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Comment by johnm1019 | Hacker News Reader

I have to wonder if part of the trend is that a generation of software developers came out of college and jumped into the startup scene during its most recent run. These folks are now forming relationships and starting families, or wanting to spend more time doing not-software dev things. They are realizing that stability in your job lets you do and plan other things in your life. Given that there is no economic certainty in working for a small start up in a city with an astronomical COL, many are deciding the risk isn't worth the rewards.

It's also possible that there are really large challenges being undertaken which require resources that actual start-ups with 10 million in VC can't do. Things like autonomous cars (Uber isn't a start-up anymore IMO), rocketry, aerospace, energy, foundational biology. Is it possible that many great minds see these as more worthwhile pursuits?

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I think you nailed it with your first point. The startup craze (re)started around 2010. A lot of the 22 year old fresh grads enamored with the startup scene at that time are now nearing 30, have probably been burned once or twice by startups not turning them into millionaires, and are now starting families and wanting to work "normal" hours with people close to their own age. Add on the fact that most startups are located in areas that are too expensive by far to make home ownership a real possibility, and you've got a decent size demographic in the software dev space for whom big companies are starting to look more appealing.

I'd argue that the startup craze restarted in 2008, on growth in the mobile app market. The reason: All the money flowing out of failing housing market went straight into tech and commodities. Suddenly these startups were bursting at the seams with investment money and everyone and their brother were trying to get a piece of the pie.

But now, commodities have already crashed. Money is starting to flow back into housing. It stands to reason that the easy money in tech has also left. 'Everyone and their brother' are starting to move on to the next get rich quick scheme.

08/09 were terrible for startups - I had one that folded up in mid-08, and I was early. Most of the Web 2.0 generation called it quits over the next 2 years. Sept 2008 was the last time you could get easy funding until about 2010 - it was when Twitter did its big raise, then Sequoia's "RIP Good Times" presentation came out in October.

The current technology cycle started in '08, and most of the really big players today were either in search mode then (AirBnB, Uber, Instagram, Whatsapp, Kickstarter, Pinterest) or were in the early phases of growth (DropBox, Heroku, YC). A lot of them didn't raise Series A until late 2010 or early 2011. I think it's fair to call that the restart of the startup market.

> then Sequoia's "RIP Good Times" presentation came out in October.

I worked at a Sequoia-funded company at the time. It was bad... hiring ground to a near-halt, and attrition was used to shrink the engineering department. Eventually, I got laid off over a year later (February 2010), and by that time we weren't any financially better off than when Sequoia made that presentation. The reason for my layoff was because our VCs had given us less money during our Series D than we were expecting.

Innovation is hard to come by from behemoths because it's easier to convince MBAs on squeezing labor costs and cornering markets vs. going to the moon.

Or maybe the big names are suddenly trying to get back in the game.

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