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I miss the old way of building a startup

7 points by phekunde ↗ HN
The pre stickynotes-and-lot-of-diagram-drawing era, where some friends use to gather in a bedroom/dormroom/garage and binge code their idea just for fun, oblivion to the idea of "unicorns" has gone! That way of startup building was fun.

I feel the present day startup building has become corporatised, where the moneybags have sucked out the fun part by pushing founders to run after the mirage of the unicorn in the hope to get 30-40x return on their investment.

4 comments

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PragmaticPulp
Both styles of startup building have always existed. There were plenty of VC-powered startups aiming for 30X exits years ago.

Small groups of friends building startups without VC money and without aiming for unicorn-level exits still exist today. You’re just not hearing about them because they’re not in the news.

There’s nothing wrong with starting a small tech company that can become self-sustaining without VC-level exits. A lot of founders are doing just this. They’re usually doing it quietly, though.

phekunde
Yes, that type of investment had existed but for hardtech startups not some app startup(and even lot of hardtech startups were funded by government grants/funding). Nowadays every bit-and-byte is funded in the hope of making it into a unicorn. That punctures the fun.
[dead] audit
That was my understanding as well.

'App-scope' or 'micro-workflow-scope' startups using VC capital as a sort of 'business anabolic' for short-term raise, at expense of long-term viability, seems to be a new fenomena.

Another anology that comes to mind is related to 'over-stimulation'. Again a relatively new phenomena as noted in this recent submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27942499

cercatrova
You can still do this? Have you seen all the people on www.indiehackers.com?