Hacker News Reader

Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

Since this article is getting upvoted; I'd love to hear what HN'ers in SV think about this.

I'm located in the Netherlands far away from it all, and to me this article cofirms exactly what it looks like from the outside. Things I'd be interested in knowng are:

- Employees and founders, are you afraid you might end up empty-handed? Do you manage to save some of those big SV paychecks in case it does go to shit?

- People on the investment side, do you see any real worries yet, or is everybody still in full on happy mode?

- Any remarks in general on what the mood in SV is on this? Do people talk about it, or are they mostly just going on like they have for the past years?

I'd love to get some insights!

View on HN

I live in SV and worked at a unicorn fairly early on for a few years. I understood the risk involved and tried to treat the equity as such: worth nothing until it can be sold for something no matter what it says on paper. Of course that's easier said than done.

As far as I can tell there haven't been murmurings of panic. It seems like a lot of these companies are doing ok enough. There's potential & they are "taking time to get it right" before going public. And they haven't had trouble finding large enough investment money to keep them going.

It's kind of painful to have been an employee at these places though because the wait is long. You were under compensated salary-wise relative to market while you worked there and the equity might be worth nothing or you might have to wait 8 years to see.

That's part of the reason why I next want to work at a public company where the stock actually has value when it vests.

I live in the Bay Area, although I work for a big tech company at the moment not a startup. It does feel a bit like we're coming down from a high, but not really like a bursting bubble. I've noticed a couple of anecdotal symptoms that make this impression:

- Rent seems to be holding steady or even dropping slightly over the last year, as opposed to the huge run up over the previous 3-4 years.

- There doesn't seem to be much poaching going on from my BigCo to startups -- less of a "gold rush" mentality among employees than at other times.

Live in Silicon Valley. Noticing a lot of startups closing shop and friends finding new jobs.

I'd mention though that the risk was well known. About 1 year ago most people started to realize that startup options are basically worthless, and similar to buying a lotto ticket.

But I've seen this exact post every couple of years on HN since 2006(I think?).

You might think things are changing but it sounds like you and your friends are simply growing up and being more realistic.

I live in SV as well.

Hard to say really. I'm just beginning to raise seed funding myself, so I'll have more perspective on that side soon. So far so good though.

On the VC side... I went to a VC panel in SF a couple weeks ago, and they all were gushing how this is the best time ever to raise money. They are all looking to invest.

There does seem to be a consensus though that investors are preferring to invest in "quality" businesses now vs chasing the Ubers and Uber for this. So potentially in line with the article talking about the levels of "uninvested cash".

Find me a VC panel where the VC's say anything other than "we're keen to invest in quality" and I will find you a hedgehog that likes naked skydiving.

Well VC are investors and money managers. If they've raised a new fund, then they need to put it to work. Capital that's just sitting there as cash on deposit isn't working, which means the VCs running it aren't doing their jobs. Q: how do VCs manage money that isn't yet invested? Put it in US Treasuries? Or the money markets with short term paper?

I've worked with a fund that didn't invest a bean, returned everything less expenses to investors.

This was at the nadir of the .com crash...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com