All In: Now's The Time | Hacker News Reader

All In: Now's The Time

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36 pointssilentscope13 comments

So acquirers are going to pay too much for companies in the coming silly season and this should be your signal to really go "all in" on your startup?

Instagram hit the startup lottery. Awesome for them. But building a biz solely because of market frothiness and hoping to hit the lottery seems like a horribly misguided idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

Always appropriate. On a side note, really hard to know whether this is a bubble or not. I don't want to take either side, but you cannot refute that a billion dollars for a startup that did not gain any significant revenue seems like a lot of money.

People get lucky. The instagram story was one of luck, rather than hard work (granted, they probably put in long hours but in the end they hit a goldmine purely on luck [plus I'm sure being connected to the top VCs & players in the valley didn't hurt]).

My point is, while it's great to encourage entrepreneurship, it's easier said than done.

Instagram is an exceptional product built with significant restraint and focus. It took them over a year and a half to release an Android app, because they were focused on what matters. This is exceedingly rare, as most teams would end up shortsightedly chasing the last few percent of users. Your assumption that the Instagram team has some above average connections in the valley is also baseless.

Make your own luck.

If you are going to say that my claims are baseless, please explain "... they focused on what matters.". What would that be exactly?

Significant restraint and focus? Please expand on what you also mean by this.

You're right on one point... They don't have above average connections. They have spectacular connections. Only the connections that being funded by Jack Dorsey, Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, etc. would provide.

What I mean is that typically these types of companies drive to support all platforms (including web), diluting their ability to execute. Instagram focused on excellent execution for a narrower user base and won over a large number of users. Considering the demand for an Android app, they held out for a very long time, until they were able to bring the same level of execution to that platform.

This isn't "connections." This is called an investment. It is because those investors realized the potential here and invested in the company. Maybe I read it wrong, but your post made it seem like there is some kind of unfair advantage they had because they "knew a guy who knew a guy." Only after they proved their ability to execute did they take significant funding and gain those connections.

you need to slide all of your chips on to the table.

Is it a casino?

Thanks, but no thanks.

I notice that the only use of "bubble" in the OP is when talking about the late 90s. Surely we want to move away from cash in while to goings good mentality the OP is promoting to something more sustainable. Otherwise we're going to see a further degradation of web technology as a good place to invest. I don't know if there is a bubble or not, but the language in the OP screams it.

This all assumes investors are capable of weighing up the relative merits of various investments and aren't blinded by big exits like that of Instagram. And the evidence continues to point to them being blinded by dollar signs . . .

It's important to understand the context of this post. Adeo said it was an email to their startups which they decided to publish.

It's a pep talk to people who've already or are on the brink of taking the leap. In that light it's entirely applicable. It's not speaking against sane business models it's about use this as an opportunity to dig in and kick ass.

It doesn't matter how you get to "kick ass" ... as long as you get there.

As an entrepreneur, what you really have to ask yourself is: are you pursuing your idea because you think you'll get rich, or because you want to change the world? Are you chasing money, or building value?

Valuations may be high right now, and some frothy transactions may be going on, but that doesn't make building a company any easier. If you can bootstrap, work on a project on the side, and keep a backup plan until you're ready to make the leap, do it! If the problem you're chasing is big and scary and capital intensive, then go raise the capital necessary to tackle it, but if not, you may be better off bootstrapping and building a 5 million dollar company you own all of than a 100 million dollar company where you end up heavily diluted [1].

[1] http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/06/paths-to-5m-for-...

If you're in your 20's and have skills now is the best time to do something big.

You're being squeezed on both sides. The gen-Xers that cashed out are reinvesting and flexing their muscles to win again. The teens and early twenty whippersnappers are hungry and foolish enough to think they'll win.

If you love what you do and do what you love then you'll win. Just make sure you love something worthwhile.

Articles like this seem to me like a good sign that we might be entering bubble territory.

This is essentially saying, "hey everyone, time to cash in right now before the money dries up." Of course in that sentence "money" refers to capital, not revenues or profits. Such misplaced focus was the hallmark problem of the late 90's bubble.

I went in all-in for that bubble and got 10 months of hope followed by 4 months of COBRA and unemployment, then another regular ol' job.

Yesterday Wired was saying that it's not a bubble.

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