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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only person sick of DHH and the 37 Signals people writing the same article 800 times?

We get it. You don't have to raise VC or grow exponentially to have a great company. They have seriously written the same thing hundreds of times in hundreds of different ways, and it's barely even a contrarian view anymore. I hear as many people saying, "I wish more people would talk about how you don't have to raise VC" as I do people talking about raising VC these days.

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I mean, how many others are there? I think there was a pretty strong undercurrent, even to the point of it being the dominant narrative back when Basecamp was getting started in the mid 2000's, but since 2010 or so, most of the startup world has focused on the venture-backed "rocketship" approach.

Yeah, it's usually not hard to predict what DHH's stance on growth vs. sustainability is going to be, and yes, he's prolific, but it's worthwhile to have opinions that go against the prevailing consensus, even if you don't agree with them.

Since DHH started writing, there have been 800 generations of starry-eyed startup people with unexamined motivations. He can do his thing and there's more than enough regard for the value of it.

There are a million articles also promoting the opposite. Are you sick of that too? What do you read these days ? Hn has already 50 stories of funding every day.

"I hear as many people saying, "I wish more people would talk about how you don't have to raise VC""

Aren't their articles doing that talking?

If you fully get their point, there's probably not much value in you ready article #801, but their message is one that bears repeating.

I've actually long been tired of the whole survivorship bias-based advice industry/PR technique.

I find that when I repeat the same argument, I'm actually trying to convince myself. He is intellectually convinced he is doing the right thing, but the emotional pull of peer pressure is strong.

>Am I the only person sick of DHH and the 37 Signals people writing the same article 800 times?

Well, for one, nobody forced anyone to read it.

Second, you should at least be even more sick of the 50,000 other sources shouting and blogging the opposite message all the time.

At least DHH brings a tiny balance to this.

VC talk can be overbearing at times but I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping. DHH, on the other hand, keeps on lambasting the VC industry without much helpful advice. It's not the contrarian view that is exasperating, it's his parochial attitude that venture capital hasn't done any good. He strikes as a person who would use Uber everyday without acknowledging that without VC capital the company couldn't have existed.

> I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping

No, that's not necessary, because it's already accepted conventional wisdom. You're starting a company? How's your seed round going? Which incubator are you applying to? I know an investor friend who works for <xyz>, want an intro?

>VC talk can be overbearing at times but I haven't seen anyone harping on how raising money is superior to bootstrapping.

I've seen that + sneer at "lifestyle businesses" (aka normal businesses that don't aspire to be "unicorns" or lose on every sale but make it up in volume) countless times.

>DHH, on the other hand, keeps on lambasting the VC industry without much helpful advice.

Haven't he and/or Fried written like 2 books with business advice?

It's actually very nice to see successful people being contrarians. What I'm sick of is elitist consensus.

There are a lot of people who don't have much voice in this society who are thinking what DHH is thinking from a different perspective.

Personally, I'm tried of competing with greedy, unprofitable VC-funded companies which are saturating the internet with their ads and financially-sponsored "thought leadership" blogs.

In the meantime, for the past 5 years I've been struggling to set up a one-person business around an open source project I created. It's a very hostile environment for a single-person business right now and greed is to blame... It's not leaving any breadcrumbs for the little people.

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