yate50
20 HN mentions · mentioned in 18 months, 2015–2026
1:16 · 835K views · Jun 21, 2015
A short clip from the show Silicon Valley in which the Pied Piper team meets a money guy who offers advice about having no revenue.
HN uses it as a running joke whenever unprofitable startups, funding or valuations come up.
20 comments from Hacker News
The engineer who already has a job at a random company has a known skill level and growth trajectory. The engineer out of a good school has an unknown growth trajectory. Conditioned on the accomplishments of alumni at the school and the (subjective) acceptance bar of the school, the new grad engineer could have a much steeper growth trajectory than the established one. Silicon Valley got this right on the money ironically [1]. If you have nothing to show, people assume a potential future ability level rather than basing their decisions on your actual ability. [1] this video
Russ (VC): Why would you go after revenue? Richard (CEO): Because... to make money? Russ: No. If you show revenue, people will ask how much, and it will never be enough. The company that was the hundred x-er, the thousand x-er, becomes the two x dog. But if you have no revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue ... you're a potential pure play. It's not about how much you earn, it's about what you're worth, and who's worth the most? Companies that lose money. Pinterest, SnapChat, no revenue. Amazon has lost money every fucking quarter for the last twenty fucking years and that Bezos motherfucker is the king. There's no revenue. No one wants to see revenue. Go! Richard: Oh, um, I just thought that mainly the goal of companies is to make money. Russ: Yeah, no no no, that's not how it works. I don't want to make a little bit of money every day, I want to make a fuckton of money all at once. ROI. ROI! — Silicon Valley, "Bad Money" (2015). this video
I don’t know much about the stock market outside of throwing any savings I can muster into a vanguard fund, but articles like this remind me of the scene from Silicon Valley where the Pied Piper team is talking about finding a revenue stream. Their investor, the Mark Cuban caricature, Russ Hanneman butts in and yells at them about the dangers of showing revenue and how it proves you might only be a 2x-er. "It's not about how much you earn. It's about what you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money!" He goes on to argue that if you don’t show any revenue then the possibilities are left only to the imagination! Pre-revenue = maybe a 100x-er at some point! Obviously silly and over simplified, but I do think that there is truth in the humor. Once this company gets its act together, it could shoot to the moon! Edit: Here's a link to the scene: this video
This reminds me of a scene from the popular TV show Silicon valley. this video Smartphones, youtube, facebook and many other success stories had exponential growth. Once a product/idea goes big, there will always be people who do not like something about it. Thats the cost of making a product that everyone can use. A better example is the idea of money itself. Its an invention used by almost everyone in the world, We still have people who absolutely hate money with passion based on their own principles that are right for them. Overall it did more good to humanity. We have created an economic world, where good ideas travel faster and share the rewards with everyone. Its a good thing. The alternative would be a hierarchical society where some other parts of the society will always be left behind.
Well, TSLA is a very sentiment-heavy stock, so it's hard or impossible to say what exactly caused this recent run. For example, they've been guiding Q3 and Q4 profitablity since ~Q2 or earlier. They started building the Shanghai factory in Q1, the Model Y was announced in March, the Truck's been talked up since forever, etc. What's really changed is that the Taycan is no longer a mystery, but a real car with a real price tag and real range. The ID.3 is almost-real and struggling with software issues. The E-Tron, new Leaf, new Bolt, etc have real sales figures. When these were unknowns, you could be reasonably skeptical of Tesla's claims, but that's increasingly untenable. Or, as the great Silicon Valley philosothoughtleader Russ Hanneman said: this video