Ask HN: Why does HN get unusually hostile towards startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does HN get unusually hostile towards startups?

I’ve been around long enough to remember the infamous iPod and Dropbox comments essentially calling those products useless. Over the years, I feel the lack of openness has gotten worse to the point of reflexive hostility. So often when people launch their startups here, the comments immediately hone in on picking the ideas and products apart, not to offer productive advice and encouragement, but seemingly just for the sake of criticism. Very few attempt to entertain the vision the founder may be working towards and offer constructive advice on how to get there.

Seems like the hostility hit its most irrational peak with the sentiment here towards startups who banked with SVB. Many seemed to go so far as to almost hope we’d see a startup meltdown.

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I think a big part of it can be described as being hype-fatigued and jaded from previous encounters.

I'm having a hard time finding the exact post, but a while ago, someone asked for advice on getting their new app idea validated on the /r/smallbusiness subreddit. The question was along the lines of "how do I go about reaching out to small business owners to get their input on this?" and the answers were essentially "don't." The reasons stated were that the majority of small business owners were sick and tired of the revolving door of wantrepreneurs claiming their app would solve x-y-and-z for them.

I think a big takeaway was that these people are stressed and overworked and just don't have the time to sit down and try out a new system. I think the bigger takeaway is that those previous engagements probably didn't show and deliver value upfront which leads to the fatigue. Of course, that example was using small business owners as a target audience, but I could see it being true across the realm.

Realism or pessimism?

Most startups fail --- half don't last 5 years.

You be the judge but with this sort of track record, don't they deserve to be picked part?

Sometimes the picking can be unjustified or simply wrong. People are human and make mistakes.

Personally, I don't understand why bottled water is so successful. I can't remember the last time I bought some. It pollutes the planet for no good reason. I have an insulated stainless steel bottle that works just as well and has paid for itself many times over.

I'm glad this is coming to light.

HN is full of better than everyone else pundits. A vast number of commenters can't see past themselves anything that is of value.

The pessimism is just a mask for, "Here is all the ways I wouldn't have come up with this, therefore I need to show everyone here how dumb this is and gain intellect points for being the one to educate everyone."

When you make a start up, don't make it for HN. HN is tech news, that's it.

> > So often when people launch their startups here

That's the main problem. There is nothing special about this place in terms of consumers. Most people in here dread consuming because it subtracts from FIRE goals.

If you are a startup and hope to come in here to make sales or to get the ball rolling, then it's possibly the hardest place to do so.

So given that the sales angle is a waste of time what's left is recruiting. People are hostile to passions and ideas, much like the immune system is to a virus. Because people in here know full well that founders are trying to infect potential employees with passions and ideas because it means being able to pay less, or pay with stock options which essentially amounts to a grand total of nothing with startups given that they mostly go to zero.

Such perceptions of general trends are super unreliable. People jump to general conclusions based on small sequences of data points (probably 2 or 3 max, but let's be generous and say 5 or 6) that are fully within the window of randomness. By "people" I mean everyone, including me. It seems to be how we're wired.

The internet tends to have negative responses because people tend to have negative responses. People also have positive responses. The negative ones usually show up quicker than the positive ones (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). As far as I can tell, all these dynamics are governed by human nature and how it shows up on the internet. It always feels like it's other people who are the problem (e.g. other people are negative whereas I am a fountain of support and positivity), but as far as I can tell, this is our self-deceptive biases doing their usual thing.

I'm not saying there aren't general trends, just that they're hard to pick out and one can't judge them by how things feel; how things feel is randomness + cognitive biases + your priors.

Btw the "infamous Dropbox comment" wasn't hostile, it was supportive (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). BrandonM has been a good sport about it over the years but his comment was misconstrued after the fact, and now everyone just repeats the story because it feels true and therefore must be true, and anyway why spoil the fun, and if the fun comes at a specific person's expense, who cares really? Btw the overall thread wasn't hostile either; there were lots of positive comments (e.g. "This is genius": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917).

The "infamous iPod comment" wasn't on HN!

Eh, HN is kind of mildly cynical toward everything, not just startups.

It makes sense to me; after all, people on HN are likely pretty in-tune with tech news, and if you read enough tech news over a long enough time, it becomes clear that the vast major of "groundbreaking" and "disruptive" ideas end up falling flat.

Isn't that sort of the point? This is a Y Combinator project, so it seems reasonable that founders can come here to have their ideas picked apart. Most startups will probably receive a kinder reception here than in the real world, after all.

I think it's a combination of you and selection bias. Things can take off very quickly here, likewise negative comments sometimes crush people's dreams. That's what you get with an informed and largely unfiltered audience.

Let's not mention crypto.

Although, I'm guilty of thinking doordash is stupid. I'm am still surprised there aren't more clones.

With that said. I think HN has a programmer bias that views the world through that lens. under estimating marketing, sales, hr and other business functions and over estimating coding in valuing a business. basically equating building an mvp with execution.

> Although, I'm guilty of thinking doordash is stupid. I'm am still surprised there aren't more clones.

I mean, does DoorDash make money yet? A year ago, Forbes had an article "How Will DoorDash Eventually Make Money?". Why would you clone a failing business? ;P

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2022/02/25/ho...

To me the biggest lessons from some of these startup companies are "success is relative" and "sometimes the real business model is the friends we made along the way".

(Note that I am writing this comment soon after eating a meal I ordered from a local restaurant and had delivered to me using DoorDash. I might order dessert!...)

Programming does that to your brain. The average HN user spends hours a day poring over code, their mind constantly checking for the smallest flaw or inconsistency. That spills over into toxic and cynical interpersonal behavior.

>>Programming does that to your brain.

Hahaha this is so true.. I used to (I guess am still) be cynical about a lot of stuffs. I then realized startup's life and death is to be validated with potential customers, not with a bunch of hackers on HNs. It's good to get the critical feedback, but don't get demotivated by them.

The loudest voices on HN are the ones most eager to show how “smart” they are. They do that by putting down other people’s work. See also “middlebrow dismissal.”

I’ve had a few articles of mine show up on the front page. They were interesting enough to get a bunch of upvotes, but the people who take the time to comment overwhelmingly 1) didn’t read the article; 2) have a shallow understanding of the topic; and 3) loudly proclaim how bad the idea is / how easily it can be solved with some misconceived alternative.

In short: yeah, in aggregate, HN commenters suck. Including me, I suppose.

If you want flowers and praises from influencers then to Product Hunt. It is meant for shoving everyone's ego.

I don't think the criticism of startup products is the same as criticism of the bailout. But I do think that we've lost our sense of community (or perhaps never had one).

>Seems like the hostility hit its most irrational peak with the sentiment here towards startups who banked with SVB. Many seemed to go so far as to almost hope we’d see a startup meltdown.

This is an image problem driven by plain old hypocrisy and fueled by greed. The "bail us out in full" because we "played by the rules and trusted banks" even though the actual rules are well advertised. Socialize the losses and privatize the profits. You can dislike this if you are a libertarian, on the right or even on the left all for different reasons. But we had a set of agreed upon rules that were apparent not good enough and the "tech elite" leveraged Twitter to broadcast that. Honestly it really shows the power of Twitter.

Then HN itself has been largely pro libertarian and anti-union for a long time although it looks like the sentiment has been slowly changing. There's always been a question in my mind of how much a HN discussion is driven by minority actions of a few vocal individuals or down votes. I don't think we actually get a good discussion of actual ideas here.

YC was also affiliated with Thiel at one point and while Altman espoused UBI (a good thing) that seems to have been dropped. OpenAI was open source and is now closed and it was nonprofit and is now seemingly "in it for the money". And while he is no longer running YC, he is still strongly associated with it. In addition Altman is seen as libertarian due to his association with Thiel. Tan is also viewed as less liberal than SF requires in terms of local politics. This doesn't help the "tech overloads are asking for money" image problem especially when the bank run was trigged by VCs out for themselves.

That is indicative of the real problem which is that SV has a major culture problem, specifically that it is no longer a community and does not interact positively with the larger community. YC companies like Airbnb have this problem too, as do all gig economy companies. Honestly if YC wants to do better they should push for universal healthcare so that they can have their gig economy companies.

Firstly, it should be noted that this isn't kindergarten. Your work doesn't get praised because you showed up, or because you worked hard. So if your idea is crap (and let's be honest, most are) be prepared to hear it.

Secondly your idea isn't new. Trust me, lots of people have thought it before. Most did nothing with it. Some have tried and failed. I know this feels unintuitive but ideas are valueless, everyone has them all the time. The worst thing you can do is treat an idea as valuable or unique. (it is neither.) Despite what the patent Office would have you believe.

Third, Execution. Assuming it's at least a useful idea, assuming it's not some boil-the-ocean scheme, you'll get judged on your execution. And you're a carpenter showing a rough prototype to other professional carpenters. Who will judge it like a finished product. And all of whom believe they could do a better job with execution. (Oak? Seriously? Oak is so last year, everyone is working in Myrtle now...)

Lastly, we all know the product is doomed anyway. Either you give up, and it dies gracefully, or it's successful enough so you get acquired by say Google (well done to you), but then Google wait 3 years and then kill it.

So yeah, this is a crappy place to get validation, much less actual customers. Selling to techies is a fools game.

On the other hand figuring out a target market with pain (you can solve) at a price point they can afford, and figuring out how to reach that market (at a price you can afford) can lead to a good income, and a long-term business.

Just don't expect much support from here :)

Most implementations are a weekend project for a programmer and a lot of real resources go into selling a for loop to count $thing; there’s little net new tech to it

Everything else about startups is hype generation, roleplay, resource waste to enable all of it…

It all reminds me of those dudes on TV in the 80s screaming about the latest Sony VCR, and Lay-Z-Boy; it’s all gaming my agency and attention.

After 23 years in CE/SWE and a bit more than that in our society, I don’t hate startups; I find our culture to be monopolized by repetitive, shallow sales pitches as if we’re above doing real work to support biology; we just externalize the mess to keep coddling suburban kids who are now grown up running startups.

Girgori Perelman is more of a role model to me than any startup founder and VC will ever be.

“Oh but we’re fixing these other things in society…” yeah it’s all trade offs. We’re making tons of other problems due to it.

There’s evidence in neuroscience teens brains switch off to mom, seek new ideas, experience. IMO it’s immoral to foist on next generation deference to elders contracts and value store. I don’t care any of those vain old men with their dubious success story I wasn’t there to verify claim to be rich. I want to define my own value store, not fellate someone else’s figurative identity.

As far as we know, humans are unique in the universe. Does not make humans important to it. Like past story of religion perpetuating story of nation state pride is just as empty, vacuous, and entitled.

Startups suck as a result of our society having caretaking of elder nostalgia and belief, sacrifice such that it is, is to be celebrated by everyone that comes after. It’s just gross group think.

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