

The Anti-Startup Manifesto - emthos
http://pastebin.com/HR16SHfW

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taylorlapeyre
This looks like the work of someone very deep inside the tech bubble. I
strongly suspect that this kind of "live off of rounds of funding without
making any profit" mentality doesn't really exist outside of the tech startups
in the bay area.

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robbrit
The mentality does, however due to lack of funding they tend to fizzle out
fairly quickly.

I would argue this is actually a bad thing and it's why the Bay Area tends to
produce lots of successful tech companies and other areas have trouble with
it. Many would-be profitable businesses die out because they lack the funding
necessary to get over the initial hurdles of starting a company. The
willingness of investors in the valley to throw money at anything is a huge
boon to startups - even if it wastes a ton of money in the process.

On the other hand profitability should still be a top goal of a startup - not
investment. Many startups seem to have confused the two.

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wadenick
You make a good argument, and I'd only add that during an uptick in the tech
sector, it becomes easier to get funding and so a series of effects flow from
there. More people get funding, and more of it, and the risk profile and
spread changes - probably to include more players that have less chance of
success.

For my anecdotal experience I can say I have friends in 2015 who are working
for good salary at funded startups that have quite literally no idea what
mission or product they are making right now, whereas in 2010 my friends were
mostly contributing sweat equity in return for actual equity.

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mszyndel
Makes me want to write "anti-manifesto manifesto". If you want to write a
manifesto work on it, make it clear, concise, well written. This is drunken
mumbling rant, even if the author is right in some parts.

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johnnycarcin
or maybe a song: [http://youtu.be/jXoQsS1Bu80](http://youtu.be/jXoQsS1Bu80) ?
:)

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beaknit
Why would we want to return to "the late XIX's century" [sic]? The pain of the
Civil War and the invention of cattle drives are tough to connect to the birth
of the Internet.

Perhaps this is a form of performance art...

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davidgerard
> the late XIX's century

There's a reason it was called the "gilded age" and not the "golden age".

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cozzyd
This confirms my (admittedly biased) outsider's perspective of startups, where
the goal is not to do something useful or even profitable, but rather to
fleece investors or get acquired by some bigger company. A result of this
possibly-to-pessimistic perspective is my belief that it is a tragedy that so
many smart, talented people, who could be solving real problems, end up in
this shell game.

