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Comment by mandelbrotwurst | Hacker News Reader

That VC would need a lot of confidence in the team to be willing to fully fund them with no revenue, clients, or IP.

Sure, but to whatever extent the human resources are the engine that drives creation of revenue, clients, and IP, it would seem that taking a large chunk of an existing working machine would have better odds than some other startup, right?

That's the point, they aren't. You need developers to execute but with today's triple A franchise titles and marketing-heavy launches it's not sufficient.

I don't think they are. I think at most companies most people are replaceable. Each company has a few key players that are truly cornerstone employees. Almost everyone else can be swapped out as needed. Not saying losing a key Sr. wont cause a set back but with the right hire (and they are not that scarce) they are back on track in a bit. Most of us think we are super valuable and that a company will suffer when we leave but reality is that it rarely happens; there are of course exceptions. Blizzard already the has the IP, everything else is just cogs.

These people are just inherently creative, just look at hearthstone which was a prototype "quickly made" by Brode and friends while inside Blizz

They could easily create large IPs and games if they so desired/needed, after all that's what they were hired to do in the first place

Fair enough, I’m coming at this from more of a non-gaming tech / SaaS startup lens. Maybe it would work, I’m not sure!

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