Readit NewsUsing terms like "servant" to appear humble, when the equity split is massively lopsided is patronizing at best, and manipulative at worst.
When you have a small founder team, you need capital for essentially nothing to show. You can't raise that capital selling the $170M exit dream to angels or a fund.
Conversely, VCs are assuming a 10% or less success rate across their portfolio. And of that, maybe 2-3% of portcos really returning everything.
So they don't have the luxury of shepherding 100 portcos to $170M exits, since in reality, a $1b exit has a similar chance of happening as a $170M exit. Which is to say very very low.
There's no magic sauce, no prime formula, no wizened or sageinvestor. It's a shit show from start to finish. You're best off finding investors who are on the same wavelength as you, and focusing less on whether you hit a home run or a grand slam.
When you get to a place where you're printing cash or whatever, then sure, make sure the math works out for you. But for 99% of all founders, this question never comes, and they spend too much time thinking about it.
I'm not defending the number of pickups on the road in America but this is an out of touch comment. Some common uses of pickup beds include:
* Hauling motorcycles and ATVs including snowmobiles.
* Carrying campers.
* Carrying home improvement projects such as bags of soil, plants, and raw material such as 8'x2"x4" lumber or 4'x8' plywood. At least in the 2000s a 4x8 sheet of plywood will not fit in a compact pickup but lays flat in a fullsize.
Some common uses of pickups include:
* Towing pull-behind RVs or fifth-wheels.
* Towing boats.
* Camping with the family.
A lot of modern pickups seem to include some kind of bed cover that makes them well suited to mundane tasks like hauling groceries as well.
All of that suggests to me that pickup manufacturers do in fact know their customers.
> 2 Seats + 6 Foot bed seems like a winning combination in practicality, but is quite rare in the US.
Because it's too small to be useful. You can't fit a sheet of plywood in that easily. You might be able to get a small motorcycle in there with some wrangling, but maybe not. 2 seats means you can't carry the whole family, so now you need a second car if you have kids, or friends. And if you actually do use the truck for weekend activity like hauling boats or an RV then you need to drive both cars.
The fact is the fullsize truck actually does work for American consumers. That's why people buy them. And why manufacturers make them.
All of this totally ignores the hundreds of thousands of "work trucks" that are being fully loaded every day. Landscapers, farmers, contractors, etc all rely on the pickup form factor for obvious reasons. And looking around those are often used trucks, including the high trim level luxury versions from a previous generation.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
"However, according to the EMA, the benefits of both mRNA shots in preventing COVID-19 continue to outweigh the risks, the regulator said, echoing similar views expressed by U.S. regulators and the World Health Organization."
> all i see today are walls instead of bridges.
Whenever I read these comments I wonder if people are using a different Internet than I am, because this isn't my experience at all.
I can access whatever I want, discuss whatever I want, and interact with whoever I want online. We have a multitude of platforms to choose from and I don't even have to pay for most of them. Honestly I don't even look at ads because I downloaded a free ad-blocker plugin for my free web browser and it all just works.
Even my social media is nothing like the dystopian claims I see online. I don't use Facebook much, but whenever I open the app it's just fun photos and updates from the people I want to keep in touch with. I have zero problems with that because I enjoy seeing the people around me happy, having fun, and succeeding.
I suspect these dystopian viewpoints come less from real-world experience and more from bouncing ideas around in echo chambers. It seems the people who are most opinionated about what social media is or isn't are those with the least direct experience in the matter, instead substituting hyper-dramatized accounts from news stories, HN comments, and agenda-pushing documentaries like "The Social Dilemma". There's a certain sense of elitism involved wherein the anti-social-media and anti-silicon-valley people feel that they are the only ones who see through the facade and understand what's really going on.
Just as many people live in nice suburbs and work in cities where there's extreme poverty. They get a good life, don't often have to contend with the pain and suffering of others, and can dismiss those claims as exaggeration.
In this case, the imbalance has existed for years and is getting more pronounced. My thoughts here are based on that dynamic. If this changes, then I'd likely change the advice.
Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want.
on a side note - these are super dog whistle comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.
If you think the partners (the core of which have been there since day 1) have really changed their outlook that much then you've not been paying attention.
YC has always been a smorgasbord of status seekers, dreamers, ruthless pragmatists, creators and artists. It's a big community that keeps growing, the good parts and the bad parts.
There were scandals then, there are scandals now. They pick some teams perfectly and others totally wrong. The most important thing is that they keep doing it every year and more people get access and a shot at doing their thing.
FWIW I was YC W14 and yes it was totally better back then and we were all geniuses and pure lovers of startups only with no ego...