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I think over the last year or two, the culture of Silicon Valley startups is to leave their customers high and dry when they basically get tired of running a st

by steven2012 13y ago

I think over the last year or two, the culture of Silicon Valley startups is to leave their customers high and dry when they basically get tired of running a startup and get acqu-hired, or when they pivot because they don't make enough money. It's this lack of true conviction in what they are working on, and the culture of chasing the juiciest, low-hanging fruit to enrich themselves rather than serve their customers that would make me never, ever purchase from a startup until they are much bigger. This idea of "fail fast and fuck over your current customers" is probably the thing that would most endanger the startup culture of Silicon Valley at this point, if this keeps happening at the rate that it has been.

nwenzel 13y ago
Post author here. Absolutely agree that any company transition, whether an acqui-hire or divestiture or acquisition or shutdown or product version sunset, that hurts customers is a a horrible thing. That said, the acqui-hires and shutdowns get a lot more of the press than the companies that serve their customers quietly. Customers are investors. They invest their time, people, and budget into your product. That's true whether you're the newest NoSQL database to hit the market or Oracle. When you sell to a customer, you're making them a promise.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  When you sell to a customer, you're making them a promise. Unfortunately, it is a promise that has no value. With the kinds of exit we're talking about, the promise is readily broken, and with little or no adverse consequences for the start-up. Meanwhile, there may be strong incentives for a small business to pivot away to a different strategy or to take a lucrative exit, even at the expensive of existing customers. This situation is magnified dramatically as soon as any serious outside investment is involved. You said it yourself, right at the end, if you just consider something you wrote from the other side of the fence: Large vendors succeed by executing to a known plan. Large organisations in general like executing to known plans, and relying on a start-up almost inevitably brings a much higher risk of having to change those plans than relying on more stable, established suppliers. And while small organisations might be more nimble when it comes to changing plans, stability in the supply chain is possibly even more valuable in that context, because you have limited resources. Integrating with any external dependency takes work, and if you're going to do it, you really only want to do it once and then not worry about it. The kind of lean, MVP-producing, pivot-happy, investor-funded, five-minute-old B2B tech startups we often discuss on HN are the antithesis of that stability. The really good ones offer enough advantage over doing things another way that using them is still justified, but most simply don't and it's hardly surprising that a lot of potential customers shy away from them and head for more stable ground even if it comes at a somewhat higher price.

nwenzel 13y ago

Post author here. Absolutely agree that any company transition, whether an acqui-hire or divestiture or acquisition or shutdown or product version sunset, that hurts customers is a a horrible thing. That said, the acqui-hires and shutdowns get a lot more of the press than the companies that serve their customers quietly. Customers are investors. They invest their time, people, and budget into your product. That's true whether you're the newest NoSQL database to hit the market or Oracle. When you sell to a customer, you're making them a promise.

Silhouette 13y ago
When you sell to a customer, you're making them a promise. Unfortunately, it is a promise that has no value. With the kinds of exit we're talking about, the promise is readily broken, and with little or no adverse consequences for the start-up. Meanwhile, there may be strong incentives for a small business to pivot away to a different strategy or to take a lucrative exit, even at the expensive of existing customers. This situation is magnified dramatically as soon as any serious outside investment is involved. You said it yourself, right at the end, if you just consider something you wrote from the other side of the fence: Large vendors succeed by executing to a known plan. Large organisations in general like executing to known plans, and relying on a start-up almost inevitably brings a much higher risk of having to change those plans than relying on more stable, established suppliers. And while small organisations might be more nimble when it comes to changing plans, stability in the supply chain is possibly even more valuable in that context, because you have limited resources. Integrating with any external dependency takes work, and if you're going to do it, you really only want to do it once and then not worry about it. The kind of lean, MVP-producing, pivot-happy, investor-funded, five-minute-old B2B tech startups we often discuss on HN are the antithesis of that stability. The really good ones offer enough advantage over doing things another way that using them is still justified, but most simply don't and it's hardly surprising that a lot of potential customers shy away from them and head for more stable ground even if it comes at a somewhat higher price.