The biggest change I’ve seen is how startups are being seen as “risk free”. At my first startup, I was one of the early employees and I had to convince and cajole new grads to join a startup. Everyone wanted to join big tech co. for the job security.
That’s changed now. New grads I’ve hired don’t see a startup as a risk event anymore, but rather, a normal career move.
It also used to be that founders would forego a salary and early employees would assume they would get paid much less than a regular job. Founders were also driven to protect their equity share and would dread dilution.
Of late, I’ve seen founders very eager to secure fat salaries and to get to liquidity events as fast as possible. The earliest startups I worked with, the founders would fret for days about bringing a VC onboard since that meant diluting their holding. Now, founders are driven to raise funding and sell some of their holdings to safeguard their future.
I say all of this without judgment or bias - I truly believe your first priority should be to secure your family’s financial future.
I just feel that the startup world is awash in so much funding (at least before 2022) that the riskiness and “courage” associated with startups - something most early startup essays would talk about endlessly - have been largely negated.
Even looking at the last 10 years vs. the 10 years before that, the emphasis has already started to shift back the power to the celebrity content creator over the nerdy engineering tech creator. Before Web 2.0 really took off, websites and apps were all the rage because it was mostly nerds and other early adopters that could monopolize the power of the internet. Now the playing field has been leveled again, and it's those with strong personalities, marketing skills and other digital content production skills who have been making the big bucks. Mr. Beast's youtube channel was offered a $1 billion buyout. Engineers weren't thought of very highly before the personal computer revolution, and the money and power was all with the celebrities instead. I think the last 30 years was mostly an anomaly, but now that the internet is more democratized, the money and power will be returning to the celebrity content creator.
1: As a founder it is more important to be competent and productive than to seem competent and productive.
2: It is an advantage to trust your own competence and ignore common practices.
3: It is better to build something for real users than for imaginary users.
4: A great product is more valuable than great marketing.
They still ring true with me. But maybe I am biased and just remember the thesis that I agree with.
There are classics like "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" which are absolutely timeless.
Like I was hoping for people who want to leverage AI to do some cool shit or solve some difficult problem in some industry. You know, something actually useful. I wanted to talk about my scheduling software, or discuss some challenges in industry I don’t know shit about.
Instead people were talking about their (yet another) copy of a copy of a wellness app..
Granted I’m fresh af to this game but I honestly felt so out of place. Nobody was talking tech and people were talking about their vacations to some exotic places and taking selfies. That’s fine, but nobody really seemed like an engineer or solver minded person.
It was honestly bizarre and kind of depressing. I felt like I had better tech and ideation focused discussions in my tiny city that I left to move to Bay Area.
I’m serious. 1980-2020 was the hype of an undertaped market that was personal computing. Anyone in a garage could do something revolutionary because anything was already better than nothing. Even if it didn’t respect GDPR and leaked PII accounts like a sieve. That’s always like that in the start of a Schumpeter economic cycle, same happened with cars in 1900.
Now, we’re in a consolidation phase.
Or are we still in an “invention” phase? AI maybe?
That belief is outdated.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34673325
EDIT: I'd like to add some links to some comments that had done a good job of listing some of the worthy information to revisit from Paul's essays.
If the era of cheap money is truly at an end, then the whole edifice must be reconsidered.
Ideas for startups often come from solving your own problems.
A good startup idea should have at least one of three things: it's something you're passionate about, it solves a problem you have, or it's something you're good at.
The best way to predict the future is to build it.
Move fast and break things.
A startup is a company designed to grow fast.
A startup is a company that is confused about what its product is.
The key to growing a startup is to learn as fast as possible.
The ideal size for a startup team is around three to five people.
The best startups are often started by people who are still in school or in their early 20s.
Don't worry about competition. Worry about creating something that people love.
Make something people want.
A startup is a company that is trying to answer a question nobody knows the answer to.
The most important quality for a startup CEO is determination.
A startup is a company that is being run by a small group of people who are trying to discover how to build a scalable business.
To be a successful startup founder, you need to be an expert in something.
A startup is a company that is trying to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible.
If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.
Don't let your ideas be dragged down by the standard of what already exists.
Don't scale too soon.
Your job is to do what you do best and delegate the rest.
Don't take VC money until you have to.
If you want to start a startup, don't think too much. Just do it.
To be successful, a startup has to be run like a cult.
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.
The biggest mistake startups make is not making something people want.
Your first 10 users are more important than your next 10,000.
If you're going to start a startup, you should know from the beginning that it's going to be hard.
The best way to raise money for a startup is to not need it.
Is Beethoven's 5th outdated?
They’ve eaten good food, but they may or may not know anything about starting a business.
Paul Graham hasn’t started a company in several decades now. Just because he has proximity with a lot of people who have, doesn’t mean his advice is still sound.
He was competing with Perl shops, for crying out loud!
The scene has changed. A lot. Seek out lessons from success by yourself, directly. Ask local, search local, find the people successful near you in your industry and just ask them. Many will tell their tale over lunch, and then you’ve received personal, actionable advice for the price of a good meal.