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Comment by jryan49 | Hacker News Reader

Because the point of starting startups isn't to create a successful business. It's to trick VCs into giving you money to burn! /s

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I think this comment still stands without the "/s". The extension is that VCs pawn the company off to the public markets, take their money and are long gone when reality catches up (Twitter, Square, GoPro, Zynga, Groupon...).

definitely... MSFT, Facebook, Google, Apple, Salesforce...

I'll give you Facebook and Salesforce, they're the only ones comparable

MSFT was profitable from almost day 1. I don't think its a good comparison.

Except Microsoft and Apple are both in the business of making things and then selling them to people for more than they cost to make.

If that's what you think, why are you even here? Maybe assume positive intent and you'll have better luck understanding all this.

I don't think assuming "positive intent" is the problem here. Read pg; he's talked about exactly this problem. A lot of would-be founders think that you "win" when you land that investment and get some publicity. It's easy and alluring to think, "Hey, we got a Series A! We're millionaires!" when the truth is nothing of the sort. It's actually, "Crap... that's all the money we have to get us to that next goalpost that soooo far away."

Taking investment is, at best, a necessary evil for startups. It's not a victory. It's never a victory. It's a compromise. It's "I just sold a hundred million dollars for a million dollars" - with the awareness that if you hadn't sold it, you wouldn't get the other hundreds of millions either.

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