|
|
|
|
|
|
by PaulHoule
5032 days ago
|
|
|
It's what it is. Yet, I often feel that criticisms of the startup wave are often a few years out of phase. At least once a week on HN we get a rehash of the meme that "startups" are too focused on advertising and social media. But if you look at the companies YCombinator has been funding lately, you'll see the dominant theme is people building subscription services that cost $X a month. I have to admit that I already find that tiresome, and maybe someday the haters will catch up and write linkbait about how that kind of business is BS. I can also say that a 'startup' can denote a wide range of companies. There are the guys who want you do a PhD thesis worth of research in two months. Maybe I could do that if I lived like Howard Hughes and ate piracetam tabs out of a huge bowl, but these guys don't even have cash to buy the data they need or the EC2 time, so tough luck. At least they're doing their startup on stolen time from their day jobs so the lack of cash doesn't mean they starve, it just means their business goes nowhere. Then there are some "startups" that are over-funded. A few years ago I was mystified at how Colours took $50 million to build a crappy photo sharing app. Then I learned, the hard way, exactly how this happens... |
|
|
It seems that it is a more sustainable business model (rather than relying on advertising and social media) because they're providing a service or product that has actual value to users, enough to have them open their wallets to the companies.
Unless there's something I am missing here?