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.

Yeah, there’s other stuff here too. 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.

And even if you fail you write some blog posts, do the speaking circuit and end up with another high paying role in a startup, VC or a services company (Government, Co-working space, law firm...)

Oh, HN.

Now, seeing this, I would totally settle for some "unsatisfactory" $450K. :)

They are probably good at rising up the ladder in some company, that's a reasonable upper management salary for them there.

Long hours, millions or billions in cash, high risk, high reward - it's so much more exciting than building a steady business that pays its way and keeps some number of people gainfully employed while providing a genuinely useful product/service.

On HN "startup" means the kind of business whose ambition is to be a household name, used by millions of people if it's in the consumer space, or all the major customers if it's in B2B.

That kind of thing tends to require a business that grows a lot while generally not making free cash, which is why it needs outside investors. Those investors see a lot of these firms and this is one take on the accumulated learnings.

Startup is not same as new company or new tech company.

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

> A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

orig. U.S. A business or enterprise that is in the process of starting up, or that has just been established; a startup company, venture, etc.

They cite these early usages in print:

1975 Chicago Defender 20 Sept. 23/1 The many problems faced by any new start up, but most assuredly by a black financial institution.

1986 Your Business Mar. 11/3 There are the small businesses; the heroic little start-ups in their garages and garden sheds.

Start-up company in the modern sense was first used in 70's

Venture capital is high-risk and high-reward, and investors won't gamble millions without a chance for a massive return.

Massive returns usually happen at large scale.

If you want more companies like yours and fewer like, say, Twitter, then venture capital would need to be a charity.

Gavin Belson is not a fictitious character; he is literally the snapshot of a typical investor.

It's a real shame that building a company has become about racing to the cash (with very little conscious reasoning as to why) and not about building meaningful products, services, and teams that will be around for the long-term.

As a guy running a "tiny" company that just did a little over 100K in revenue its first year, I couldn't be happier. There's only three of us (two of which are contractors) and the current goal is to intentionally limit our team size to no more than 20 over the next few years.

There also companies/people who think they need an exit strategy, rapidly iterate and grow, get multiple rounds of funding from VCs or angels, then sell it to one of the bigger tech companies. There are so many examples of these types of companies. You only need to visit Techcrunch or one of many tech news sites.

There are other types too. The company I work at, we do put in great work, have steady growth. We did get funding from VCs but working towards self-sufficiency. Funding was necessary to keep the company alive, while delivering great value to our customers. In the end it comes down to what kind of a culture you want to set for the company and what you think will be good for the company and the employees.

Contrary to many responses, the drive for growth is a consequence of human psychology and hence how things evolve in business. Humans are fundamentally dissatisfied creatures, and this translates into ever-increasing hunger for profit in businesses.

As a business owner, you cannot decide in isolation that you want to not grow because that decision is impacted by your competitors and customers. If your competitors decide to grow really big, your small business will get threatened. This is exactly what's happening with Amazon. A mom-and-pop shop may be happy not growing, but it's at the risk of not existing at all.

Earlier I had similar thoughts of "why grow", but now I understand better. I wrote about this in a blog post: https://growth.wingify.com/startup-complacency-the-flip-side...

It's true that a certain kind of business culture encourages this thinking and disparages slow growth or - worse - static but healthy profits.

But that's propaganda, not reality, and the economy is the worse for it. Steady businesses contribute far more in jobs, personal freedom, and social opportunity than unicorns do.

I have successfully run a consultancy for fourteen years. This is very bootstrappable, but does not scale well. Conversely, one cannot make the next Tesla using one's own capital.

I thought, “The dry cleaner down the street he a competitor advantage by memorizing the face and account number of every customer. Even if they don’t scale beyond one shop, they’re an entrepreneur”

Single proprietor businesses generally don’t hire PR firms to hype themselves up. That’s why it’s not in the press.

Don't let the hype/marketing make you think otherwise.

To answer your question, you have to understand how VCs operate. How they raise money from other institutional investors, rich folks etc and how they need to return that money in a finite time (4-5 years) Everything comes down to money for that reason.

(I'm not affiliated with them in any way, just a fan of the product and someone who sympathizes and agrees with their views.)

Startups need an exit strategy.

Employees want to work 5-10 years max and end up with millions to retire peacefully while working in an intense environment which serves as the story of their accomplishment for the lifetime.

Then they plan to follow their other life goals like going on a world tour with the family or watch their kids growing up or creating their own small lifestyle business. It can be anything.

The key realization is that most employees do not want to work for you just because they have found themselves in such place.

When I was new in the industry, I put a lot of blood/sweat into building a company. Today, I can't force myself to put the same amount of efforts even if I want to.

The idea is to raise money fast, hire experienced people for ancillary services and develop the application in a way so that it is able to hold up till IPO. Defer all costs (application maintenance, vendor lockins, IP infringement risks) for post IPO. Create the Hype around the product which gets you eyeballs, subscriptions, MAU and other metrics which translates into the valuation. Once you've caught market attention, the solution can always get more love post IPO.

The market pressure to produce returns post IPO results in the broad application of the company's IP, resources, and talent. This might spin up new industries.

Once the employees have cashed their equity, it's up to them to stay (if they are enjoying the position) or leave (if they've other life goals).

A lifestyle business, won't be able to achieve this for each of their employees. Even very few startups achieve this for most of their employees.

Nopes, founders want millions by (ideally) using technology to disrupt a market and gaining from the windfall.

VC want millions/billions by betting money on such founders.

They both agree to buy talent by promising employees a share of the windfall.

Employees don't start out thinking "hey I want millions, let me join this unknown company".

They usually start out "I need a good, well paying job where I do interesting work."

Edit: spelling

This sounds like either it is an extremely unrealistic expectation or it's extremely unfair.

I know lots of smart people who worked for at least 10 years in very intense startup environments and got essentially nothing out of it. Often, they have to fallback on a life of contract work for huge boring corporations.

Yes, it's not guaranteed by anything.

I also know of cases where founder alone ended up with billions and early employees got nothing.

I just see those startups as poorly executed who decided to kill their army after victory way home.

We should strive for execution where at least your comrades also win.

It is not a zero-sum game. You win when your comrades win. The glory is not in taking it all but taking pride in what you have created and can potentially create and expand on over and over again. :)

Every dollar of an exit given to an employee is a dollar that the VC or founder can't have.

Strip the ideal away and people will leave in droves. Without a differentiator, startups are just like everything else.

Then it's time to play the game of "compete against each other, and the worst 10% gets fired". Suddenly the talent becomes cheaper, and stops talking about work-life balance.

In Silicon Valley, pay is high, so is the cost of living, reverse in other places. If your situation differs, you've got it good (unless you're in a bad job in a high cost of living place)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446121