Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
430 comments
·January 21, 2025dcminter
NoboruWataya
> I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of people who are here because they are generically interested in tech topics and not specifically startups
This is certainly me. Generally interested in tech (and many of the other things that HNers seem to be interested in these days), but no real interest in startups. Hope I am not ruining HN for the old timers.
I started using this place a lot more in the last couple of years as Reddit went to shit, so I suspect that was a big driving force in changing the audience here.
TeMPOraL
Relative out-timer here. I came here because of smart people having smart discussions about life, universe, and everything (tech or otherwise). HN both got me to drink the startup kool-aid early on, and then cured me from it later on, ultimately making me a startup-skeptic (and infecting me with an unhealthy dose of cynicism). I guess this is how growing up looks like :).
Ultimately, I still hang around HN because of high-quality discussions; there's really no other place like it, or at least I've found none. Or maybe after all this time, it just feels like home. Still, were the balance to shift hard towards startup talk, I fear we'd lose all the intellectual curiosity driven submissions and discussions - they'd just turn into sharing tips and tricks to make moar moneys with tech, which I personally find BOOOOOORING AF.
kbenson
I was tempted to write much the same, then read yours, so I'll just say "me too, for everything you said" and leave it at that. :)
fragmede
Relatively :)
Macha
This was always me, and I've been here 15 years. It was pretty much a tech forum then (arguably more then than now, there's much more discussion of culture war issues now, even when stories are flagged it's ever-present in the comments). I think the time when HN was primarily startups was much further back and much briefer than most people nostalgically remember.
dcminter
Yes, but the proportions have still changed. It's not static, it's a progression.
2010 will have been different to 2008 (when I joined) but so will 2013 with respect to 2010, 2020 with respect to 2013, and 2025 with respect to 2020.
It's fine that it's much more broadly a tech forum now - but it's silly to infer things about the wider world by comparing attitudes in HN across eras unless you take account of the change in demographic.
As to the culture wars? Perhaps it's time for another "erlang love bombing" campaign to recalibrate :D (When was that anyway...?) Edit: Ah yes, it was in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11
wat10000
I mean, it’s not called Startup News. There’s a group that assumes real hackers all want to do startups (and the site is run by some of those), but that isn’t really the culture. We mythologize Woz and Gates and Page, but also K&R and Knuth and Dijkstra.
Karrot_Kream
So I'm curious, is HN just a general tech news site for you then? Do you expect it to have a focus?
NoboruWataya
Yes to the first question, no to the second. In fact it's not just tech, as I sometimes see interesting articles about history or the arts on here. But of course it is mostly tech-related content.
nick__m
As a Canadian in a low COL area working somewhere with almost absolute job security, a pension plan and plenty of opportunities for learning (I have a few 3 hours sessions on quantum computer starting next week :D ) I don't care much for the SV startup ...
I am here for the selection of interesting articles and the high quality comments when it's not a political thread (those threads have less rational lower quality comments and I am also guilty of producing some os them, I apologize dang).
swat535
If I were to make an off topic comment and by no means I am picking on you personally, however as another Canadian, I find this general attitude of Canadians towards innovation unsettling and dare I say it's the reason why we are always playing catch up with US. It's also the number one reason why we are bleeding top talent to Americans which results our nation great economy loss.
I suppose you can argue that we have more of a "European" attitude, to which I would respond that while we pay high taxes like Europe, we hardly get any of the social security benefits that they enjoy, so in short we end up with worst of both worlds: high taxes, low salaries and limited benefits.
You can't expect a nation to develop the next FANG when people's idea of business is purchasing a home in the "suburbs" of Toronto and renting out its basement.
P.S I hope you are staying warm in this weather..
sofixa
> You can't expect a nation to develop the next FANG when people's idea of business is purchasing a home in the "suburbs" of Toronto and renting out its basement.
Serious question: do you think having the next FANG is desirable? Many people would say that those companies (Netflix are kind of the exception) are too big, too powerful, stifling competition and innovation, and even deserve to be broken up.
Lots of folks would create their own business, but it takes a special person to dream of world domination and want their company to be a global multi-industry behemoth. As a fun example, contrast successful restaurants in France vs in US. In France, very few restauranteurs branch out with other locations or start their own chain, it's considered a sort of selling out/diluting of quality. That's how you have decades old highly profitable and loved restaurants that are just there and work well. In the US you have to make it big, expand, increase sales, add locations, make it a chain, etc.
dirtybird04
As another Canadian (who is living in the US and working in tech), this is just naive on so many levels.
Firstly, unicorn valuations does not necessarily mean innovation. There is nothing innovative about the Salesforces and Zendesks of the world, they're great market fits in a very profitable corporate world.
Secondly, the whole world is playing catchup to US which it comes to money, not just Canada.
Lastly, the valuations & money in US are a result of an insane ethos (working hard, breaking shit), very corporate-friendly government policies, and a very capitalist society.
Canada isn't perfect, our housing is way too expensive and we'll always play second fiddle to USD. But Canadian society is miles better than anything you'll see in US, and for that I'm forever grateful. Giving up that peace and security is just not worth it for any amount of money.
copyleftdj
>be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of people who are here because they are generically interested in tech topics and not specifically startups.
For me what hn use to be an interaction between art and tech in the theme of hackers & painters. Tech along is not so interesting IMHO unless it's in the context of art and/or humanity.
finnthehuman
Maciej wrote "Dabblers and Blowhards" in 2005 (that was an eyeopening date to go check). Hackers and Painters was always for the fresh and easily impressionable to feel a sense of specialness.
gsf_emergency
I'm vibing that the original sin of HN is the shame in being a midwit. Maciej comes off as being an incurious blowhard too..
(Consider that the word "painter" itself has complementary high/low meanings)
Currently I'm low-key mulling about the possibly not-even-wrong idea that in some cultures, there simply isn't a clear distinction between high and low art.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42770351
The downside of that
1)YC and HN won't attract a lot of people from such cultures, at least not the ones they hope to get (the supposedly curious AND effective folks)
2) eternal September is inevitable, especially for folks who have Alan Kay in their pantheon of heroes
Separately, California seems like it could very well host a ommerist culture in a century. See the Oscars, very much a blowhard affair though you could almost call it "communal" (blowhards celebrating shitting in public?) -- Hollywood still has to go through the prepubescent phase of totally embracing their inner and utter philistine. (Compare Kaurismaki, maybe he got a bit enlightened by eastern filmmakers?)
gsf_emergency
Upvotes and downvotes are about art vs humanity.. ("painting with #s"[0])
see below
[0] an inane activity which has often been unduly embraced/denounced
>In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art in New York accepted four early designs of paint by number by Max Klein for its Department of Architecture and Design, donated by Jacquelyn Schiffman.
dsugarman
Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now, it's really sad to me. I went through YC in 2012 and I feel like the community here is unrecognizable, the quality of discourse is so low it feels hard to participate.
spencerflem
I joined HN only a few years past you, but given what's being done in the name of tech these days I find it very hard not be cynical
fxtentacle
I'm not cynical, but my relationship with technology has surely become adversarial.
I still remember the days when self-driving cars seemed just around the corner and inevitable. When Google was organizing the world's information and ethically pure. When I trusted software to do the right thing.
But nowadays... Good luck finding any trustworthy megacorp. We've commoditized trust for profits (e.g. from Couchsurfing to AirBnB) and the result is that people became less trusting.
johnny22
> I still remember the days when self-driving cars seemed just around the corner and inevitable.
Inevitable or not.. I did not consider the other things this would enable. like mass surveillance! I thought it was going to be a relationship between me and my car. I did not realize the relationship was actually me, my car, and the company tracking my every move.
That is how my relationship with tech became adversarial.
Analemma_
I can understand complaining about cynicism, but it's dishonest to pretend it's not coming from a real place. All the complaints people are voicing elsewhere in this thread are true:
- it's true that you will get jack squat if you're employee #4 or later (and in the process you'll work more hours with less job security than at a FAANG)
- it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value to the economy in the last fifteen years: it has all been regulatory arbitrage, intrusive ad-tech, financial engineering, and, of course, shitcoins
- it's true that the people at the top turned out to be amoral psychopaths who practically tripped over themselves to kiss the ring when authoritarianism arrived and their talk about improving the world was hot air
If you're going to complain about the cynicism, you should at least respond to the above instead of pretending it's just grumps wanting to ruin everyone's fun.
Tcepsa
Thank you for collecting these here--it's been very heartening for me to see that I'm not the only one around here that sees these kinds of things and finds it difficult to maintain a positive outlook. I appreciate that there are still folks on HN willing to point out stuff like this.
dnissley
I'll just point out that you're presenting your view of the world and beliefs as if it were based on objective fact. The things you've listed here are all narratives pushed by the media, so I would be understanding that you and many others would feel because of this that they are indeed objective truths, but they are in actuality far from that. Even if these stories are made up of objective facts, they ignore many others which contradict them. For example, I also consider myself grounded in reality and I can think of ways in which these things you've listed as "true" could turn out to be far more complicated.
I like this comic / poem, which I feel captures the essence of what I'm trying to get across here:
Try as I might to live simply, my life tends towards complexity.
My ordered thoughts veer off track, once they turn inward I can't turn back.
The path forward twists and tangles, I lose myself at every angle.
The clear vision I hold inside me, fractures into something far more exciting.
fragmede
"Jack squat" is still in the millions of dollars for holders of a golden ticket, but it is fundamentally a gamble.
> it's true that the startup scene has delivered basically nothing of real value to the economy in the last fifteen years
"basically" is what Wikipedia calls a weasel word. If you're determined to look at the world through a particular lense, by discarding any points to the contrary, you're basically right. That's not the same as actually being right, but it comes down to attitude and world view. If you believe the world is shit, you can find countless examples of it being shit. Because sometimes it is. If you want to have hope and believe in better, you can find those examples too. Because they're also there. Life isn't a math problem though, so you can't take 100 misery points and combine them with 200 hope points and end up feeling happy.
As far as the people at the "top" being amoral psychopaths. It's the amoral psychopaths who make the most noise. A humble quiet person funding soup kitchens and not talking about it isn't going to ping on anybody's radar. Yeah the psychopaths exist, but so do the helpers.
no one wants to believe they're the grump ruining everyone's fun, but would you take all that emotional effort to go challenge the grumps, who are just going to argue, aren't going to appreciate anything you do, and are just a bunch of cynical unhappy assholes, or would you just go find a different digital lawn? (which may just be one thread over, having fun with the idea of an electrostatic wall)
finnthehuman
> Everyone is so negative, cynical, and bitter on HN now
Our profession got hollowed out over the years. Of course the vibes at the bar next to the plant will be down.
> it's really sad to me
There's a thing I've seen on HN a few times over the years, where people expect HN to be like a secret oasis of fun away from the realities of the professional pursuits that brought us together in the first place. Why is that?
knome
the only thing that I've seen growing that I hope is pushed back is the growing number of jokers. I see people posting here like it's reddit or slashdot. it's not, and that's part of what makes it valuable. every joke comment is a loss of signal in the forum.
jokes are great, but unless it's a joke that has some truth squirreled away in it that's worth knowing and well transmitted by the joke, it shouldn't be here. especially on its own. little joke at the end of a long relevant anecdote? great. just replying because you had a moment of wit you'd like to share? think twice and don't, please.
there are plenty of places to be a comedian. I enjoy it myself on more than a few. but I would prefer it not be here.
Dilettante_
>every joke comment is a loss of signal in the forum.
I really needed to hear this, thank you.
Daishiman
The promise of technology was different. The stories of engineers at FB making millions in options were still fresh in people's minds. The untapped potential of mobile and SAAS and a dozen other things.
Tech lost its glitter. It is now just another arm of rentier capitalism, not too dissimilar from banks and finance.
nottorp
For the record, when i started to read HN I didn't even realize it's sponsored by ycombinator and is a startup launch vehicle for several years.
I'm here for the tech porn mostly. I do read the business related stories but I mostly retain everything but whatever includes "founder".
(My account seems to be made in 2016, so i suppose i started reading in like 2013-2014.)
hardwaresofton
Agree with all your points, just wanted to note:
> But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group
This miracle is probably just hard work in disguise -- dang et al. HN also has a self-censorship bias and some self-enforcement, but mostly not an abrasive kind -- people (mostly) gently remind each other of the rules, and sometimes viciously downvote comments that are not useful/in the spirit of HN.
toomuchtodo
HN and Dan’s work are arguably worth more than the VC part of YC. The VC side plays the capital musical chairs game (selling the equity to a greater fool before the music stops), this is the valuable output from that.
dcminter
Oh I entirely concur; I think there's a team of sorts, not just Dan, but I'm sure the gentle steering is a huge part of the reason things are still on course.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
jajko
This is just another public website, various people come here since its interesting and discussions engaging. Its one of the last places which is free/public and discussions don't immediately turn primitive, political and emotional unlike rest of internet. People from various backgrounds come and have interesting things to say, which is often refreshing and enlightening (at least to this fella).
Many if not most of folks at this point have nothing to do with neither startups nor hacking. Neither do I for example, and I am here for a decade+.
jurschreuder
I'm a startup founder doing startup right now. I'm experiencing burnout, by which I mean, after half a year of working 6-7 days a week 10-16 hours a day I really needed an 8 hour workday to get my focus back. Specially after working non stop for two weeks for a demo for McDonald's with only 6hrs sleep per night and then two devices fried because of a messed up 5v connection so we missed the demo. Went to bed at 20:30 today because the startup hustle is real. No rest for the .. startup founders.
Want to have one day of 8hrs of work only so I'm fresh tomorrow to visit a car factory and to write two papers in the weekend.
I just started a relationship though, you do get used to the sensation of falling down a cliff trying to build a plane as you fall while eating glass and barely being able to walk out of exhaustion because it needs to be ready tomorrow so you're the only office on a Sunday night at 3am with the lights still burning while knowing that if you cannot borrow money within 4 days you cannot pay rent.
It's an acquired taste :)
I agree that SaaS is a dead end. I had a talk with two of our investors this week who run a SaaS company trying to convince me to stop hardware and go 100% to SaaS because it's such a great business model. But for that I think you're too late. The only new SaaS I consistently see people trying out are AI SaaS.
Because of that I'm doing SaaS with AI but combined with physical devices. I do think manufacturing is going to grow in the US and Europe, simply because factories need (way way) fewer people. Regardless of tariffs, protectionism, etc., the playing field has changed. Labor cost has become a tiny fraction of manufacturing cost. Offshoring makes no real sense anymore.
Therefore I make real physical AI, cameras and robots, to help people, well people and bigger people like McDonald's and car factories, build ultra-low-labor factories. That's what's going on in the US and in Europe right now, not SaaS. But the principle is the same: Startups just move to where the money / growth is.
yason
I'd say starting a company to make something people want in order to sell it for money is still relevant. It's just that you're looking at working quietly, humbly, but perseverantly for the next 25 years, slowly growing the business and balancing the risks and opportunities along the way. You won't be looking for an "exit" because you want to take care of the company you built. That's a very different story from whatever vibe it is that startups acquired after the dotcom boom, i.e. find something that hasn't been done before, scales quickly, and sell the company after a few years for 1000x, and then something.
That never was sustainable, I think, and effectively it became a glorified hiring process for big tech who bought the best toy companies to get to the people behind. And now even big tech figured it's cheaper to just hire the talent directly and not buy their token company for a few million first just to get the guys in.
Not saying a good company with a good idea and execution at the right time couldn't still make it big quick: there always were some lucky ones and there will always be. But the process isn't repeatably stable enough that there's a lot of wasted effort to make a few shooting stars. And everybody seems to be slowly accepting that. Go for it if the opportunity arises but if you spend 10 years trying and trying without the fish biting you're likely better off saving off from a decent salary when those years have passed.
clumsysmurf
> you're looking at working quietly, humbly, but perseverantly for the next 25 years
> That never was sustainable, I think
Another aspect with this being (un)sustainable is lack of affordable healthcare. I bet many people would take more risks if they didn't have to worry about this aspect of their lives.
cushychicken
The Swedes sure seem to think so. Per capita Swedish entrepreneurship is like 7x the rest of the euro zone, and they’re convinced that it’s that aspect of the social safety net that help prop up that high level of personal risk taking.
sofixa
It's not the only factor for sure, but it definitely contributes.
Jokingly Swedish and Spanish colleagues have said that weather probably plays a part too - because it's so cold outside, lots of time is spent indoors - some of it with friends socialising or chilling (they even have a word for it, Fika), but not only. So you have lots of opportunities to read, think, explore, experiment.
In contrast, in Spain the weather is often nice and sunny, so you're outside more often, with friends, drinking and eating. You don't really have a lot of alone time at home to think and tinker and innovate.
It's purely anecdotal, but there might be something to it.
Twirrim
Most (all?) of the Euro Zone has "free" Healthcare, so it's not just that.
(I put free in quotes to avoid any reply guy "itself not actually free" blah, blah, blah)
pjc50
> Per capita Swedish entrepreneurship is like 7x the rest of the euro zone
That sounds worthy of deeper investigation, but healthcare is unlikely to be the factor?
Nifty3929
I wonder what the Norwegians think?
jimmydddd
Agreed. I was starting a small law firm (small biz, not a startup) and asked other dudes who had done the same what they did for healthcare. The all said the same thing -- I had my wife get a job at a bank.
gnkyfrg
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Draiken
But at that point, does it fit a startup definition?
In my view, startups always involve rapid growth and VC money to achieve it. If the company doesn't meet that criteria, isn't that simply a regular business?
s_dev
I agree however it's the 'Paul Graham' definition. i.e. a trade off must be maintained between the bottom line and growth and a startup is a business that prioritises growth over basic financial sustainability.
I've seen economists argue the opposite saying a startup is no different to a regular business. It depends on which definition you wish to subscribe to.
gnkyfrg
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edanm
> That never was sustainable, I think
What makes you think that? Still plenty of startups being founded, many achieving success. It's long odds, of course, but what exactly is "unsustainable" about this? (And unsustainable to whom, exactly?)
tossandthrow
IMHO building startup became a status symbol which means that the payment in respect for making a courageous adventure is lost and commoditized. We are slowly seeing the same for academia.
Point 2 resonates with me. Risk adjusted it is very unlikely that one will make a reasonable salary doing startups. So it is conviction and heart that needs to drive it.
For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea about building something I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem. I think this is endemic - the entire sector is short sighted and profit obsessed.
MrLeap
> I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem.
I feel this. I keep thinking there has to be a competitive advantage in being more conscious about the creation than the extraction. The latter seems to be a strangling force on the former.
rrr_oh_man
> The latter seems to be a strangling force on the former.
Bozo brainrot
sureglymop
I highly agree. And I think in practice, what is driven by curiosity and passion ends up being a better product. I think part of the reason why is that all over social media and the internet there are gurus telling people "you can be the next to be rich and you deserve it". But that's the wrong motivation to have ingrained in every potential founder.
TeMPOraL
> in practice, what is driven by curiosity and passion ends up being a better product.
If it can survive. The problem here is that startups compete in the same economy as those more sustainable, passion-driven businesses - and because of their ruthless focus on growth, as well as access to vastly more capital, they win, effectively suppressing good products or outright preventing them from entering the market.
rUsHeYaFuBu
Free market thinkers here would say this is the market working as intended.
hardwaresofton
> For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea about building something I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem. I think this is endemic - the entire sector is short sighted and profit obsessed.
Do you think some of this is idea related? If you're building software, many new ideas are not truly innovative in a way that would make execution seem like the place to focus?
An experienced person might hear the idea and instantly have a general idea of how to build it -- but know that the real hard parts are distribution, finding customers, talking to customers, and building the profit flywheel that lets you do more of the previous.
Taking AI as an example just because it's hot right now, but it's a very different conversation if your idea is building a alternative to the transformer (assuming you're talking to someone who could even speak authoritatively on the subject!), versus building an "chatgpt wrapper" app, even if it's very complex/tailored to an industry. Most people won't be able to discuss the industry specific bits so they focus on the tech bits, and then the differences seem to be mostly execution?
tossandthrow
When I pitch my calorie counter app that uses AI - fair, that is not new.
But eg. working on an idea around decentralized dating app that utilizes federated learning, blockchains, en cryptographic distributed filesystems to make a truly open and algorithmically transparent dating app - and the response is: "But how are you ever going to make money off that" instead of starting to jam on good privacy preserving techniques in FL that still yields good results. ...
In honesty, I think the main issue is that the people have _not_ been able to understand these technologies. It has probably been _too_ innovative?
gr4vityWall
> and the response is: "But how are you ever going to make money off that"
I believe one cause for this response is how someone tells the other person about that idea. If you make it clear that you are building something for fun, I think that response becomes less likely. But if they believe your project idea is also a start up idea, then they may ask about the business side.
Sometimes I do see a cognitive dissonance when computer-first people and business-first people discuss software. IMO, making it clear where the person starting the conversation is coming from would help both groups not talk past each other when engaging. A startup-minded person won't necessarily ask about monetization if the other person made it clear they're talking about a hobby. I believe it would be less likely, at least.
gnkyfrg
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myth2018
> I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns
That general mindset was a major source of pain for me. I used to say I had founded a startup just to get along with the other entrepreneurs, but in fact I couldn't care less about fast growth, product-market fit and other common concerns in the field -- heck, "consulting" was in my list of services and some of my peers couldn't even wrap their minds around that concept -- and the ones who did, frowned upon it. They just kept asking about product, competitive edges and so on, while all I cared about was joining a growing market served until then by a handful of small but profitable companies in my country.
Twirrim
> For me, the main issue is that every time I voice the idea about building something I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem. I think this is endemic - the entire sector is short sighted and profit obsessed.
I think this is in part a market correction. Whether it's over correction, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
There's been a lot of really bad startups making a big splash, often without any experience or knowledge of the field they were trying to disrupt (so they don't actually know what the problems really are, or what was really needed), and with far too vague hand wavey ideas on how they'll actually reach sustainability.
There's been far too much of engineering being a hammer, and seeing every problem is a nail
shahzaibmushtaq
> every time I voice the idea about building something I get bombarded with premature growth and commercialization concerns instead of excitement about how to solve the problem.
Talkers hate doers and those who dare to think of doing something.
mhh__
A big trend in science now, at least for those less fortunate researchers, is basically only being allowed to do research that you already know the outcome of.
kirso
So whats next?
tlogan
I think several factors have changed over time, which have made the startup landscape—and for us mere mortals who dream about it—less exciting:
- Massive consolidation in tech: Large tech companies can easily acquire and neutralize potential competitors by offering founders a few million dollars, leading to fewer truly groundbreaking success stories.
- The evolving role of accelerators and VCs: They’ve turned startups into something akin to product management roles within their own agendas. Whether it’s cloud, AI, or the next big trend, founders often end up building what investors want rather than pursuing their own unique visions.
- A lack of truly groundbreaking ideas: We don’t see as many revolutionary concepts anymore—the kind that once gave birth to companies like Google or Amazon. This is likely tied to the investor-driven focus mentioned above.
- A shift in cultural expectations: Perhaps we—or at least the HN audience—are becoming more like Europe, with an increasing expectation that governments will take care of us, whether through healthcare or other social services. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does shift the mindset around risk and entrepreneurship.
Temporary_31337
Pretend all you want but interest rates make a ton of difference. If you can make a safe, compounded, perhaps leveraged 5% from treasuries the financial bar that a successful startup has to pass is so much higher
benjaminwootton
Interest rates are like a dial which turns economic activity up and down.
I’ve always understood that in theory but it’s the first time I’ve actually lived through it and it’s wild.
A few years of higher rates and half of the tech industry and the people who buy tech seems to be on hold.
It makes me realise how vacuous the last decade was and how a lot of our jobs and businesses existed because of dirt cheap money. I’m glad I saved some money rather than thinking it was going to last forever!
jajko
If you were older, you would still consider current rates low and recent past an obscurity that couldn't last long. I can say that definitely about Europe, ie here in Switzerland interest rates used to be around 7% for quite some time and economy was doing fine, then it dropped to negative and afterwards people complained when they rose to 1-2%. 0.4% now, not complaining.
arccy
If you're that old, you probably already have a house when it was much cheaper relative to income levels. Now, a tiny shift in interests rates affects not only the general economy, but people paying back mortgages which can take a significant chunk out of your income.
ghastmaster
When prices rise through inflation, without equal income rises, low interest rate takes on a new meaning.
If it takes more hours of labor to purchase the same thing, it requires lower interest rates to borrow.
adamc
Yep. When we bought our first house (mid-1990s), interest rates were over 7%.
The future is hard to know, but demographic changes are going to move a lot of money out of the stock market (because retiring boomers and soon gen-xers will want safer investments). At the same time, labor will itself become more valuable, because the same forces are going to tighten the labor market. To me that is suggestive of an environment where the rewards of startups vs. engineering jobs are weaker.
null
acuozzo
To really drive the nail in... consider what advances have been made in software over the past 30 years. In software specifically, NOT software enabled by faster hardware.
What can we do now in software which would not have been possible in 1995, even if we were to somehow make our hardware today usable by programmers then?
saurik
I realize that you are asking a rhetorical question, as the answer is supposed to be a bit obvious and maybe even mind-blowing... but I actually struggle to come up with really good examples. Most of what I come up with are places where math struggled to keep up, notably in cryptography and consensus (and thereby, quite powerfully, in the intersection of these we have cryptocurrencies). Oh, here's one great such example: compression algorithms!!
However, the vast majority of the crazy things I feel like I'm able to do in software today aren't really because the software is--or even the protocols are--better, but that I'm capable of executing so many instructions in so little time on such vast quantities of stored data while communicating massive results over large distances reliably using computers that are so cheap and so small that virtually everyone in every financial class is surrounded by them.
Hell: even with large language models and the recent birth of working/useful AI, we are right on track for the timeline for progress along the road towards the singularity laid out in the late 1990s by Ray Kurtzweil, who was merely looking at computation per dollar, working off of the expectation that if the hardware can do it the software will figure it out. I could go back in time with the code for a modern LLM and I'd still have to wait for 2020 to deploy it.
Glyptodon
When you consider that the dot com era had mortgage rates similar to or maybe even higher than now, and same with federal rates, I tend to think there's a combo of recent startups having poor/LCD ideas w/ recency effect leading to overvaluing current rates against potential growth.
drc500free
Absolutely, and in practice it's not a well analyzed spreadsheet problem with a smooth transition. The change in interest rates moved necessary payoffs from the "later" bucket to the "soon" bucket.
A whole segment of product stories only worked when investors wanted to believe in them so that they could park their money there. With everything oversubscribed, products would get investment as long as success wasn't provably impossible - so CEOs and PMs optimized for inscrutability and constant pivots. More thoughts here:
https://coldwaters.substack.com/p/the-mystery-box-is-out-of-...
nejsjsjsbsb
SP500 returns too.
jschveibinz
Here are a few anecdotes from the U.S. that can hopefully add substance to this conversation:
1) I am an investor in startups, and I have slowed my investments to a trickle since the beginning of Covid. I have noted that this has been generally true of other investors like myself.
2) There are still tons of problems to solve through technology applications; but there needs to be a moat between your solution and what AI will likely disrupt in the next few years. So, think about solving problems in the physical world.
3) Many startups create a pool of equity at around 10-15% of total shares for awarding to key employees. If your startup doesn't have this, then that is a red flag.
4) When assessing a startup, consider two things first: are the founders experienced in the industry and market they are attacking? Is the value of the solution obvious? i.e. people will likely willingly pay well to have the solution?
5) startups are still thriving at universities that support entrepreneurship and technology commercialization.
6) financial stability of startups, especially technical startups, is greatly affected by non-dilutive grants and contracts, e.g. SBIR awards. Investors look for this.
fxtentacle
My bet would be on material science to become the new software. Thanks to 3D printing, we now have lots of ideas of things that people would like to make. So the demand is there and quantifiable. But we lack the technology to produce it.
aworks
4) When assessing a startup, consider two things first: are the founders experienced in the industry and market they are attacking? Is the value of the solution obvious? i.e. people will likely willingly pay well to have the solution? --- I've worked at three start-ups. The answer was yes to the first question for all three. But the second question was really hard to answer going in. In hindsight, only of the companies had a valued solution. And I left 9 years before IBM bought them for big money.
I had a lot of fun and excitement but the financial uncertainty is tough.
gnkyfrg
[dead]
InkCanon
On the last point:
"The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to find."
It is a repeating pattern in history that people think technology and science have reached a dead end. Michelsen (falsely attributed to Kelvin) declared principles of physics were already established before quantum mechanics. Watson said there was demand for maybe five computers in the world. These inevitably tend to be wrong because they misunderstand the dynamics of progress. Because technology is fractal, every invention spawns several others. The explosion of web was built on top of a lot of technology, and has supported a lot of technology too. Being an app or website has lots some of its initial novelty, but really this novelty was lost many years ago. Web itself has spawned many other frontiers - like innumerable frameworks, databases, languages etc. Those will spawn their own, etc.
adamc
There will always be more to find out, but there are a ton of counter-examples to your claims. Engineering related to radio was huge in the 1920s and 1930s and is... not today. A lot of key problems got solved and the focus turned to other industries and other problems.
The world will continue to have interesting problems. Whether those will have much intersection with writing software is less certain.
wslh
The point is about a specific technology, like software, not technology at all. For example, we continue to use the same vehicles (e.g. cars) with a well known technology while SpaceX is advancing on sending rockets to the space. Technology is advancing but some technology is well known.
This is not to say that software is not evolving but most startups don't have an issue with building software but with business development (e.g. selling).
InkCanon
But there's still a ton of innovation going on in cars. Tesla and BYD are some of the biggest companies in the world. And conversely, rockets was regarded as a sleepy, government contracting business for a long time.
I don't particularly understand why (some) people say X technology has stagnated, like web or apps. There's a ton of innovation going on - off the top of my head, WebGPU and WASM will unlock huge amounts of performance for web apps, creating a lot of possibilities like much more powerful web game engines. There seems to be widespread beliefs that the market is "saturated" or "well developed". This always struck me like saying automotive startups won't work because rubber tyre technology has stagnated. Webs and apps are just the delivery mechanism for software.
I think there's two flawed reasons people think this. One is that they only perceive the change in people using it. So they think anything which has a lot of people already using it means it's saturated. Two, they as consumers don't perceive the vast, complex systems used to deliver those services. So a website is a website to most people, but they don't understand the massive changes it has undergone over the decades.
The only technology that really dies is very specific ones competing with others in a narrow field. For example vacuum tubes lost to the transistor.
wslh
There is innovation, but you’re operating within the same business domain. I wasn’t talking about stagnation but addressing the point made in the article as a software-based founder: will you compete with NVIDIA? Highly unlikely. Will you create an AAA game? Unlikely. Will you advance AI at a fundamental level? Again, highly unlikely.
When I said “no way” I meant the chances are close to epsilon. In the past, there was more room for improvement and breakthroughs in these fields. This doesn’t mean you can’t create a successful startup based on AI, but its success will likely stem more from the business development side than the software itself. The secret lies in bizdev.
schappim
I 100% agree with this. It is now a lot easier to create software, but it does feel harder to reach customers, especially via Google/Meta Ads.
flyinglizard
But while cars are a well known technology, the last 15 years have spawned a 1.3T company in that space - Tesla. There's room to innovate anywhere, maybe but the most basic commodities.
InkCanon
This. Virtually anything that can be changed, can be innovated. And people seem to underestimate how complex the world is. Even something as unchanging as a commodity can increase in demand massively because of second order effects - like lithium and electric cars.
escapecharacter
People also believe fall into this trap with political philosophy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
whiplash451
Point 5: even if your startup exits successfully, the math of exits are brutal for employees (even early ones).
Between double dipping for investors, accelerated vesting for the c-suite, and taxation intricacies, employees make out much less than they'll think even in good scenarios.
Everyone makes 10X less than their head in the food chain: investors -> c-level -> VPs -> directors -> senior staff.
nejsjsjsbsb
This is why later companies can be better. Either they are public or private but it is clearer what the stock is and could be worth. Best deal is to get actual stock not stock options.
YetAnotherNick
I don't know anyone who took any significant pay cut for the expectation of future return. If you join startup for huge return as an employee in any case you are doing it wrong.
whiplash451
Expectations of a big return is absolutely a valid reason to join a startup. That’s the very definition of it actually.
YetAnotherNick
No, that's why you have such expectation mismatch. No one should take any significant pay cut over market rate. In that way they aren't losing anything monetary.
fxtentacle
I believe the main change is just that Hacker News went from being a very specific subset of the population to becoming much more mainstream. Ten years ago it was, at least in my opinion, mostly early adopters of internet technology and in general people who had enough funds that they could fail without being devastated. Nowadays, in addition to the traditional VC route, there's also the indie hackers movement. Those founders typically aren't friends with old money, so they will bring a different perspective on financial risks.
disgruntledphd2
> Nowadays, in addition to the traditional VC route, there's also the indie hackers movement. Those founders typically aren't friends with old money, so they will bring a different perspective on financial risks.
When I first started hanging around HN (around 2011 or so), the general vibe seemed much more like indie-hacker types to me, lots of anger at VCs and the hockey stick growth required.
Honestly though, the following decade was a massive tech bull market which presumably pulled lots of HN denizens in (including me). Maybe we're getting back to that a little bit with tech layoffs and potential opportunities in other industries.
checker659
I can't say I agree. There were a lot of app developers on HN even as far back as 2009.
righthand
You should watch the Arstechnica homepage then. They have authors who essentially get all their writing assignments based on how popular a story is ranking on this website. That is pretty mainstream.
aleph_minus_one
Concerning
> 4. The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to find.
I disagree: In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find.
I feel what rather changed is that with VC becoming big and mainstream, investors have become more risk-averse in investing into innovative ideas (that they don't really understand). Perhaps also society has become more conservative, so selling a really innovative product to a customer has become harder.
graemep
> Perhaps also society has become more conservative, so selling a really innovative product to a customer has become harder.
Customers are more locked into existing products. Network effects, switching costs, familiarity and branding, staff training (for businesses) and learning something new....
aleph_minus_one
I'd claim that also before the customers were locked into existing product. What is different is that in former days they were much more willing to get away from this lock-in.
The reason for this that I consider to be the most plausible one is that society has become more conservative (i.e. less willing to change things or try out new things).
graemep
Lock is has been a problem for a long time, but I think the lock in is stronger. You have dependencies between multiple systems, dependencies between systems, data that is no longer stored locally on machines you control, etc.
escapecharacter
Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them.
To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms.
I really wish the US government was more pro-business competition; they're merely pro-business in terms of ensuring existing winners continue to win. Across the pond, the EU seems to get this with measures like GDPR which make it actually easier to port between platforms.
aleph_minus_one
> Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them.
> To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms.
I personally observe that people have quite different "sensitivities" to this phenomenon. It might be true that such people exist, but at least in my "echo chamber" it's rather exactly the other way: the more dark pattern such people observe, and the more they feel "jailed" by these large platforms, the more they are willing to leave the platform - just out of spite. Thus, at least many people of my "echo chamber" show exactly the opposite behaviour from what you claim and the platforms intend.
Thus, I believe the conservatism is a different phenomenon: people become less willing to try out new things because they observed far too often that a new interesting service turned more and more into a dark jail over the years.
intalentive
The US government does business with men who say, “Competition is for losers”.
sofixa
> In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find.
Such as? Can you name a few?
aleph_minus_one
> > In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find.
> Such as? Can you name a few?
Naming them would need long explanations (and a lot of my thoughts are still in an early phase), but I can give you a rough sketch of one possible way how one can find them (but note that there exists an insane amount of other possible ways to find great innovative opportunities):
Simply read sophisticated scientific literature about mathematics and related areas, in particular about insanely deep results that were (possibly) honored with high awards (which gives you a strong evidence that there is indeed something deep to find in these results). Then find cool, exciting applications of these results in an area of your choice.
Why does this simple approach work? Answer: the state of the art in mathematics is in many cases simply working with science-fiction technologies from, say, 50 years in the future already today.
Honestly, this way I find raw ideas for possibly cool, exciting opportunities basically every few days.
ludwigvan
Most engineers figured out that the options/stocks of startups are worthless.
nostradumbasp
9 times out of 10 the company sells, performs a reduction in force, or goes under before they vest. 1 time out of 1000 the company is worth something and remains operable over a 5 year period.
Rules of thumb for the green engineers:
- Take salary/health insurance over stock in almost all cases.
- At some companies employees who are greener and greedier will fight/sabotage all their peers to get rid of them, is this the type of place you want to be at? Insider fighting is often a big part of why these companies fail.
- Never pay into start up equity. If a company "offers you the chance to buy their stock" after X months/years don't do it and if you do, don't put much in. Have an excuse so no one gets offended like "I am saving for a house" or something. If you're looking at a 5k minimum simply don't do it unless that is peanuts for you.
- Make sure anything offered is in writing and completely understood before joining. Lots of things are said at final stage interviews. If it isn't in writing you are not getting it. Ask questions be annoying.
- Negotiate. Its the only way you can actually get what you want. If the stocks mean nothing to you unless you get them quick, negotiate that. Start ups close doors extremely suddenly every single day.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
> If a company "offers you the chance to buy their stock" after X months/years don't do it
This generalizes to a rule of thumb, "Don't accept any deal you didn't go looking for." Same as a trapdoor firewall doesn't accept any incoming connections.
Someone on the street offers to sell you a bridge, say no. You get brightly-colored letters from your credit union selling you car insurance, recycle them. Your friend wants you to buy a bowling alley with him, refuse.
It almost always works.
chamomeal
What about if the valuation was super low when you received the options agreement?
For instance, if I got $5,000 worth of options when the company was “worth” 1 million, is that a safe bet to buy into?
Like surely the founder would be able to sell the company for 1 million dollars instead of crashing and burning… right?
pjc50
> surely the founder would be able to sell the company for 1 million dollars instead of crashing and burning
That is absolutely not guaranteed at all! It's not even guaranteed that the next funding round will be on a better basis, or not dilute you.
The pre-IPO market for companies is illiquid and bad at price discovery.
rrr_oh_man
> If it isn't in writing you are not getting it.
Golden words to live by.
meritage31
>> Most engineers figured out that the options/stocks of startups are worthless.
Also, if the startup gives you options/stocks without showing up the cap table, they are giving you a numerator and not a denominator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization_table
Never trade real cash for imaginary money unless you have the facts
consp
And if they are not worthless in general, they are worthless for you since you will get squeezed out because funders and founders need to take everything since they are the only ones who matter or do any work (/s obviously).
whstl
I certainly did. I have options/stocks from 3 different companies, all vested, but zero expectation of seeing any money out of it. One of them recently went belly up and had an exit for peanuts.
I didn't go for big tech but I did pick a job on a YC startup that, while demanding, allowed me to purchase my own house and work on my own stuff in the evenings.
chamomeal
Your options haven’t expired since leaving those startups?
I recently left a job at a startup where I had some options vested. It would be like 6k to exercise them. I was leaning towards leaving em, and now this thread has kinda convinced me
pcl
I think the calculus is different for exercising options after leaving than the scenario the GP described, in which the company is pitching current employees on a stock purchase scheme.
There’s nothing inherently wrong in the latter, but it’s super unusual, and it’s pretty safe to be wary of startups shouldn’t do unusual things with their financing / cap table.
Exercising options post departure, on the other hand, is par for the course with any option-based compensation (note that this shouldn’t apply to RSUs, since those are usually owned outright after vesting).
A similar question arises with payment of taxes for 409a elections. Can be pricey, but it doesn’t raise the same red flags as a founder asking you to pay to work there.
whstl
Sorry, my mistake. It's all shares, I don't know why I said stocks/options.
But it's all shares. First from being early in a marketing startup that recently closed, second from being one of the first engineers of an event ticket marketplace that's holding on for dear life, third from a tourism unicorn that paid half my salary with instant-vesting shares during Covid.
bradlys
How did you manage to buy a house on your own while making just salary? Usually salary at YC startups doesn’t get past $250k and that’s not enough to afford anything in the bay.
whstl
There are YC startups all over the world! :)
I'm in Berlin. Houses are expensive here, but still possible with a Startup salary.
schappim
We are now also seeing companies staying private much, much longer. This is tough on the employees who quite often can't offload their equity.
nejsjsjsbsb
Which makes FAANG + property investing + index pension/401k + other funds etc attractive. Maybe the occasional wsb style risk for fun.
Chyzwar
I think this is the normal trajectory of online forum. The initial cohort was positive and deeply invested into the topic. Over time, this initial cohort gets older and start to have life, slowly being replaced by new people. As long new people share initial ideas and archetype, it can continue to work well.
For HN case, initial cohort either become too busy with life and success and left forum or become jaded and skeptical about startups by experiencing it by themselves. The second group is still very active here, driving a lot of sentiment in discussion. HN also changed audience to be more general techy forum that startup forum. There are more people that want to discuss politics instead of technology (see deepseek, UK hardware talent to AMA with Peter Roberts). Any post about hiring is full of people whining about leetscode. Posts about process are full of agile haters. Even product lunches are full of open-source zealots, discussion of unrelated stuff like rust or useless feedback about website working slowing on 10 years old android phone with JS disabled. There is very little content for aspiring founders.
Finally, there is value in HN for discovery, just not for startup. You can learn more about startup/VC from Y Combinator YouTube channel, Saastr or even Harry Stebbings podcast.
> What's changed?
Largely, the make up of the audience in HN. I sincerely doubt that the hard core of people doing startups, thinking of doing a startup, or just very interested in the topic has gone away or changed attitude very much.
But the profile of HN has grown. It's a miracle that it's still an interesting and curious group, but from comments I'd be astounded if there were not a far greater proportion of people who are here because they are generically interested in tech topics and not specifically startups. That broader group was always there, of course, just its proportions relative to the hard core of entrepreneurs has changed.
I'd love to see some objective analysis of how things changed after the twitter and reddit kerfuffles, but I don't believe the article's thesis that the zeitgeist is the cause.
PS I could live without the stories that violate the precept of "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." ... but it's still pretty good here.