dumb money, hire programmers to build code they don't understand, then spend their days 'networking' at trendy hotels in down-town, throwing minimal techno parties and going on trips across Europe for 'business and pleasure'. It's a great lifestyle, and I've nothing against people enjoying themselves - it's certainly my priority now. But I find this sort of carry on repugnant when an investor's money is at stake. Viaweb was founded by PHD students at MIT, one who invented the worm and the other who wrote timeless Common Lisp textbooks. The modern waterfall of self-professed 'startups' are run by guys and girls who watched 'How to Build a Blog in 15 minutes using Rails' then decided they were the next Steve Jobs. Let's get realistic here - building a web app or an Iphone app these days is no more high-tech than a mechanic fixing your broken car. Drop the ego, drop the pretense - the majority of business now labelled as startups are small online businesses and there's nothing wrong with that.

nihonjon 14y ago
I can back Jack in saying the Berlin startup culture is vommit-inducing.
cjkarr 14y ago
"Viacom was founded by PHD students at MIT..." Wasn't it Viaweb? Big difference between Viacom (the media conglomerate) and Viaweb, the online shop software.
- jackkinsella 14y ago
  Fixed. I had Viacom on my brain for other reasons resulting in a nasty typo.
simonbrown 14y ago
Most startup founders use tutorials to build technically trivial web/iphone apps, and yet they hire programmers and can't build products themselves?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
That is what a 'bubble' looks like. People with more money than sense giving it to people because those people are offering up what ever is the bubble today. In this case "startup". The dumb money will be lost, the "startup founders" will slink away (for the most part) into nondescript corporate jobs, and saying you are doing a "startup" will become a bad thing. Well at least that was what happened here in the Bay Area during the 90's.
tylermauthe 14y ago
As college student who grew up watching Zuck "get rich easy", I was easily taken in by the Hipster startup culture. Very unfortunately for me, I only found out about this fantastic site (Hacker News) about 5 months ago. By this time, the hipster ethos was rampant and I was swept up by it. My ego deeply resonated with their fancy promises and extravagant buzz words. However, there is a thread of hope. An undercurrent of truth which I have recently started to uncover within the layers of crud. I just read Paul Graham's essay Beating the Averages last night and realized that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Lately there has been a growing thread of dissatisfaction with Hacker News. It feels as though the original community has become diluted by an influx of folks like myself, eager to make their mark but too naïve to really do anything constructive (and too naïve to realize we’re naïve). But we are learning. So, Hacker News, thanks for putting up with us noobs! I realize now that I won’t be the next Zuck, but if I keep listening and learning from HN, I just might make a dent in the universe.
- nirvana 14y ago
  You're absolutely right on all counts. But also realize that while, 4 years ago HN was more diverse in many ways, it still was overrun with "startup hipsters", though they weren't called that. You saw people denigrating others startups as "lifestyle businesses" and me suggesting that one might pursue product market fit before VC money was laughed at. Back then the Word of PG was the Word of God, and you could be shot down with a misrepresentaiton of a PG quote. (Did you know PG opposed customer development? I bet he didn't!) For awhile I though HN was going to become a cult of personality for PG.
- personlurking 14y ago
  I work for a 4 yr old startup. I'm an ideas guy but I didn't have the idea for the startup I work for, I merely do administrative projects for it. Nonetheless, I have to be careful how I word things. About a month ago, I was at a meetup which had nothing to do with technology or the internet but I ran into a guy who was throwing out some buzzwords. The point came early on when he asked me what I do, and I really didn't want to say I worked for a startup (because I sensed what was coming) but I did because I do. Then came the 20 minute monologue throwing out many more buzzwords and how he'd just moved to SV. He was going over how he was just pre-launch and outsourcing the coding, blah blah blah. He was very, very excited about his project (at least there's that). But then he told me what it was (I forget but it had to do with health, it might have been a lifestyle app) and I thought to myself, "but specifically what you're describing is not a startup, that's a small business that happens to be online." He wanted to keep in touch, almost as if we were two kindred souls braving the unknown and at that point I gave him the (true) line that works really well in certain circumstances such as these. "I'm not searchable on Facebook, sorry, but you can send me an email." In casual settings, no one ever sends the email, by the way. It's FB or nothing. Being that I have another regular job (that happens to be online), I now say I do that instead of "I work for a startup." Though, believe me, if I had one, I'd have zero shame in saying it.
nirvana 14y ago
I've seen a lot of this as well. And the term "dumb money" is right-- there are two causes of startup death in my experience. The first being fights between the founders paralyzing progress. The second being VCs forcing the company to ignore profitalble lines of business or customer traction and chase the VC's favorite fad of the day. But, this is also a perversion of the meaning of the word "startup". A lot of the BS aquihires-in-waiting in the Bay Area are not startps either. Somehow getting dumb money and being faux "scalable" has become what "a startup" is, with everything else (That is real busiensses, often scalable themselves) termed a "lifestyle business." A one man SaaS business is scalable if the target market is large enough, and even if it is a nich, PG has advised people to conquer a niche and then move to adjacent markets. So, if patio11 keeps his business at the size that he can run it by himself, that's fine, that's a choice, but I disagree with the idea that there's some magical "scalability" that those who live in the Bay Area and get funded by VCs have, compared to living in Japan and not taking investment. When you have no engineering background and your primary skill is BS, then its really easy to morph your "business" into whatever investors want and get that dumb money. But if you really want to build a business- then follow Running Lean, Steve Blank, and build that business. Chasing investor money seems to be a waste of time-- Investors would rather fund these hipsters than Viaweb.
incision 14y ago
"Let's get realistic here - building a web app or an Iphone app these days is no more high-tech than a mechanic fixing your broken car." I think high-tech folks tend to underestimate what it takes to be a mechanic.
- dasil003 14y ago
  Perhaps, but the analogy is not all bad. After all, there's a lot to know about making web or iPhone apps. You might pick up the basics fast enough, but if you don't know what you're doing it's liable to blow up down the road.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Are you saying there is not a big difference between a great mechanic (who fixes stuff that stays fixed) and the one to whom you are always bringing your car back to?
- eavc 14y ago
  I think the HN crowd (as a whole) tends to underestimate what it takes to do just about any job aside from programming.
- jackkinsella 14y ago
  Nothing against the skill of mechanics here. Striped of hyperbole my point was that 'high tech' is another phrase that needs to be rescued. Recently the term has come to mean 'anything that uses custom code', and the distinction between technology and high technology has decayed. Of course mechanics are skilled; my point was that the bar for considering oneself to be on the cutting edge of technology has moved upwards and that the companies and programmers building routine Ruby on Rails web-applications and iPhone apps need to re-assess their place and adjust their egos accordingly.

nihonjon 14y ago

I can back Jack in saying the Berlin startup culture is vommit-inducing.

cjkarr 14y ago

"Viacom was founded by PHD students at MIT..." Wasn't it Viaweb? Big difference between Viacom (the media conglomerate) and Viaweb, the online shop software.

jackkinsella 14y ago
Fixed. I had Viacom on my brain for other reasons resulting in a nasty typo.

simonbrown 14y ago

Most startup founders use tutorials to build technically trivial web/iphone apps, and yet they hire programmers and can't build products themselves?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

That is what a 'bubble' looks like. People with more money than sense giving it to people because those people are offering up what ever is the bubble today. In this case "startup". The dumb money will be lost, the "startup founders" will slink away (for the most part) into nondescript corporate jobs, and saying you are doing a "startup" will become a bad thing. Well at least that was what happened here in the Bay Area during the 90's.

tylermauthe 14y ago

As college student who grew up watching Zuck "get rich easy", I was easily taken in by the Hipster startup culture. Very unfortunately for me, I only found out about this fantastic site (Hacker News) about 5 months ago. By this time, the hipster ethos was rampant and I was swept up by it. My ego deeply resonated with their fancy promises and extravagant buzz words. However, there is a thread of hope. An undercurrent of truth which I have recently started to uncover within the layers of crud. I just read Paul Graham's essay Beating the Averages last night and realized that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Lately there has been a growing thread of dissatisfaction with Hacker News. It feels as though the original community has become diluted by an influx of folks like myself, eager to make their mark but too naïve to really do anything constructive (and too naïve to realize we’re naïve). But we are learning. So, Hacker News, thanks for putting up with us noobs! I realize now that I won’t be the next Zuck, but if I keep listening and learning from HN, I just might make a dent in the universe.

nirvana 14y ago
You're absolutely right on all counts. But also realize that while, 4 years ago HN was more diverse in many ways, it still was overrun with "startup hipsters", though they weren't called that. You saw people denigrating others startups as "lifestyle businesses" and me suggesting that one might pursue product market fit before VC money was laughed at. Back then the Word of PG was the Word of God, and you could be shot down with a misrepresentaiton of a PG quote. (Did you know PG opposed customer development? I bet he didn't!) For awhile I though HN was going to become a cult of personality for PG.
personlurking 14y ago
I work for a 4 yr old startup. I'm an ideas guy but I didn't have the idea for the startup I work for, I merely do administrative projects for it. Nonetheless, I have to be careful how I word things. About a month ago, I was at a meetup which had nothing to do with technology or the internet but I ran into a guy who was throwing out some buzzwords. The point came early on when he asked me what I do, and I really didn't want to say I worked for a startup (because I sensed what was coming) but I did because I do. Then came the 20 minute monologue throwing out many more buzzwords and how he'd just moved to SV. He was going over how he was just pre-launch and outsourcing the coding, blah blah blah. He was very, very excited about his project (at least there's that). But then he told me what it was (I forget but it had to do with health, it might have been a lifestyle app) and I thought to myself, "but specifically what you're describing is not a startup, that's a small business that happens to be online." He wanted to keep in touch, almost as if we were two kindred souls braving the unknown and at that point I gave him the (true) line that works really well in certain circumstances such as these. "I'm not searchable on Facebook, sorry, but you can send me an email." In casual settings, no one ever sends the email, by the way. It's FB or nothing. Being that I have another regular job (that happens to be online), I now say I do that instead of "I work for a startup." Though, believe me, if I had one, I'd have zero shame in saying it.

nirvana 14y ago

I've seen a lot of this as well. And the term "dumb money" is right-- there are two causes of startup death in my experience. The first being fights between the founders paralyzing progress. The second being VCs forcing the company to ignore profitalble lines of business or customer traction and chase the VC's favorite fad of the day. But, this is also a perversion of the meaning of the word "startup". A lot of the BS aquihires-in-waiting in the Bay Area are not startps either. Somehow getting dumb money and being faux "scalable" has become what "a startup" is, with everything else (That is real busiensses, often scalable themselves) termed a "lifestyle business." A one man SaaS business is scalable if the target market is large enough, and even if it is a nich, PG has advised people to conquer a niche and then move to adjacent markets. So, if patio11 keeps his business at the size that he can run it by himself, that's fine, that's a choice, but I disagree with the idea that there's some magical "scalability" that those who live in the Bay Area and get funded by VCs have, compared to living in Japan and not taking investment. When you have no engineering background and your primary skill is BS, then its really easy to morph your "business" into whatever investors want and get that dumb money. But if you really want to build a business- then follow Running Lean, Steve Blank, and build that business. Chasing investor money seems to be a waste of time-- Investors would rather fund these hipsters than Viaweb.

incision 14y ago

"Let's get realistic here - building a web app or an Iphone app these days is no more high-tech than a mechanic fixing your broken car." I think high-tech folks tend to underestimate what it takes to be a mechanic.

dasil003 14y ago
Perhaps, but the analogy is not all bad. After all, there's a lot to know about making web or iPhone apps. You might pick up the basics fast enough, but if you don't know what you're doing it's liable to blow up down the road.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Are you saying there is not a big difference between a great mechanic (who fixes stuff that stays fixed) and the one to whom you are always bringing your car back to?
eavc 14y ago
I think the HN crowd (as a whole) tends to underestimate what it takes to do just about any job aside from programming.
jackkinsella 14y ago
Nothing against the skill of mechanics here. Striped of hyperbole my point was that 'high tech' is another phrase that needs to be rescued. Recently the term has come to mean 'anything that uses custom code', and the distinction between technology and high technology has decayed. Of course mechanics are skilled; my point was that the bar for considering oneself to be on the cutting edge of technology has moved upwards and that the companies and programmers building routine Ruby on Rails web-applications and iPhone apps need to re-assess their place and adjust their egos accordingly.