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Comment by nbashaw | Hacker News Reader

OP here. I'm curious, what makes you think that you know anything about what our plans were?

You're absolutely right that we weren't profitable at our current scale, and that our goal was to raise funding from VCs, and since we couldn't do it we had to make really tough changes. But this was a risk that we all accepted! Would I do it exactly the same way again next time? No, of course not. I learned a lot from this experience. But do I regret going for something big that I believe in, even if it wasn't a plan that was easily bootstrapped? Absolutely not.

You are smart, and you make a lot of good points. I could learn a lot from your way of thinking! But--you're also being a bit of a condescending know-it-all. This is a perfect example of why everybody makes fun of Hacker News comments.

You can see that, right?

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I think many, many more people make fun of the startup mentality. Which is harsh, but justified.

It's nice that you chased your dreams. The problem is, this is how almost all startups end up, with the last guy wondering what to do next. If you get struck by lightning, you get acquired. If you get struck twice, you get VC money.

That you "accepted" the risk just means you took a very bad bet. If you learned from that, great. No shame in that. But it's not something people are going to be impressed by, especially this late in the game.

You're right that the probability of any individual "unicorn" type idea succeeding is ridiculously slim. But I think you're not appreciating the larger context. Consider this:

1) I have never had more job offers in my life than the past 24 hours. Like, really good jobs. Obviously that wasn't the goal, but it's not like I'm out on the street or really in any way worse off than I was before.

2) I learned more in the past two years than I have any other time in my working life. So again, I'm not in that bad of a spot. It wasn't a waste of time at all.

3) Even though there are very few massive hit VC successes, they do happen dozens of times a year. Just because something is low-probability doesn't make it stupid. Do you think people are dumb who write novels? Or become actors? Or open food trucks? Nobody should try anything that probably won't work?

That's a really sad life outlook.

To be blunt, you're the one who complained about the outcome in your blog post and the one who is angrily seeking validation in Hacker News comments by personally attacking critics and saying nobody understands your unicorn or your boldness in rolling the dice.

If your goal was to get some job offers, great. I got the impression that wasn't your goal, though. That you're fine, personally...well, I assumed that, given you bothered to blog about it. But yes, that's good. I hope that's true of everyone else involved.

But to answer your last question...it's the wrong question. The real question is whether it's smart to pin all your hopes on a really unlikely way to succeed when other approaches exist. Most people who write novels, become actors, etc. don't quit their day jobs until they actually start to make it. Food trucks that don't turn a profit don't tend to get investors to save them. Most new businesses aren't wannabe unicorns.

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