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Comment by davidkuennen | Hacker News Reader

Having bootstrapped my own app I can't fathom how some other apps with millions of VC money will every turn a profit.

My app provides me a nice income, but it's far from anything able sustaining teams of dozens of people. And I'm pretty sure throwing money on ads wouldn't change that.

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Your app is making money? That's very nice. But have you tried selling the PROMISE of more moneys sometime in the future? Lots and lots of moneys. Just say things like "We are trying to elevate the world's consciousness" and "community-based EBITA!"

Silicon Valley was a great show

Those quotes came from Wecrashed about WeWork.

They’re from wework’s own s1.

Wow!

I actually read Billion Dollar Loser this year, and the show is dead on. The book has more WTF moments in it, but the show's S-1 fiasco was juicer, if I remember correctly.

Sounds a lot like crypto to me.

You are thinking small and that’s fine. It is wonderful to bootstrap an app and make income. However some ideas are much larger and need a big team and years of effort before the big payoff.

And then only 10% “payoff” for the investors, even fewer payoff for the employees.

Venture capital as an aggregate investment class might only generate returns in the 10% range, but no VC would invest in an individual deal with such a low expected return. For early stage A-round deals they're targeting something like a 1000% return, and then those targets decline somewhat for later rounds.

Which is fine for the VC. They are well diversified. It sucks for employees.

How does it suck for employees? They still get paid. Any stock options or grants are essentially a lottery ticket. Anyone taking a job offer expecting to get rich on that basis is a fool.

Private companies usually pay less in tech in cash than public companies cash+RSUs. Even in the current brutal stock market environment, at least your RSUs are guaranteed to be worth something and you can diversify when you vest.

don't know why you're being downvoted. You just presented objectively true facts.

I didn't downvote, but I'm fairly certain the downvotes come from the "you're thinking small" part - it comes across as condescending, even if it wasn't meant that way. If the parent chopped off the first sentence it would dramatically change the perceived tone toward a neutral to positive one. That is, the first sentence is largely unnecessary (it adds nothing other than the risk of people taking it quite negatively).

Like so:

It is wonderful to bootstrap an app and make income. However some ideas are much larger and need a big team and years of effort before the big payoff.

You are looking at the darts that didn't hit the bullseye, or fell on the floor.

Wouldn't more money allow you to spend more on marketing and sales, which in theory could drive more profit? I think that's part of the bet.

A lot of these VC funded marketing efforts end up being selling dollars for 75 cents. Sure, it might get you tons of growth but that that is really difficult to translate to profit.

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