[misiax]

This is actually a spot on comment recalling the true startup/software mindset.

I miss the old days of building software just for the pure joy of hacking things together to create value, first for myself.

The physics of software/SaaS market became severely disturbed in the last decade by free marketing money pushing the most shiny products as wide as possible without making the technical side work first (Looking at you, Clickup).

We strongly need hackers to become motivated and concentrated again to build great new things. Far from FAANGs and far from GPT-is-the-answer theme.

Just two-three hackers working together late nights over shared pizzas on something smart.

Building is the answer. And even likely so in the current reality of failing corporate promises which will take us into 2024 or even 2025 easily. The new, adjusted financial forecasts for public companies are just being published (these won’t be nice) and we are still to reach the bottom in demand for software developers.

Let’s not waste this time and build something great.

[dogleash]

> We strongly need hackers to become motivated and concentrated again to build great new things.

This guy on twitter is a *checks notes* virtual mailbox provider. A product that's existed for ages and already had software startups take a run at disrupting them a number of years ago. I remember one spectacular failure, don't remember how well the others fared, and get the impression from a friend that uses one of the legacy providers that they're happy with the software offering of existing service providers.

Not exactly the kind of tech R&D conjured up by the phrase "build great new things."

Makes me expect that the kind of people "Work at a Startup" could place at innovative companies are going into the same meat grinder that got us to where we are today.

I have a hard time drawing a line where my own lost innocence ends and the widespread cynicism and malaise that has crept into "tech" starts. But the culture has unmistakably been a casualty of recent history.

This corporate-all-hands-meeting flavor inspirational writing ain't gonna fix it.

[opportune]

I would love to do something like that, but I wouldn’t do it for a 70% paycut like I’d get as a founding engineer, unless I had founder-level equity.

I’m actually considering bootstrapping but in this day and age, it’s a hard prospect. You’re getting out advertised by everybody and many domains (AI, SAAS) have high inherent costs. It only works if you put in a lot of your own money, and are OK with a slow ramp to ramen profitability (within a domain where such a domain exists; forget about ML or nontrivial SAAS).

The whole “get some pizzas and hack” I am pretty sure is still how many profitable startups are getting created up to the MVP stage, just not necessarily the “three randoms and an accepted YC application” startups.