[askafriend]

You’re on a website which is run by an arm of a prominent venture capital firm.

What did you expect? Us all talking about the successful McDonald’s franchisee in Wichita, Kansas?

You’re consuming news from a portion of the overall economy where there are high stakes, big bets and a lot of money involved. Outsized, massive multi-billion dollar outcomes are the name of the entire game.

That’s why you get that feeling.

[onion2k]

I think you're wrong. There's lots of people here who want to build massive businesses at scale and believe VC is the right way to go, but that doesn't mean people can't also see the benefits of going more slowly. If you read HN a lot you start to see people here have huge amounts of respect for people who bootstrap their businesses. Comments from the likes of candyjapan, idlewords, and patio11 about their journeys pretty much always get plenty of positive replies and very little negativity about not going down the VC route.

[travisjungroth]

lol they’re not wrong. People seem to forget the facts about HN. It’s hosted by a incubator/VC company that uses it to promote discussion and the company itself. Which is fine and makes sense.

Yeah, there’s other stuff here too. But there’s a huge bias towards startups compared to the rest of the world.

[onion2k]

But there’s a huge bias towards startups compared to the rest of the world.

Of course. That's not the point of contention here. HN is mostly about startups.

The post I replied to suggested that there's a "pro-VC / anti-bootstrapping" slant on HN. That's what I think is wrong. Many people who post here are sensible enough to understand that both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. People don't generally advocate taking on VC funding unless there's a good reason to.

Other startup communities have people who are seriously against the idea of bootstrapping, and level accusations of building a "lifestyle business" at anyone who chooses that path. I don't see that very often that on HN.

[opportune]

just curious if you can give examples of other (online) startup communities so that I can follow them too

[kentt]

Indie hackers

[atupis]

Things are chancing and people have not noticed it yet. Nowadays it's much easier build fast growing company without outside capital and additional workforce than let's say 15 years ago.