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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> I think the bigger issue is that most of the financial upsides of startups were illusory

I wouldn't say I'm an old-timer by any metrics, but even back in 2012 when I first discovered and joined HN, I remember it was pretty clear in the community (and people I spoke to around me) you shouldn't go to work at a startup if you were looking for "a lot + safe" money.

Sure, you could belong to the 0.001% and work on the next Dropbox, but most likely you would end up not, so don't start at a startup to chase riches, as there are better venues for that. Do work at a startup if the environment/mission/team feels right to you, but with no expectations of a big payday-exit.

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Here's a question: what's the list of startups fitting the criteria of

- after 2008 Great Financial Crisis

- actual startup, not spinoff from larger company

- financially successful exit

- early non-founder employees made a substantial amount of money?

Everyone has a different interpretation of "substantial", but I'll say Nest.

GPT: whatsapp, instagram, airbnb, slack, uber, snap

Fact check: almost totally correct, most founded in 2009 except Airbnb which was 2007. Interesting. Seems like 2009 was a good year for startups; I guess building at the market bottom is a good way to ride the market up.

The gig economy at least in part grew out of a giant wave of unemployment.

There were also suddenly a lot of people without a home to sleep in, and suddenly a lot of homes on the market.

Basically, right after a crash is the best time to do anything.

Also coincides with the start of the app + REST economy

Openai?

The slave isn't going to turn on its master ;)

No exit in view.

If you look at the companies that went public from 2018-2021 (boom/tail end of the latest "bubble"), you should assume that all of those generated somewhere in the range of 25-500+ non-founders who cleared $1m+ worth of stock pre-tax (a small-mid cap SaaS will be on the lower end, Uber/AirBnB will be at the higher end).

It's harder to know from acquisitions, but I'd guess that most of those with sale prices >$1b generated ~10-250 non-founders with $1m+ share packages. I think that the Qualtrics founders said that they minted 250 millionaires from their initial sale to SAP.

Solidfire (which never got talked about at all on HN) fits the bill nicely.

Why the after 2008 foundatuon criteria. Someone who joined FB in 2010 could have got rich right? Same with Google, Amazon, most other unicorns that established before 2008.

Get rich in the sense of "decent salary, and HODL the company stock", sure. Get rich in the sense of riding that startup VC wave, no.

Amazon had north of 100,000 employees by the time I joined in 2012. The "plucky startup" days were long gone, even if they did still tell the fable of the door desks at every orientation class

Oh, it's somewhat arbitrary, but Facebook was founded in 2004 and by 2010 no longer counts to me as a "startup". I suppose 2010 is still pre-IPO (2012) and therefore has a chance for advantageous stock grants.

(Not lost in all this: over the years the tax treatment of option grants has changed! It used to be a hugely advantageous way of giving employees something of value, and that's been eroded a lot.)

Technology is inherently a domination force and you can see this invisible domination battle between technology startups all the time.

Have a moat* or get exhausted battling against other similar startups until one is the major winner.

Technology is the easy part (for most people) Winning the battle is the hard part.

TO summarize, win battle=big-payday

That's assuming "Winning" means "More money", but that's not everyone's goal in life. There is plenty of space for smaller companies that earn enough profits to let every employee live a good life, without chasing unicorns.

Correct, but if you're interested in that, you start a regular small business, and you take a loan from a bank for seed capital. Venture Capital will give you much more more money and ask less questions precisely because they expect you to go for world domination - and they expect corresponding returns.

You don't reach for VC if you just want a lifestyle business, much like you don't reach for mafia money just to pay down your mortgage earlier. You have to know who you're getting in bed with, and what their expectations are.

This is called a "lifestyle business", which some people get very annoyed about. And as mentioned you can't get VC for this model.

I think a lot of people get annoyed (probably including myself) because the term sort of implies that there's great work-life balance which definitely isn't the case with a lot of small businesses.

Actually, what I was referring to is just called "company" or "business", or at least used to be called that.

I understood "lifestyle business" to be a company that tries to be adoptable to the lifestyle of the founder/owner, but maybe I understood it wrong or it changed.

I saw the same posts you did, but how many people actually listened? How many, instead, came back later asking how to salvage a situation that didn't match the dream?

There are always cooler heads raising alarms on these booms. What turns them into bubbles is the inflection point where there are more people coming for the dream than for the thing that motivates people who understand the risks and know the statistics.

I seem to remember 2015 or near it as that inflection point. Tech media went from worrying about the steady march of unicorns to not talking much about valuations.

The thing that puzzles me is the early "only eating Ramen and pulling all nighters" startup founder story. I suppose nobody believes this anymore, fortunately.

I mean... we all agree, it would seem, this is not the path to getting rich for most people. And it's unhealthy and stressful, so it's also not the best way to work.

So it has to come down to "the mission". You must be doing something so amazing, so innovative, a boon to mankind, that all else is secondary and you're willing to endure financial risk and a stressful job, right. Right?

But no. Most startups' products are unremarkable or banal -- with some honorable exceptions -- and mankind doesn't really care either way.

“The mission” isn’t the only meaningful drive.

It is hard to build a successful business out of even a most mundane ideas. That alone can be a great accomplishment that many people strive for. Also to be able to set and execute initiatives is also a great motivation. Seeing the fruits of your labor can be very rewarding.

Or you think you’re special. You know it’s risky and many people fail, but you’ve got the right idea, intelligence, work ethic, etc. It might even be true sometimes. I’m sure success isn’t randomly distributed. The trouble is figuring out if you really do have it or if it’s self delusion.

I'm not saying it's completely random. It's very likely a combination of skill [1] and luck, with luck being the bigger factor. So even if you're "special", you're unlikely to make it.

[1] And possibly contacts, or safety net, or wealthy family and/or friends.

I think there are special circumstances where success, while far from assured, is a lot more likely than usual. Apple and Google probably had decent odds. (Where “decent” here means something like 10%.) But they’re really rare, and honestly and correctly evaluating whether you have an opportunity like that is really hard. I think that’s why a lot of people do startups, anyway.

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