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Comment by shoo | Hacker News Reader

> Plus, they get the additional disadvantage of trying to figure out an actual business model during a recession.

this has a bit of a silver lining: it'll help filter out bullshit business models that appear to work in the times of plenty.

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It will also filter out sound business models that actually do work in times of plenty, but don't under the conditions of a pandemic.

That's far from a sound business model.

For example restaurants and cafes and gyms

I'm not sure I buy this. 80-90% revenue declines across many industries is unprecedented. Especially in cases where poor operations didn't impact the business. Businesses like Hilton or Disney that have operated for 100 years may go bankrupt (not out of business) before this is all over.

And they will simply continue after the bankruptcy

Yes, I mentioned this. I’m just saying that a large drop in revenue right now doesn’t necessary correlate with a product that people generally want or is useful.

Hilton may go bankrupt but Disney won't, they've been quite successful at diversifying their portfolio and I'm sure their streaming service is doing quite well. They recently announced that at least one of their upcoming movies will skip theatres and go directly to their streaming service, while others theatrical releases are being pushed back.

This allows certain parts of their business empire to fund the less performant ones e.g. adventure parks. Hilton has no such option, they're quite invested in the hospitality industry which leaves very little room for pivoting.

Working 99 out of every 100 years is quite sound.

No, about every 8 years we see contractions.

Right but they didn't result in Hilton / Disney having 80-90% revenue drops overnight. This is a very unique contraction. Even in the depths of 2008, DisneyWorld still had a steady flow of visitors, and Hilton hotels across the world still welcomed guests.

This is rather worse than your typical 8-year contraction. Like, experts aren't sure if it's going to be better or worse than the Great Depression and they're not optimistic based on what we've seen so far levels of bad.

Hotels. Parking. Restaurants. Not sound?

Most business models also don't work if the world plunges into global thermonuclear war, but we still consider them to be sound.

Yep, if your startup plan has a good chunk of the budget dedicated to "how does the business survive global thermonuclear war" you are wasting money, time and focus.

If a business model works based on current conditions, how is that "bullshit"?

When it is based on multiple external funding rounds to remain cash positive while aiming at profitability in the future.

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