4 ms·

In an alternate universe, this genre would sound like: "We produced a great product which costs $60k a month to run but which only charges customers $8k. We hop

by patio11 12y ago

In an alternate universe, this genre would sound like: "We produced a great product which costs $60k a month to run but which only charges customers $8k. We hope you have enjoyed being subsidized by our investors and below-market salaries, but there is simply no more subsidy left. We received an offer of a soft landing, which means the team is taken care of and the founders get a consolation prize which doesn't quite make up for spurning the BigCo offers they turned down to get here. We took it. Please tell uninvolved third parties who have never even heard of us before to mock us on the Internet, as is customary in these sorts of situations." We do not ask people to actually write that because to do so would be petty, cruel, and beneath a community organized around people who make things.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
"We produced a product that was never, ever going to pay for itself in the hopes that it would convince a bigger company to give us all stable jobs and/or a truckload of cash so we could stop pretending that this boondoggle was sustainable. And it worked! We're so happy!" "Oh, you...you used the product? Wow. Sucks to be you." Any time you hear a startup guy talking about their "exit strategy," understand that this is what they mean.
- patio11 12y ago
  This view is quite popular on HN. It is false. Substantially nobody starts a startup with the idea that they will get bought out by $NAME_AN_ACQUIRER. This is a sucky and very stressful way to buy yourself a job interview at the cost of two years of your life. There's a much, much easier way to get a job interview with, without loss of generality, Dropbox: ask for one. If you're a designer with sufficient chops to get a prototype funded by YC, you can have a job at Dropbox by Friday. (Step 1: identity any design lead at Dropbox. Step 2: coffee date. Step 3: interview. Step 3 may even be optional, depending how good you were at steps 1 and 2.) It's the hottest hiring market in the Valley in the history of ever. Many people have a poor understanding of the rough economics of selling a company in a soft landing vs. taking a hiring bonus from AmaGooFaceSoft. The hiring bonus is substantially more lucrative, particularly for non-founding employees, when you amortize it over the time (and opportunity cost) required to achieve it. I appreciate that it is frustrating if someone pays $19 a month loyally and then finds one day that $19 doesn't suffice to field a team of five engineers and designers continue to work on producing them bespoke software development. The source of frustration is not "unsustainable models" or "evil VC funding" -- it is, simply, that $19 doesn't buy that caliber of software development unless it's being paid by, oh, +/- 4,000 people in parallel. There exist options if one desires continuity of service in a SaaS app. They require custom legal language and start at $10k. If you don't remember signing custom legal language and you denominate your SaaS spend in dollars or tens of dollars, you haven't purchased continuity of service, even if you think you're entitled to it.
  - sireat 12y ago
    Patrick, you are right that most startups are not started to end their life as acqui-hires. However and this is a bit of generalization on my part, startups in todays ecosystem are often started upon an assumption that acqui-hiring is the fallback plan if things go sour. Source: anecdotal If one values steady returns getting a regular job might be more financially rewarding especially as a non-founder. There have been countless discussions on HN about low payoffs in aggregate for early non-founder employees. However a steady job does not give you "a buck and a dream".
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    > Substantially nobody starts a startup with the idea that they will get bought out by $NAME_AN_ACQUIRER. This is a sucky and very stressful way to buy yourself a job interview at the cost of two years of your life. True. Generally the hope isn't to get a job but a payout big enough to retire immediately, which is why I said "and/or a truckload of cash." Ideally, merely getting hired is a consolation prize for the employees, not the founder. And I disagree that "substantially nobody" does this. "Build a service, sell it to Google, retire at 25" is an actual business plan that I've seen people propose more than once. It's true that they're probably not trying to make something unsustainable that Google/etc will kill on acquisition, but they're also not trying to make something that will stand the test of time. Once they've got their payout, they don't care what happens.

by patio11 12y ago

PhasmaFelis 12y ago

"We produced a product that was never, ever going to pay for itself in the hopes that it would convince a bigger company to give us all stable jobs and/or a truckload of cash so we could stop pretending that this boondoggle was sustainable. And it worked! We're so happy!" "Oh, you...you used the product? Wow. Sucks to be you." Any time you hear a startup guy talking about their "exit strategy," understand that this is what they mean.

patio11 12y ago
This view is quite popular on HN. It is false. Substantially nobody starts a startup with the idea that they will get bought out by $NAME_AN_ACQUIRER. This is a sucky and very stressful way to buy yourself a job interview at the cost of two years of your life. There's a much, much easier way to get a job interview with, without loss of generality, Dropbox: ask for one. If you're a designer with sufficient chops to get a prototype funded by YC, you can have a job at Dropbox by Friday. (Step 1: identity any design lead at Dropbox. Step 2: coffee date. Step 3: interview. Step 3 may even be optional, depending how good you were at steps 1 and 2.) It's the hottest hiring market in the Valley in the history of ever. Many people have a poor understanding of the rough economics of selling a company in a soft landing vs. taking a hiring bonus from AmaGooFaceSoft. The hiring bonus is substantially more lucrative, particularly for non-founding employees, when you amortize it over the time (and opportunity cost) required to achieve it. I appreciate that it is frustrating if someone pays $19 a month loyally and then finds one day that $19 doesn't suffice to field a team of five engineers and designers continue to work on producing them bespoke software development. The source of frustration is not "unsustainable models" or "evil VC funding" -- it is, simply, that $19 doesn't buy that caliber of software development unless it's being paid by, oh, +/- 4,000 people in parallel. There exist options if one desires continuity of service in a SaaS app. They require custom legal language and start at $10k. If you don't remember signing custom legal language and you denominate your SaaS spend in dollars or tens of dollars, you haven't purchased continuity of service, even if you think you're entitled to it.
- sireat 12y ago
  Patrick, you are right that most startups are not started to end their life as acqui-hires. However and this is a bit of generalization on my part, startups in todays ecosystem are often started upon an assumption that acqui-hiring is the fallback plan if things go sour. Source: anecdotal If one values steady returns getting a regular job might be more financially rewarding especially as a non-founder. There have been countless discussions on HN about low payoffs in aggregate for early non-founder employees. However a steady job does not give you "a buck and a dream".
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  > Substantially nobody starts a startup with the idea that they will get bought out by $NAME_AN_ACQUIRER. This is a sucky and very stressful way to buy yourself a job interview at the cost of two years of your life. True. Generally the hope isn't to get a job but a payout big enough to retire immediately, which is why I said "and/or a truckload of cash." Ideally, merely getting hired is a consolation prize for the employees, not the founder. And I disagree that "substantially nobody" does this. "Build a service, sell it to Google, retire at 25" is an actual business plan that I've seen people propose more than once. It's true that they're probably not trying to make something unsustainable that Google/etc will kill on acquisition, but they're also not trying to make something that will stand the test of time. Once they've got their payout, they don't care what happens.