
State of Startups 2017 Survey Results - redm
http://stateofstartups.firstround.com/2017/
======
Silhouette
I love this one:

How confident are you that you're building a billion dollar company?

    
    
        18.6%  I'm certain we will
        41.8%  I'm confident we have a decent shot
        23.2%  It's possible, but I'm not so sure
        10.1%  I doubt it
         6.4%  Definitely not
    

They interviewed 869 venture-backed founders to get the data.

As of December 2017, WSJ lists 168 VC-backed private companies valued at over
$1B _in the entire world_.

Meanwhile, how many years until you think you'll be profitable?

    
    
        14.4%  Already profitable
        18.3%  <1
        50.2%  1-2
        13.7%  3-5
         3.5%  >5

~~~
mrleiter
#33 What’s the hardest executive hire you've made? (Choose one)

2.6% Finance

Well, I see some sort of correlation here.

*EDIT: Two options - either there are so many brilliant finance people looking for jobs or finance is not so important (although it obviously should be).

~~~
mattmanser
A finance employee isn't necessary until you're bigger. Like the two companies
I know who have one part-time and mainly got them for Credit Control because
they were actually making money and they were in an industry with lots of late
payers.

The need for a finance executive? Comes when you start getting silly money.

------
PeterStuer
Feels like more of a pamphlet illustrating the deranged state of US culture
and politics more than anything else.

------
Veelox
#36 asked "A person's political affiliation would influence how you think
about:"

If it is possible I really want to see this broken down by political views of
the respondent. I feel like that would be a really good data point about if
the left wants diversity in thought or not.

My hunch is if you broke it down on left/center/right you would see more
poltical bias on the left. That said, since SV is so left leaning it might
simply be because those on the left can do it and still find good people while
those on the right cannot.

~~~
tedmiston
^ This, but from #51 the Bay Area only represents 38% of respondents
(headquarters). Overall, still a huge bicoastal bias, but there's definitely
representation outside SV too where the political climate is not as left
leaning.

------
jansho
#53 is interesting!

I assumed that there would be more 20-something founders. But 31-35 year olds
account for 23%, and 41-50 year olds account for 30%

~~~
k__
Same here, but on the other hand I never worked with <30 founders. A few
friends of mine founded right after university, but that was it.

Maybe this feeling comes up because they prefer to hire <30 people because
they are cheaper?

~~~
cyberpunk0
Most start ups want you to have a lot of experience so they don't have to
train you. That level of experience isn't found in most people in their 20s.
The older age bracket I'd wager are finance and venture capital types.
Startups are mostly toys for rich people

~~~
k__
Sure, but this doesn't explain why most people working in startups are in
their twenties.

~~~
nwenzel
Is that true? Or is that just what people want to see?

Avg age at my company (Series A funded, 50-ish people) is >30\. Founders
started at 35 & 36\. Now they’re not-quite-40 and 40. Your sample size may
vary.

~~~
tedmiston
It would be nice to see more data collection here around employees. Maybe
AngelList would be a good co to collect it?

At my startup, in my late 20s, I'm one of the older employees, excluding
founders & management.

------
haaen
#9 reveals the prejudice of the authors. It's about founders who experienced
difficulty in fundraising because of their sex. Last sentence of that
paragraph, in bold:

To the 12 men who said it hurt their chances... really?

~~~
Silhouette
I was irritated by that comment as well. Obviously some groups are subject to
prejudice more often than others, but measures like reverse discrimination and
quotas cause their share of problems for the opposite groups as well.
Likewise, some groups may be more subject to unwanted advances at work than
others, but again that doesn't mean no-one in the opposite groups is. It's
hardly inconceivable that 1-2% of male respondents in a survey like this would
have been affected by such issues in one form or another.

------
sillysaurus3
Since 3 out of 9 are about sexual harassment and one is about politics, I was
hoping to get your thoughts.

These days, people feel increasingly under fire. We have to watch what we say,
what we do, who we offend, what our political affiliations are, and whether we
are crossing any lines.

A little anecdote: I was hacking away on a couch in a mall, and a couple of
techies came up to me doing a user study. They asked me whether their flyer
might attract customers and what I thought would help. I complimented them
that they were out trying to talk to users and thinking of ways to increase
their growth rate. Their product looked genuinely interesting, so I asked if
they'd be willing to shoot me a text message to keep in touch.

This was something I'd done twice before. Both of the times led to getting
contacts that turned into a friendship or a lucrative gig.

I found myself unconsciously willing that the guy I was talking to would pull
out his phone. But she offered first. I gave her my number, and she typed it
in wrong. I corrected it, and she wrote a text message but didn't hit send.
And I was surprised to feel _relieved_ that she didn't actually text me.

This goes the other way too: A female friend's company recently made it to the
interview stage at YC, and right away the founder started treating her
differently. We couldn't figure out why. Then she remembered he made some joke
about having to room together like they were in college. She couldn't help but
wonder if her being female had something to do with the awkwardness.

But here's the thing. I know what's in my heart, and it's nothing but positive
intentions. I'm rooting for equality, and I think everyone who's oppressed or
experiencing discrimination needs to have a way of voicing those concerns.

How can we relax knowing that our political beliefs determine whether someone
will want to work with us? Whether an inappropriate joke might haunt us?
Whether a comment like "I don't think gender reassignment surgery on minors is
a good idea" will be seen as oppressive and intolerant, and we might lose our
jobs for it? What do we do if we want to participate in BDSM but have to live
in fear of being stripped of our titles and leadership roles?
[https://www.sonyaellenmann.com/2017/10/drupal-gor-
ayelet.htm...](https://www.sonyaellenmann.com/2017/10/drupal-gor-ayelet.html)

I'm asking openly and genuinely. We should be coming together and finding ways
to work as a unit in spite of philosophical or political differences. It
shouldn't be a rush to spot someone saying the wrong thing or trying to catch
someone doing something inappropriate.

None of this is to downplay or excuse any of the awful things that have
recently come to light. It's a relief to see it being resolved. I'm merely
trying to talk about the other side of the situation.

An open source project was looking for a code of conduct to adopt. They were
considering the contributor covenant, since babel and other large projects use
it. I tried to point out that it was a little controversial and that it may
foster a more productive working environment to adopt a different model. The
comment was deleted and the PR was locked until it was merged.

When ideas can't be discussed, pressure builds.

I thought maybe it was just me, but a friend of mine was recently at a risque
party, and they said they happened to run into a young male techie. They joked
that the party was pretty rowdy, and that there was all this inappropriate
behavior going on, even though it was the point of the party. "Honestly," he
said, "My biggest concern is running into someone I know from the tech scene."

How should we act in an era when one mistake will haunt us forever? Is there a
point at which we're being too cautious? Or is it just the smart thing to do?

I don't know. I guess I was just hoping we could talk about some of this. It's
feeling like people aren't allowed to have flaws.

~~~
codingdave
> We have to watch what we say, what we do, who we offend, what our political
> affiliations are, and whether we are crossing any lines.

People felt the same way in the 90s when the "Political Correctness" movement
really took off. It did feel like a bit much at the time, and if tumblr
existed in 1991, surely it would have gone overboard... but at the end of it
all, we did move to a culture that was more conscious of diversity and
developed communication styles that didn't exclude people.

I think we're in the same place now -- hyperaware of what actions we take, and
how everything is being perceived, with some people struggling to recognize
and adjust their own behavior to match new cultural norms that they never
thought were a problem in the first place.

And in 10-20 years, we'll likely end up with a better culture for it, even
though not everyone is going to enjoy how we get there.

~~~
SeoxyS
I don't agree that we ended up in a culture that is more conscious of
diversity. I think we moved to a a culture of adversity between social justice
warriors and those who outright rebel against their ridiculous campaign. If it
wasn't for that dynamic, we'd have a different President right now.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
For what it's worth, I agree with you. It feels like we're entering into a new
age of McCarthyism[1], where anyone perceived to have the wrong politics are
considered guilty until proven innocent. Nonliberal politics are completely
disallowed from corporate environments, while liberal politics are accepted in
earnest. It's just going to make extremism worse IMO.

People should be able to have and express their own opinions on
multiculturalism, affirmative action, gender norms, family structures, and
immigration in their private lives(Facebook, Instagram, etc) without risking
their careers.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)

------
anon11082016
Are we still pushing the idea that superficial diversity is something to
strive for? How about diversity of thought?

~~~
mlevental
those two things go hand in hand.

~~~
anon11082016
Clearly not, because after all the effort, at least the valley has been
making, it's still a cesspool of the same ideology. Even with VPs of
dieversity and correct think

~~~
jaggederest
Part of the difficult of achieving diversity in the startup world is that the
first filter everyone has to pass is drinking the ideological Kool-Aid.

Tough to attract diversity of thought when you directly screen it out.

------
RandomInteger4
It's good to see that they didn't go with headache inducing "morphing
background color as you scroll" design this year:
stateofstartups.firstround.com/2016/

------
forkLding
Had a question about number 7, do they mean that founders who struggle to
fundraise also have tendency to make more mistakes or that the struggle to
fundraise causes more mistakes? And I guess they meant based on people who
fundraised easily or who thought fundraising was easy?

~~~
duncanawoods
I read it as "of those who struggled to fundraise, these are the mistakes they
believed they made expressed as a multiplier of those who did not struggle".

Makes me suspicious about the presenters intentions because that type of
convolution is often to facilitate cherry picking. More charitably, it might
be an attempt to give advice to those experiencing difficulty fund-raising
about where their problems may lie.

------
sidcool
Sexual harassment is a scorn that refuses to die. In any industry.

~~~
ahkurtz
Because in human history it's unlikely that people who perpetrate it will ever
realize and/or admit it. And so it goes.

~~~
awinder
The numbers kinda prove this point. 35% of these founders believing sexual
harassment isn’t under-reported is a problem. That’s how you get here, people
willfully living under a rock.

------
stuartaxelowen
Wait, why are autonomous vehicles not AI anymore?

~~~
d4nt
The general rule is: Nothing is called AI anymore once it works.

Like with magic tricks, once we know how it works it seems a lot less
impressive. So we stop calling it AI. When you think about it, everything
computers do could be considered AI.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
> everything computers do could be considered AI.

That's like saying everything a human does is art.

Ai involves actions by computers which are not specifically programmed

