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CT 757: does anyone know a paralegal who enjoys insensitive jokes

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cookoutdeac said:
the other real problem is that if you're bootstrapping a company like this and trying to be profitable from the get-go, you do get FUCKED (or just acquired) by the companies pursuing growth at all costs with free VC money

so you just don't get many companies doing it until that goes away
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Or just choose your investors wisely and don’t try to solve something a million people couldn’t solve

I think about the startup you work at or the one my wife works at and they’re examples of normal growth curves and customer acquisition strategies, not ones exclusively focused on growth at the expense of product
 
TownieDeac said:
A fair point but scale is a crucial element in your basic Business Plan
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yeah and if all your losses weren't funded for years by VCs that would only be happy with a unicorn and would rather it just fail if it can't do that.. that level of profitability would probably be acceptable to someone who was able to just bootstrap the business
 
dartsndeacs said:
well wasn't the plan self driving cars?
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Not gonna claim to be an expert on their business plan but

I think while they waited for that it was smart to at least try and solve the last mile commute thing with bikes and scooters

But self driving at scale is still a pipe dream
 
I think I blame business schools for making everyone think they have good ideas too
 
TownieDeac said:
Or just choose your investors wisely and don’t try to solve something a million people couldn’t solve

I think about the startup you work at or the one my wife works at and they’re examples of normal growth curves and customer acquisition strategies, not ones exclusively focused on growth at the expense of product
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yeah but I wouldn't say we're not concerned by some competitors (with inferior products!) who have more recent large VC funding rounds and sales teams 10x larger than ours as a result, they're definitely a threat just because of manpower and money to throw around

OTOH if this all crashes that puts them in a tight spot, so I'm happier being on the more stable/profitable side right now
 
TownieDeac said:
I think I blame business schools for making everyone think they have good ideas too
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was actually just thinking about the Entreprenuership class i took at wake.

the curriculum did not include "leverage historically cheap capital to subsidize your dubious product/service into SCALE"

i wonder if it changed in the period between 2006-2015
 
cookoutdeac said:
yeah but I wouldn't say we're not concerned by some competitors (with inferior products!) who have more recent large VC funding rounds and sales teams 10x larger than ours as a result, they're definitely a threat just because of manpower and money to throw around

OTOH if this all crashes that puts them in a tight spot, so I'm happier being on the more stable/profitable side right now
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Different as an employee (even one with reasonably high equity) than being a founder
 
TownieDeac said:
This will be a boring side topic that nobody cares about but ITC asked me what I found interesting about that article and diggler said this



First let me stipulate I’m an English major and an idiot who talks out of his ass. With that out of the way


I now work on the product management/development side, and I feel like diggler’s analysis is emblematic of the Big Capital Problem. A startup should have a product that solves an actual need and differentiate itself from existing products by XYZ and has a path to being profitable. At the highest end of VC/tech funding like Uber/Netflix/DoorDash, they skipped some major steps and there is no path to profitability except for raising your prices or exploiting your labor, neither of which is sustainable. And yet you can take those companies public and trade on them and get rich AF or sell them for a 100x and get rich AF, and you’ve created absolutely zero value.

And in the case of Netflix, who cares if they go out of business, it was entertaining and for a while before they had competitors, cheap for customers and decent for creators. No real harm done. But in the case of Uber you decimated an industry (cabs) and exploited cheap labor and you don’t have a real product that will last even with your other verticals. DoorDash even worse for restaurants, killing what was already a razor thin margin.

Feels like a serious structural problem exacerbating inequality and not a very good and just and neoliberal well regulated market approach to running an economy. I don’t really care at the end of the day that the Atlantic needed to put “millennial” into the angle to get people to click, I feel like we misdiagnose the underlying issue in our typical conversation about this. But if I missed the conversation and it was already had, oh well.
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which steps did netflix skip? seems like they they didn't take shortcuts or exploit legal loopholes or push the limits of labor laws like the other gig economy app businesses
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
which steps did netflix skip? seems like they they didn't take shortcuts or exploit legal loopholes or push the limits of labor laws like the other gig economy app businesses
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Less about skipping steps there than how much cash they spent scaling. They just opened the firehose for years indiscriminately while their competitors built up platforms, and they didn’t seek ad money or merchandising or any alternative to subs and raising prices as ways to diversify when the market actually got crowded. A different case than the others, but their losses are pretty wild too
 
Man, trampoline parks are just fun all around.
 
It's kinda crazy how much movies move around the streaming services. Like I thought when HBOMax started they would just hold onto all the WB movies, but if you go on Netflix rn you could watch all the Nolan Batmans, for example. Like why is Netflix paying for those right now?
 
TownieDeac said:
This will be a boring side topic that nobody cares about but ITC asked me what I found interesting about that article and diggler said this



First let me stipulate I’m an English major and an idiot who talks out of his ass. With that out of the way


I now work on the product management/development side, and I feel like diggler’s analysis is emblematic of the Big Capital Problem. A startup should have a product that solves an actual need and differentiate itself from existing products by XYZ and has a path to being profitable. At the highest end of VC/tech funding like Uber/Netflix/DoorDash, they skipped some major steps and there is no path to profitability except for raising your prices or exploiting your labor, neither of which is sustainable. And yet you can take those companies public and trade on them and get rich AF or sell them for a 100x and get rich AF, and you’ve created absolutely zero value.

And in the case of Netflix, who cares if they go out of business, it was entertaining and for a while before they had competitors, cheap for customers and decent for creators. No real harm done. But in the case of Uber you decimated an industry (cabs) and exploited cheap labor and you don’t have a real product that will last even with your other verticals. DoorDash even worse for restaurants, killing what was already a razor thin margin.

Feels like a serious structural problem exacerbating inequality and not a very good and just and neoliberal well regulated market approach to running an economy. I don’t really care at the end of the day that the Atlantic needed to put “millennial” into the angle to get people to click, I feel like we misdiagnose the underlying issue in our typical conversation about this. But if I missed the conversation and it was already had, oh well.
Click to expand...

God damn, I would sit and talk with you just to watch your lips move
 
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