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Comment by n7c3c1 | Hacker News Reader

I will never understand how startups like this get money with such incompetent leadership.

Look at how this Famo.us office tour showcases the waste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imc1p_laIt4

I've always disliked Techcrunch but I'm starting to realize how valuable their "Cribs" series is. They have the very best documentation of a dying culture of spoiled founders aimlessly running startups like a daycare for adults. I wonder how much longer people are going to be pulling this off for. Investors need to wise up and start giving their money to people who are mature enough to be modest and efficient with their company's resources before they've proven themselves as a business.

I seriously get the feeling people are just looking for any excuse to criticize Famous. I don't see what's wrong with their office. What's objectionable? A couple of $5 nerf guns? A cheap Lego board for project tracking? Or is it the fact that people aren't packed in as tight as they are at a place like Facebook (which is ironically something people on HN love to criticize)? The crappy makeshift studio they have? Seriously. Their office seems pretty normal.

The only thing you might find objectionable is the expensive SF location, which the article notes they got on the cheap at below-market rates, or the printer (the printer is probably only 1-2 thousand dollars, less than a Macbook).

Yeah, I don't see what's wrong either. The CEO is a fantastic interior designer. And his LinkedIn self-summary[1] is a real piece of art in its own right.

I find it hard to believe any of what this former employee wrote[2].

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenewcomb

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/06/nopen-source/?fb_comment_id...

A non sequitur. I said there's nothing wrong or particularly wasteful with the office. I didn't comment on the company at all (the company is clearly in the dumps).

> I said there's nothing wrong or particularly wasteful with the office.

Just because you said there's nothing wrong or particularly wasteful with the office doesn't mean others agree. Outside of bubbleland, most people are going to struggle to understand why the CEO of a company that almost certainly doesn't have a cent of profit spent any time whatsoever thinking about how he could avoid "boring noise panels."

"Why not make this a piece of art as well on the ceiling?" Really?

When will folks learn[1]?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9778832

And you know it was he who personally spent his time buying those noise panels (and not, say, the office manager) because...?

My broader point is people are just trying to find any excuse to uncharitably interpret anything just so they can to crap on the company.

"One of the things I wanted to sort of like inspire people with that worked here is you always feel beautiful while you're here." Those are the words of the chief interior designer himself.

Bottom line: this company crapped on itself. You're deluding yourself if you truly believe office managers are driving decisions to waste time and money on stupid sh*t like beautiful noise panels.

It's easy to criticize a figure who has made mistakes over his/her values that are unrelated to those mistakes. It seems that may be happening here.

He doesn't actually say he bought the panels. In that sentence he's talking about something he thinks is a company value.

My god, it might have cost thousands (THOUSANDS!!!) of dollars to install some noise panels on the ceiling to cut down on noise.

It doesn't matter how much it cost. It's about priorities. If you watch the video and get the sense that this company's founder has his priorities straight, maybe you can chip in and buy the next set of panels.

On second thought, it appears that the office is going to be pretty quiet soon enough.

He probably spent hours (invaluable hours!) thinking about those ceiling panels. I dunno, should their office be a hovel? Because you appear to have some sort of issue with this founder outside his attempt to make their office a nice place to work.

And why on earth would I finance ceiling tile purchases for some random company? There's something wrong with you.

ps -- while it's fine to be surprised at companies lighting money on fire, gloating about a company laying people off is all class.

> He probably spent hours (invaluable hours!) thinking about those ceiling panels.

When you run an unprofitable company that subsists on investor money, every single hour of leadership's time is invaluable.

> I dunno, should their office be a hovel?

So the choice for startups is a) a swagged-out office in one of the most expensive commercial real estate markets or b) hovel? What world do you live in?

> Because you appear to have some sort of issue with this founder outside his attempt to make their office a nice place to work.

You're free to believe this office represents a modest attempt at creating "a nice place to work," but outside of bubbleland, most people will see excess.

By the way, "a nice place to work" is just as much about how people are treated and interact with each other than it is about all of the "stuff" that gets put in the office. Unfortunately, leadership teams at many early-stage startups today don't seem to recognize this.

> And why on earth would I finance ceiling tile purchases for some random company?

It's only "THOUSANDS!!!" of dollars. You seemed genuinely concerned by the noise levels.

> while it's fine to be surprised at companies lighting money on fire, gloating about a company laying people off is all class.

I started my career at a dot bomb in the first boom/bust, so I have been on the other side. It taught me one of the best and most profitable lessons of my life: don't work for people who seem better at spending money than making it. Hopefully some of the younger folks who get laid off for the first time in this cycle will come away with lessons of their own that will help them avoid being fooled again in the future.

Finally, you seem to be missing the fact that lots of people are not surprised startups today are lighting money on fire. We see it every day, and many of us frequently point it out. What baffles me is that folks like you are surprised at where this leads and indignant when somebody points out that a bad outcome was more than likely. Shouldn't your indignation be directed at the people who are responsible for the incompetence, excess and waste?

Your hypothesis is perhaps ten thousand dollars of noise panels and hours of a CEO's time is material to a company and/or a factor in its success. Neither of those make or break a company. It's hardly "swagged-out", and is cheaper than other office space according to the very video you watched. Low noise levels do contribute to both productivity and someplace being nice to work in.

There's plenty of counterexamples (including several I've worked for) who have somehow succeeded despite spending relatively modest amounts of money to make the office a pleasant place instead of a loud dump with sawhorse desks and 20 year old carpeting. If you're complaining about sfbay rates, well, that's what office space costs here.

Believing spending well under one engineer's annual salary made a bad outcome more or less likely is nothing other than dumb.

> Believing spending well under one engineer's annual salary made a bad outcome more or less likely is nothing other than dumb.

Now you're being obtuse. It is the cumulative effects of leadership having out-of-whack priorities that can lead a company to the deadpool. Get it?

In any case, I'll take being Common Sense Dumb and having a successful, profitable business over being Silicon Valley Smart and handing out pink slips any day of the week.

Do investors really need to 'wise up' as you say? It seems to me that they are quite tolerant of this type of thing, because it's cost effective in the end. They're searching for billion dollar unicorns, the diamonds in the rough, and they have to launch hundreds of startups to get them. That requires a lot of young engineers willing to work for ramen and stock options. The perks required to bait them are a modest expense in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe because I'm no longer in my early 20's, something about agreeing to be an employee in that environment, e.g. staying late for "1st and 2nd dinners", for something you didn't found, just feels humiliating.

Office tour video nails it. Beer dispenser? 6-foot printer so staff can print their ideas in high resolution? Having 60 non-employees to live with them for free? And I'm pretty sure this is not even scratching the surface of non-sense that must have been going on there.

Even the TV host said it right in the video "This is crazy!"

That is amazing. They have so much extra space, so much money, that they let startups live with them - in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the US. Basically they were funding a dozen or so startups with power pipe and food. I wonder if they got any equity out of that?

TechCrunch Cribs... didn't know that was a thing. Glamorizing startup offices gives me a very 1999, bubble-y feeling.

Once you sell a search technology company for $100M (good luck with that), you too will be able raise ridiculous amounts of money for your next technology venture.

It totally makes sense.

One of the most cringeworthy videos I watched this year...

While I find the majority of that video as absurd as everyone else (it seemed like something out of Mike Judge/HBO's "Silicon Valley") I have to admit the Lego burn down project tracking board thingy was pretty cool.

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