Pivotal

> Business is rife with survivorship bias, and indie hacking, doubly so.

Indie-hacking-projects have the benefit of a dignified exit by open-sourcing - a lot of whatever value in any technology/code/designs was created will be preserved - which is a good thing.

It's a shame that oftentimes the "best" outcome for a startup or small software/tech company (where they get acquihired by Apple specifically) is not only their product/service gets shut-down, but all traces of it are systematically removed from the Internet and everything the company's founders do is effectively memory-hole'd - the _Dark Sky_ app is the textbook example of this.

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Separately, when a company is small, stable and profitable it isn't a failure as far as the bank is concerned, but not exactly a hyperscaling unicorn - so when the founders/owners want to exit their only real option is to sell-out to either their competition for a managed wind-down-and-migration - or worse: an M&A firm (which will only make a lowball offer, then replace staff eng with a skeleton maintenance crew, and mis-manage the company's products/services for a decade as they hemorrhage-out loyal customers due to declining product quality).

Required reading: https://pivotal.substack.com/p/the-worst-outcome-is-a-mediocre-success

Agreed. As an occasional starter of things, if I really believe in my company, then all things considered, I'd rather have a surplus dollar in the company, as that's where I think my highest long-term ROI is. Early on, founders taking lots of cash out would be a negative sign for me. The $100k because-I-can fee strikes me as repulsively WeWork-esque.

On the other hand, I've been reading lately about the vast acceleration in the pace of investor money since last I did a venture-backed startup. [1] To me this looks somewhat like the diet of a pâté goose: more to the benefit of the feeders than the goose itself. If my investors are in it for a quick flip, I would have to question how much I should be long-term focused.

[1] Scroll down to "fast is in fashion" here: https://pivotal.substack.com/p/minsky-moments-in-venture-capital

As to what might happen regarding "Decreased Investment", this article [1] has an interesting analysis for those working in rapidly funded startups. In short it predicts a Minsky moment, but in relation to funding "speed" rather than "value".

> Does the compression of timelines in venture change the distribution of terminal outcomes for venture-backed companies? [1]

> A Minsky moment is a sudden, major collapse of asset values which marks the end of the growth phase of a cycle in credit markets or business activity.[2]

[1] https://pivotal.substack.com/p/minsky-moments-in-venture-capital

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment

> manufacturing startups

Oxymoron? VC money chases high growth, high margin businesses.

How would a manufacturing business fit the VC funded model?

Aside: article with an interesting take on VC -- unfortunately however with an extremely long-winded intro. https://pivotal.substack.com/p/making-markets-in-time