Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Excellent read. I'm just going to comment on one thing:

The typical venture-capital concerns used to provide money only after a few hundred thousand dollars or more had been put into a business by relatives and principals, and only after the company had a product well along in development.

One of the major differences between then and now is that normal people could actually save money, because the two-decade (or longer?) Boomer/NIMBY-created housing bubble hadn't happened yet. Bootstrapping was possible, and it was a negative signal if an entrepreneur hadn't put, at the very least, $10,000 of his own money in the show.

In 2015, the it-gets-VC-or-doesn't-happen attitude may seem degenerate, but it's a necessity given that it's no longer normal (but rather extraordinary) for a 30-year-old programmer to have a six-figure net worth, thanks to Boomer-created housing and health insurance costs.

View on HN

What you're saying isn't necessarily wrong, but it's not necessary to say it's "boomer-created". It changes the conversation from being about why this phenomenon happened (and there's several interesting theories) to something more of a blame game.

A necessity? Only because people have no self discipline. Few people have the ability to save/invest and defer gratification. Spend, spend, spend is the American way.

The life of relative comfort of the average HNer (engineer, likely six figure income, little fear of unemployment) is basically what the middle class was 40-50 years ago (adjusted for inflation, etc). This level of material security used to be common, even expected.

At one time it was possible to own a home, several cars and raise multiple children on a single, average income!

However, because it's getting so uncommon now, it's becoming significantly easier to save up large quantities of money for those people who are fortunate enough to have good jobs.

Think of it this way: you probably have friends, neighbors, or classmates that manage to survive on a grad student or service worker salary (~$20-30K). It may not be comfortable, but they can do it. If they can do it, why can't you? Are you too good for their lifestyle?

Now if you're making $80K after tax and they're making $20K and you're living the same lifestyle, you put away $60K/year. For every year you've worked, you've saved up for three. There's your startup capital.

Over the past 15 years or so, I've saved over 1.2 million USD. I also paid off my mortgage and am completely debt free.

The most I ever made in a single year was around 160K or so.

A 30-something programmer doesn't need a six-figure net worth to put $10,000 of their own savings into a venture.

That's hardly worth the cost of drawing up the investment paperwork. You'd need to pool with nine friends to even make a meaningful seed round.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com