[HN Gopher] How shutdown Bay Area tech companies ditch their fan...
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How shutdown Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear fast
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 190 points
Date : 2025-01-22 08:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| lysace wrote:
| Example:
|
| _VitroLabs raises $46 million to build and scale the world 's
| first pilot production of cell cultivated leather (2022)_
|
| ->
|
| https://svdisposition.com/auction-detail?id=698
|
| _Featuring Late-Model Research and Development Instruments, 3D
| Printers, Laser Cutters: Phenom Pro Desktop SEM, Sartorius Stedim
| and Eppendorf Benchtop Bioreactor Systems, Perkin-Elmer Operetta
| CLS (High Content Analysis System), Molecular Devices SpectraMax
| iD3, and much more! Milpitas, CA_
| Rygian wrote:
| No cell-cultivated leather office chairs.
| happycube wrote:
| Rich Cellinthian Leather anyone?
| saagarjha wrote:
| > In a 2020 sale for what Silicon Valley Disposition called a
| "Major Bay Area Wind Energy Kite Company," the auction site
| listed a 2016 Magni crane.
|
| I assume this must have been Makani:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makani_(company)
| pveierland wrote:
| There's a beautiful feature film about the story of Makani.
| It's a great watch with plenty of technical details that
| follows the story from beginning to end.
|
| Available for free on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_hEja6bzE
| myfakebadcode wrote:
| Is there an equivalent for nyc?
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'd love to find one in Ireland, but people here seem to be far
| too diligent at recycling stuff.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| "Hireland" needs to be a thing.
|
| Please tell me someone's done this already.
| rbanffy wrote:
| "Hireland"?!
| bombcar wrote:
| It's just an auction site, albeit one that specializes.
|
| Search around and you should find similar auction sites for
| NYC, some will specialize in government sales, some in private
| liquidation, and some in estates.
| Eridrus wrote:
| NYC doesn't really have the ecosystem. You can definitely find
| used Aerons on facebook marketplace though.
| nailer wrote:
| NY is the centre of the world for fintech and blockchain.
| myself248 wrote:
| Look around on Bidspotter, there's industrial auctions all the
| time.
|
| They're extremely user-hostile. No shipping, no weekend hours,
| so you gotta take off work time to go to the inspection and
| pickup days. The photos and descriptions are insultingly
| sparse, and the terms are egregious.
|
| But sometimes you can score a real gem for pennies, and it's
| all worth it.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I remember seeing a shop near Old Street in London that I thought
| was definitely just selling the office chairs of failed
| businesses. You'd walk past and there would be some fancy chairs
| and desks, from yet another dream that died.
|
| Vital part of the economy, a bit like fungus in ecology.
| nailer wrote:
| There's a place in London Bridge called something like 'London
| office furniture' that regularly sells Aeron chairs for about
| 100 quid
| changadera wrote:
| I think that's where my Aeron came from, or somewhere
| similiar, but it was more like 300ish quid and via eBay.
| jamessb wrote:
| Apaprently there's an "Office Furniture in London" that might
| be it: https://www.officefurnitureinlondon.co.uk/product-
| category/s...
|
| Their online listings for Aeron chairs are for more like
| PS400, but that's still less than a third of the price when
| new.
| esskay wrote:
| Bought a Mirra from there about 15 years ago for PS115
| including delivery, sitting on it right now, still going
| strong!
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Would you sit in such a "haunted" chair if you're just
| launching your own startup though?
| yard2010 wrote:
| I'm not superstitious. Well, maybe I'm a bit stitious.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| I'm not either, if only because being superstitious brings
| bad luck.
|
| But still. There's this inexplicable feeling that "failure
| is contagious"
| sampullman wrote:
| You can look at it another way - the chair's bad luck is
| all used up!
| boticello wrote:
| I bought Aeron chairs for an agency I joined after the 2008
| financial crash. They were from Bank of America. Six months
| later I found a hole in our agency's finances and we went
| bust.
|
| A bit stitious too.
| throw0101c wrote:
| On the etymology of "superstitious":
|
| * https://oxfordre.com/classics/display/10.1093/acrefore/97
| 801...
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| imagine that same chair is recycled over and over again
| that chair has fineprint of killstreak of how many
| bussiness failling like how pilot cross their cockpit to
| signify how many plane he shootdown
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sounds like something Netflix would make into a two
| season show with a cliffhanger that the chair makes it
| into the Oval Office but Netflix cancels the show without
| resolution.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Was the hole in the agency's finances due to high spending
| on very expensive chairs, tho?
| rUsHeYaFuBu wrote:
| Yeah because I got it effectively on discount. Sitting in it
| would be a reminder of how to prioritize business and
| spending.
| floatrock wrote:
| Both a trophy and a reminder of our financial mortality.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| You learn more from your failures than your successes. Those
| chairs have experience.
| bagels wrote:
| Yes. It's not contagious through sitting on surfaces.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Some cultures believe in objects absorbing negative energy.
| Tons of Asian films are about homes harboring souls who
| faced injustice.
|
| Very famously, US cabinet member Donald Rumsfeld purchased
| Mount Misery to live in. Even in the west this shook a lot
| of heads https://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/22/rumsfelds_
| mount_mise...
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I would need more data on how many businesses failed based on
| ownership of the chair.
|
| If you told me that chair had been used by n successive
| failed businesses, there is a value of n where I would reject
| the null hypothesis that the chair has no association with
| the business failing.
|
| I don't think n=1 is sufficiently large.
| bluGill wrote:
| You will never get to n sufficiently large - chairs don't
| last that long. Even if a chair really is that haunted, it
| will have to be in a startup for 6 months before the money
| runs out (it will take that long to run out of money after
| the chair forces it on the bad track - if the startup runs
| out sooner it wasn't the chair at fault).
| swhitf wrote:
| Yeah! I don't know if it's still there but I kitted out my
| first company's office with chairs from there! It was a cool
| place.
|
| There's also a junk shop, for want it a better phrase, just off
| the top of Brick Lane that is similar, it has office stuff but
| also way more general stuff too.
|
| It doesn't even have a GM listing but it's here:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/CWDZ3goLKXeJb3eAA?g_st=ac
|
| The mural on the wall is of the guy who used to own the shop.
| He'd sit outside all day in his car. I can't remember his name
| now but he was famous locally.
| world2vec wrote:
| Do you think it's still there? I wouldn't mind getting a fancy
| office chair at discount.
| jonatron wrote:
| Andrews Office Furniture, next to inmarsat?
| carb wrote:
| I got my current chair nearby, possibly where OP is talking
| about. I wanted to be able to sit and adjust chairs and
| needed one that would tilt forward. Their selection is a bit
| chaotic and didn't have the chair I really wanted, but I
| liked being able to try out a few.
|
| I think you'll have similar success watching Gumtree,
| craigslist, etc.
|
| ---
|
| Andrews Office Furniture - Old Street & The City 250 - 254
| Old St, London EC1V 9DD
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yo that's the one!
| bluGill wrote:
| Nearly every city has one. Every office needs some form of
| desk and almost always a chair. These are also worth
| repairing in enough cases that it is worthwhile for some
| small local company to deal with that, but they are not worth
| repairing often enough that any company would keep that
| repair person on staff (most chairs are scrap when they
| break). So nearly everyone contracts with a local company to
| buy office furniture and keep it repaired. (where I work
| there are 10 extra chairs in a back room, when your chair
| breaks you trade it for one in that room, if you hire someone
| you grab a chair. Then they come once a week and count
| chairs, replacing any broken ones, and adjusting our chair
| lease if there are more/less than 10 chairs.)
|
| Finding this company shouldn't be too hard, but they don't
| have a nice retail location since most of the business is
| they bring chairs to you for an extra fee. However they
| always have a location and generally they have used chairs
| for cheap they are happy to sell you.
| sorum wrote:
| The failed startups are a vital part of the Aeron economy,
| putting these back-savers into circulation at 1/3 of MSRP
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I always called 2.0 the "Steelcase Employment Project"
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| I don't know what company died so I could get a Steelcase
| Leap for $5 but it's worked out well for me. Over a decade
| with a used chair and it still feels new. The only problem
| I've encountered is a screw in one of the armrests falls out
| from time to time. Whatever it is meant to bite into seems to
| be stripped out. Might glue it in the next time it falls out.
| DanielHB wrote:
| I live in Stockholm and there are _tons_ of stores like that
| here, Stockholm is one of the big startup centers of Europe.
| The difference is that most them just sell IKEA furniture
| because that is what all the offices buy...
|
| Although to be honest the IKEA standing tables are quite good,
| I own one myself (bought from one of those stores). Some of the
| ikea chairs are good but not top-notch.
| mmooss wrote:
| Ikea is nice design, but from what I've seen it doesn't last.
| You still get what you pay for. That makes it perfect for
| young adults, who aren't buying for the next 20 years, but
| it's not a vote of confidence in the startup.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Ikea has different quality levels. You probably default to
| thinking about the MDF furniture which can never be
| successfully moved to a new place and is cheapish and
| breaks. That's what most people think of, and I believe how
| they started. But they also have 100% wood or steel framed
| furniture that while not fancy is durable and has a nice
| design.
| DanielHB wrote:
| I dunno if they have different designs in different
| regions, but even the "cheap" stuff on ikea feel a lot
| better than equivalent price cheap stuff from other
| stores.
|
| Like their MDF stuff feels more solid/denser? I don't
| know how to explain it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's possible their MDF is really HDF, which is literally
| the same thing but denser.
| rangestransform wrote:
| As much as people joke about breaking up over building
| ikea furniture, it's almost always easier to assemble
| than other furniture at a similar price point
| fragmede wrote:
| That's fascinating because I have the complete opposite
| experience. Flat pack stuff from eg Wayfair or Target is
| way more annoying to assemble compared to the Ikea
| versions of the same, which just feels like it has more
| thought put it into it on how to assemble it.
| kaikai wrote:
| You're in agreement with the parent comment; I lean
| furniture is comparatively easy to assemble.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| MDF is considered premium now, when they even substitute
| screws with plastic.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _but it 's not a vote of confidence in the startup._
|
| I'll take a startup that doesn't waste its money on
| overvalued furniture over the opposite any day of the week.
| Shows they're not stupid about spending money. I've seen
| the opposite too often to count.
|
| You can get the Aeron _after_ the money starts really
| flowing in.
| nottorp wrote:
| Well, it doesn't have to be an Aeron, but if a startup
| wants someone to gamble half their compensation or more
| _and_ fuck up their back with long hours in cheap and
| painful office chairs, they may not be able to get good
| employees.
| rangestransform wrote:
| I think in the US a company could be subject to legal
| action for not providing ergonomic equipment
|
| https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/osha-national-
| news-re...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| You'll sing a very different tune once you reach an age
| where parts of your body start sending you twinges that
| they didn't before. Workplace ergonomics matter. I'm not
| going to sacrifice my health for any kind of employer,
| startup or not.
| atlbeer wrote:
| Can you name drop some examples?
| DanielHB wrote:
| This is the one I bought my table from:
|
| BBS Used Furniture Group AB Fridensborgsvagen 57, 170 60
| Solna
| atlbeer wrote:
| Tack!
| JALTU wrote:
| Wish I could post a pic of my Ferrari-red, "high end" Ikea
| KLAPPE office chair I'm sitting on right now, purchased 15
| some years ago, still going strong holding me up. The floor
| demo, however, that had reached EOL, lol!
|
| Okay, okay, it's not Ferrari-red but it is a nice red that
| has not faded in 15+ years.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| We have office liquidation companies here as well, but
| unfortunately when I checked them out they basically just had
| Aeron chairs which I find incredibly uncomfortable. So it's a
| great deal but on something I won't enjoy using.
| flobosg wrote:
| Previously: _The business of gutting failed Bay Area tech
| companies_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42107870
| xtiansimon wrote:
| There used to be some killer junk warehouses in San Jose filled
| with the detritus of electronics industry.
|
| Triangle comes to mind.
| rbanffy wrote:
| In Brazil there were large warehouses in Sao Paulo near the
| local "electronics" street, Santa Efigenia (we joked she was
| the saint patron of electrical engineering).
|
| From those places you could get almost anything, from a
| tomography machine or a jet engine test stand, all the way to
| each and every kind of electronic component of every
| imaginable vintage.
|
| As far as I know, the ecosystem that powered it no longer
| exists. I got a sizeable chunk of my vintage computer
| collection there.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > As far as I know, the ecosystem that powered it no longer
| exists.
|
| I take that back. Going through the place on Google Street
| View shows it quite vital as late as April 2024. Some of
| the places that had the most interesting stuff seem closed,
| but it really depends on the actual day of the week of the
| photo, as those places had notoriously unreliable opening
| hours.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Even cooler were the shops near LA filled with the detritus
| of the aerospace industry. Like, piles of titanium tubing,
| and big rocket nozzles sitting on the floor.
|
| Example: https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/los-angeles-sci-
| fi-prop-ho...
| liontwist wrote:
| This is an ad.
| rUsHeYaFuBu wrote:
| This is a site related to tech startups. While content here is
| not intended to solely be focused on that, development of good
| business sense is relevant.
|
| Buying used but functional equipment and saving your start-up
| money makes for good business.
| pookha wrote:
| Certainly feels like a native add...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising
| rbanffy wrote:
| A very interesting one, BTW
| lelandfe wrote:
| My dentist keeps yacht sale and swap magazines in his waiting
| room, which are all ads, but they're completely irrelevant to
| me and fascinating. That's how I feel about this ad.
| liontwist wrote:
| No complaints here. I wasn't interested and projected that
| expectation on others. My mistake.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Are you saying it was sponsored? At any rate, it's clear that
| many people in this thread don't know that this is a type of
| business that exists--evidently they did experience the first
| dot com crash, or the second dot com crash. So, there is
| informational value at least.
| liontwist wrote:
| PR works by offering interesting stories to journalists whose
| message is beneficial to the original group.
| throw0101c wrote:
| The profiled company has a Youtube channel where they
| occasionally post tours of the facilities of the companies being
| liquidated:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/@svdauctions/videos
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Any tech company that thought it a good idea to buy rather than
| lease a Cessna deserves to be made bankrupt.
| krisoft wrote:
| Depends on what were they doing with it? If they were just
| flying with it from A to B then I tend to agree with you. If
| they were working on tech actually attached to the airplane
| (like a fly-by-wire system, sensors attached, or something like
| that) then I can imagine the point of it. Paperwork around test
| flights are hard enough without also having to convince the
| lessor to let you do what the FAA lets yo do.
| bombcar wrote:
| That wasn't a Cessna, but a Piper Warrior, and depending on the
| age it might not have been terribly much (even new ones can be
| had for $250k or so).
| bluGill wrote:
| Even still in most cases leasing is what you want to do.
| Preferably in terms where they take care of maintenance (if
| the crankshaft fails inspection it doesn't increase your
| costs), and if "yours" is down you get a loaner. You probably
| want shared plane terms, not a plane that is all yours, and
| they provide trained pilots. There are lots of tax reasons
| this is better.
|
| Buying a plane makes sense when it is your personal plane
| (and leasing your personal plane to the company is done -
| though the laws/ethics get weird) and you fly a lot. It also
| makes sense when you have several (though I don't know where
| the break even is). It make might sense for bragging rights,
| but generally your customers won't be as impressed as you
| think.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The particular startup in the article was developing tech
| to replace regular aircraft engines with those running on
| Hydrogen. I don't think any lessor would appreciate those
| extensive modifications on their aircraft.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Their goal was to convert to a hydrogen fuel source. Moonshot
| for sure, but hardly deserving to fail, especially since that
| sort of thing would almost certainly be barred in lease terms
| buildsjets wrote:
| What is your opinion about the full sized airliner (Dehavilland
| Dash-8) that said "tech company" also bought?
|
| Are you aware that the tech company in question was Universal
| Hydrogen, who was modifying aircraft to utilize a hydrogen fuel
| cell power system? Don't you think it would be reasonable for
| an aircraft development company to own flight test assets?
|
| Besides, the cost of that little puddlejumper is the noise.
| It's a 1976 Piper Cherokee 235, nearly 50 years old. Fair
| market value of $150K currently, but they have been
| appreciating rapidly over the past 5 years or so, and it is
| likely that they will realize a profit on it's sale. Rather
| than a loss if they had leased a newer aircraft. But either
| way, it costs less than hiring a useless new college graduate
| "full stack" developer.
| trollbridge wrote:
| We bought our Aeron chairs during Covid. Went for about $100,
| although the bored guy selling them sold for a bit less for cash.
| We didn't ask any questions. The warehouse had hundreds of them,
| mostly new and mostly in decent shape.
|
| 5 years later, a few repair kits ($35) have been needed, and a
| few backrests have cracked, but mostly been an excellent value.
| ge96 wrote:
| so funny I'm like wtf is an Aeron chair, I look it up I'm
| sitting on one now
| adastra22 wrote:
| Same, lol.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| If you're in a major city, I suspect those chairs came out of a
| renegotiated/cancelled WeWork type building.
|
| In my city, one of the WeWork copycats cancelled a brand new
| lease at short notice in May 2020. The building owner sold a
| lot of the furniture at the front door.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| If only I lived closer, I could get some cheap Macbooks...
| bena wrote:
| Isn't this how Overstock.com made their nut as well?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I think they started off disposing of surplus inventory, which
| is different. The products are new, just never sold, and now
| the manufacturer, distributor, or retailer wants them off the
| books (unsold inventory is an expense).
| dymk wrote:
| I've gone to similar industrial auction sites in WA. Sometimes
| there's gold to be had for pennies on the dollar, other times
| it's trash. Either way, I've got some good equipment out of them
| for very cheap.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| UCSF had a surplus store in south San Francisco. I worked nearby
| and we'd make it an office excursion occasionally to go there at
| lunch. One coworker found a fresnel lens, our company bought a
| server rack there... they had small auctions for the more
| expensive items but you could also just buy things... sorry, this
| was so long ago I can barely remember other than the dusty smell
| and the comfy feeling of wandering the warehouse.
|
| I just looked it up and it looks like they still use the
| warehouse but now sell everything online.
| mihaaly wrote:
| > Startups burn through cash as they skyrocket in size and
| ambition, accumulating outrageous perks and office equipment
| along the way. Then they crash to Earth, with nothing but their
| private planes or massive 3D printers to pad the impact.
|
| This does not sound healthy.
|
| Almost sounds intentional by its common knowledge usual
| occurance. Taking the money of some clueless holder of money -
| optimistically calling themselves as investors, never as suckers
| for sure - and fraud away. Having a good life while doing it.
| Putting it proudly into the CV to repeat. Like if this is the
| original intent to begin with. To fail and skim the money while
| losing bad. Not really doing/attempting something beneficial and
| lasting in the end. That might sound scary - meaning they have to
| worry about being permanently successfull, balancing the sheet,
| react to adverse changing, for long, long, long. 'Starting up'
| (and fall) is easy, 'keep on going' is too hard?
| aftbit wrote:
| Yep, I think it's an open secret that many startups are known
| to be doomed from the beginning. That's one reason that
| founders tell such outrageous stories. Maybe it arises from the
| fact that tech changed and grew so fast that the non-technical
| asset class was unable to separate fact from fiction. You see
| that today with many of the AI startups that clearly have
| almost no meat on their bones but a really good pitch deck.
| tdumitrescu wrote:
| Nobody is going through the significant work of raising VC and
| then TRYING to fail. All for the sake of temporarily using some
| fancy office furniture.
| lolinder wrote:
| OP's not suggesting they're trying to fail, OP is suggesting
| they're not trying very hard to succeed.
|
| A typical bootstrapped business wouldn't dream of spending
| money on equipment that wasn't absolutely essential because
| it pointlessly burns valuable runway. But when you're
| spending someone else's money and don't see this startup as
| your one shot--when you can always start again with a new VC
| when this one fails, and the new VC will be totally
| understanding of your past failures because that's just how
| the dice roll--the need to be careful isn't there, creating
| an incentive to live it up while you're flush with cash.
| rsynnott wrote:
| High spending on office furniture etc is _not_ a common
| behaviour for early-stage startups, tho. It's really
| something that you see more from mid-stage, and generally
| at a point where it doesn't _really_ matter; the amounts
| just aren't significant enough to make more than a few
| days' difference to the startup's lifespan if the next
| raise doesn't work out.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Given that most employees are underpaid at very-early stage
| startups with stock options it seems deliberate fraud is
| not common at all. Besides monetary compensation the "have
| a failed startup in the CV" argument doesn't seem a big
| draw either.
|
| I don't see how VC funding is being syphoned away by
| fraudsters at all. Syphoned away by incompetence yes, not
| deliberate fraud.
| cloverich wrote:
| > wouldn't dream of spending money on equipment that wasn't
| absolutely essential
|
| The issue is if they don't create a desirable work place,
| they will have trouble attracting and keeping talent.
| Further most of the luxury items pale in comparison to a
| single engineer's salary. E.g. 10 engineers with cushy job
| setup, or 11 engineers with a very lean one. The former may
| be more attractive to the kinds of engineers you want. The
| trick of course is identifying the talent, IMHO and IME
| this is why most startups don't make it.
| lolinder wrote:
| These days, just offering WFH would be more than enough
| to attract the right kind of talent, with the benefit of
| not only not needing to pay for a cushy office but not
| needing to pay for an office at all.
| avgDev wrote:
| I will take WFH offer anything, especially forced "team"
| exercises.
|
| Pay me competitive salary. Allow me to WFH. Spare me all
| the cheap benefits.
| toast0 wrote:
| Some talent is going to be more attracted to sensible
| cost controls than lots of cushy perks.
|
| But up to you what kind of talent you want to attract.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Often, one of those cost controls will be penny-pinching
| on salary. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a place that pays
| a generous salary and then buys knockoff/used aerons
| instead of brand new / brand name.
|
| But often the company is either stingy or generous, and
| they view the chairs and the engineer comp as both things
| to invest in, or neither.
| lolinder wrote:
| You know your salary before accepting the offer, so if
| they're that kind of cost control you should have advance
| warning when they lowball you.
|
| I think the big reason why this is so common is because
| the type of talent a lot of these startups want to
| attract is explicitly _immature talent_. People who are
| drawn to fluffy perks without realizing that they (a) don
| 't actually benefit from them in any real way and (b) are
| actually a warning sign of what's to come financially.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Amusing office perks (and any other benefits down to the
| Mr. Coffee) are a branding and recruiting exercise. They
| are essential.
|
| It's just a matter of budget and efficiency.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > Nobody is going through the significant work of raising VC
| and then TRYING to fail.
|
| Unfortunately there _are_ individuals who do almost this.
| Their names do travel in the VC circles. Their goal is to get
| VC money, enjoy the funds and preferably fail within a year
| or so; rinse and repeat.
|
| Spend 3 to 9 months securing the funds, be boss, leading
| lavish lifestyle for 12 to 18 months, while getting paid and
| have lots of perks.
|
| edit: @lolinder wrote it better "..they're not trying very
| hard to succeed."
| huijzer wrote:
| I mean does it surprise you at this point that it's hard to
| find integrity in Silicon Valley? My current theory is that
| it's a side effect of easy wins since the fall of the Soviet
| Union. There was no competition and only the US knew how to
| build software startups. It's interesting where the next
| decades will go. I'm not saying the US will surely loose, but
| based on the products I see coming out of China, it's going to
| be interesting. For example, in my local MediaMarkt, the most
| high-tech section is the drone section and these are all
| Chinese. Also, if you purely look at the specs, Chinese
| electric cars outperform all European and American brands
| (charging rate, battery capacity, and performance). Not only in
| the budget segment but in the performance segment as well.
| pm90 wrote:
| Nah. There has been legitimate progress in Semiconductors
| (EUV!) and basic research (JWST!), including healthcare
| (mRNA, CRISPR). This theory that living in a world on the
| brink of world war somehow makes societies more productive
| seems like an incorrect narrative.
| huijzer wrote:
| That's not what I meant to say. I think many in Silicon
| Valley underestimate how much right place and right time
| has played a role in the success. With that in mind, I
| think too many ideas from Silicon Valley are blindly copied
| as a theory of how things should go.
|
| As a contrast for example, Buffett is known for high
| integrity. A lot of current startups on the other hand
| assume that integrity is not really necessary in business,
| based on the contradictory statements that are often made.
| I think that getting away with low integrity was/is only
| possible due to the tailwinds.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I cannot picture a future where software avoids becoming
| another low margin commodity.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This has been the way since the first internet boom in the
| early 2000s. The successes make too much money for it to be any
| other way.
|
| Overt fraud (sometimes known as "long firm" fraud) is rarer
| than you think, but there are the Theranos companies out there.
| Then things with very questionable payment structures like
| WeWork.
|
| This is also why "qualified investor" rules exist in the US.
| People briefly got into cryptocurrency (ICOs) as a way round
| this, which really _is_ an all scam all the time economy.
| DanielHB wrote:
| It feels the frauds are at least using non-traditional
| funding strategies, Theranos funding setup was kinda crazy.
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| I have a theory that extreme levels of VC investment mean,
| relative to whatever ownership shares the employees doing the
| actual work get, the original VCs have extreme ownership over
| whatever profits the business might generate (including from an
| IPO/sale).
|
| Well, that's just a fact. But my theory is that this ultimately
| incentivizes the employees to invest in their own skills and
| maximizing their salary-earning potential, rather than making
| the business succeed - the behavior you've described here.
|
| If the market were sane, I think VCs would be averse to
| investing in already-highly-invested-in companies that don't
| have clear paths to profitability. But, well... our markets
| aren't really sane or sensible in that way. Many VCs and
| managerial types would rather crack whips or institute
| OKRs/other MBA-type nonsense than simply make sure employees
| are both adequately salaried _and_ adequately invested in the
| success of the company.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Taking the money of some clueless holder of money -
| optimistically calling themselves as investors, never as
| suckers for sure - and fraud away.
|
| Generally, investors in early-ish-stage startups, that is those
| which are most likely to unexpectedly implode, scattering
| office furniture all over the place, know very well what
| they're getting into; they're specialist VCs who invest in,
| say, 50 startups in the hope that two or three will be worth
| something.
|
| Though, the nature of the game is that sometimes, one of these
| will have a truly massive breakout success, by accident, and it
| will totally screw up their view of risk from then on, leading
| them to put vast amounts of money into things which could not
| possibly work. Looking at you, Softbank.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Right. So it sounds like rolling the dice with unknown
| numbers (both negatives and gigantic ones) on the faces as
| many times as the vallet bears in the hope of a lucky jackpot
| kind of unsophisticated cluelessnes to me then. National
| lottery for the wealthy. Likely this is not their money, and
| not hard earn money then but some easy come easy go furtune
| perhaps? Otherwise I'd expect a bit more cautious
| sophistication arond wealth generated by an intelligent body
| of people rather than the '2-3 out of 50' kind of strategy
| those VC specialists represent. Success is a conscious
| journey for only those eventually succeed and always
| retrospectively - to serv as a sellable recipe then for the
| hungry aspirings seeking foolproof methods - so a lot of luck
| is involved in the birth of great things, any great things,
| but come on! This level of fortuitous attitude is a crime,
| huge distortion, misuse, and disrespect of the funds
| representing the value created by someone else elsewhere. Is
| this all there is about VC professionals? This apparently
| open secret of lavish games, seemingly by overgrown greedy
| children whose talent is in puffery?
| luckydata wrote:
| Investors are usually the ones that push you to spend as fast
| as possible. The goal is to find out the good company sooner
| and not having to dedicate time and effort on businesses that
| won't become outliers. You're either Facebook or dead, those
| two outcomes are preferable to a good mid size company that
| generates steady revenues (they call that a lifestyle
| business).
| andrewf wrote:
| The "private planes" were liquidated from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Hydrogen - "The
| company's main product was intended to be a conversion kit to
| be retrofitted to existing aircraft to allow them to run on
| hydrogen fuel."
|
| The "massive 3D printer" was liquidated from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Motors - "was an American
| manufacturing company focused on low-volume production of open-
| source vehicles and other products using multiple
| microfactories."
|
| If an investor accepted the premise of the companies, these
| don't sound like outrageous assets to own.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Those two sound - phrased that way - noble goals.
|
| I assume the opening of the article quoted with that hint of
| a judgemental tone was born on the corpses of the others
| then. Those may have catchy promises too perhaps, without any
| hint of parasitic smell leaking out even if the hidden agenda
| was precisely that.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| > This does not sound healthy.
|
| Its not - the entire Silicon Valley / VC thing was enabled by
| the free cash created by the zero-interest economy. Now that
| went away, and everything is coming crashing down back to
| reality.
| cess11 wrote:
| I'm in a similar business. It's fun working with the spoils of
| corporations in crisis or bankruptcy, one gets to see the insides
| of them and figure out where they went wrong without having to
| get employed there.
| mamcx wrote:
| Any way to buy overseas that is relatively reputable?
| yellowapple wrote:
| None of the auctions seems to offer shipping, so you'd probably
| need to hire someone to pick up whatever you buy and ship it to
| you.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| If you're in Europe, Troostwijk (no affiliation) is pretty big
| in used corporate goods.
|
| https://www.troostwijkauctions.com/
|
| Otherwise, perhaps there are local auction houses/warehouses in
| your country/region?
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... Okay, how common is it for startups to have _private planes_,
| even small ones like the one pictured? I've never seen that.
| You'd think at some point investors would get irritated.
| bluGill wrote:
| More common than it should be. There is a group that is
| impressed that you are large enough to afford to own a plane.
| If you have to travel often a plane at your command saves a lot
| of time. If you often travel with the same group the size of
| the plane, it can be cheaper than first class. Generally you
| should be better off leasing 25% of private jet though for the
| above needs.
|
| Of course airplanes are always an environmental disaster. That
| doesn't matter to many people though.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It may have been an aviation-related startup. There are many of
| those in the area too. Or agriculture, given the size of the
| plane.
| buildsjets wrote:
| You'd think at some point the investors would read the
| startup's prospectus, and realize that they have invested in a
| company that wants to modify airplanes to run off of hydrogen,
| and that the company has purchased not just a a _private
| plane_, but a _whole blimey airliner_ and a bunch of _jet
| turbine parts_ and to try and implement this scheme.
|
| https://svdisposition.com/auction-detail?id=664
| rsynnott wrote:
| I really think that the resellers should offer a provenance.
| "This aeron has been through both the early twenties
| cryptocurrency bubble and the mid-twenties AI bubble!"
|
| There _has_ to be a collectors' market for this sort of thing.
| This beanbag was at Theranos!
| jjkaczor wrote:
| heh - I bought a 17-year old Aeron in 2020 - 2nd best office
| purchase I ever made. (First was a Brother MFC office-class
| laser printer in 2016... still going strong, still gets driver
| updates for new OS's - and still allows me to use 3rd-party or
| refilled toner carts)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Didn't theranos have a "no killing bugs" policy? I say let them
| keep the beanbag chairs.
|
| The PawnStars show had a great bit about valuing a hypothetical
| "Bill Clinton's lawn mower". Famous names dont necessarily make
| everything more valuable.
| daveguy wrote:
| It might get difficult to acquire lots if they start doing
| that. I doubt an in-bankrupt-proceedings company wants the
| provenance of their office gear on the internet. Maybe they can
| agree to a time delay of X years or months, and only with
| permission. If they start doing it across the board they could
| lose significant business. I like the idea though!
| somanyphotons wrote:
| If they're getting liquidated via bankruptcy, do they have
| the right to deny having it advertised in a way that would
| improve the item sale price?
| daveguy wrote:
| That's an excellent point. I don't know. I guess it would
| depend on the creditors.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It Depends(TM), but likely not.
| varsketiz wrote:
| This should obviously use blockchain!
|
| (jk)
| ak217 wrote:
| "This coffee machine was at a startup that tried to build a
| blockchain for tracing the provenance of auction items."
|
| Has a certain Ozymandias ring to it
| mmooss wrote:
| Put small ID stamps on everything (or many things). It will
| start to acquire a history, like a passport or guitar case.
| huehehue wrote:
| "This aeron offered through a liquidation sale by a company
| that once resold furniture from defunct dot-com startups, but
| is now itself going bankrupt"
| dewey wrote:
| There's always a lot of real (additionally to non-authentic)
| merchandise sold on Ebay from defunct startups.
|
| Theranos:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/146096029198?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| If you can overlook tech company logo embroidering, this is a
| great way to get really nice soft shell jackets for cheap.
| Like a Patagonia jacket that retailed for $200 will be $30 on
| eBay because of a small logo.
| jjice wrote:
| I recall the hosts joking about this on Oxide and Friends, as
| they worked at Sun in the 90s up through the Sun acquisition.
| Some of their finds are hilarious. I think Brian had found a
| "Windows on MIPS" shirt at a thrift store?
| bcantrill wrote:
| Yes -- it was in fact an SGI t-shirt with the top ten reasons
| to run NT on MIPS (!!). It was even cringier than you might
| imagine, and included reasons like "SPARC shmark" (?) -- with
| the number one reason being "it's so fast it hertz."
|
| I would like to believe that this awful shirt was in fact an
| extraordinary act of subversion from within a once-great SGI,
| but no one is that good. Anyway, very much worth the twenty
| five cents I paid for it at the Palo Alto Goodwill!
| Tistel wrote:
| Might spawn a new occupation: sniff sommelier!
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| There is (a collector's market) of course, the provenance can
| be hard to come by though. There has always been a joke in the
| Bay Area about buying the product you helped design and ship at
| the "DeAnza Flea Market" (which is actually the AVSRO flea
| market[1] but was held in the DeAnza community college for many
| years).
|
| There is some nostalgia there, especially from former
| employees. But generally the 'premium' is limited[2]. Mostly
| because collectibles have to 'connect' with the collector in
| some way, and outside of a relatively small community a lot of
| startup stuff doesn't really make that connection.
|
| [1] https://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/
|
| [2] I have a super rare jacket from "First Person Inc" the
| wholly owned subsidiary Sun created for Project Green/Oak/Java
| that has an embroidered 'Fang' (the Java mascot) and the
| product name 'WebRunner'. Only given out to the original Java
| team. WebRunner was the name of the Hotjava browser before
| Sun's lawyers chickened out because Taligent had a similar
| trademark. I expect it is worth over 10 times what Bryan paid
| for the logowear t-shirt at Goodwill (0.25) :-). It would
| probably be worth more if was Gosling's jacket instead of mine.
| MisterTea wrote:
| A former tenant of mine was an office furniture and moving
| company. His business was pretty interesting as he was big into
| buying and selling Aeron chairs. He even gave me a top of the
| line Aeron for free. All of his inventory just circulated through
| NYC: he'd furnish an office with chairs he refurbished from
| another that was closing or moving. My favorite part about his
| business was how he charged for cleaning out the office of
| furniture he would turn around and resell making money on both
| ends.
|
| He even tried making Aeron parts overseas to bypass Herman Miller
| but got caught by customs and had to surrender the shipment. When
| Covid hit he tried pivoting to home service to try and build a
| WFH office furnishing company but struggled to get it going (the
| scale was beyond his ability.) His business in shambles he
| quickly shut it down and liquidated his inventory in a week.
| blindriver wrote:
| During the dot com bust they had a bunch of these auctions where
| a ton of equipment was for sale.
|
| I bought a Cisco router (2514 iirc) and a Napster T-shirt when
| Napster went bankrupt.
| bluedino wrote:
| So if early Amazon employees built their own desks out of doors,
| what did they use for chairs?
| htrp wrote:
| wooden crates
| nipponese wrote:
| I really envy the auctioneer featured in the piece.
|
| [[?]] Gets to learn about real tech economy
|
| [[?]] Gets to learn about many different unrelated businesses and
| tech
|
| [[?]] Gets to interact with people across many industries
| mmooss wrote:
| What is the square root of "Gets to learn about real tech
| economy"?
|
| (I think you mean: :) )
|
| EDIT: Why did HN nuke my checkmark (U+2713)? I insert it
| between the colon and smiley, and it disappears when I click
| submit/update. !! Now I understand the parent's mathematical
| expression better.
| adastra22 wrote:
| HN removes most Unicode that isn't used as part of an actual
| language. Ever noticed you never see emoji here? Math symbols
| are an exception, I guess.
| mmooss wrote:
| Thanks - now I understand the root of the problem! :)
| bushbaba wrote:
| ah silicon valley disposition, my favorite place to window shop
| at. If your ever curious just go to hibid.com and put in a
| Silicon valley zip code.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| The waste of our generation really kills me. We all pay for these
| things. It's in the price of everything we buy, all companies
| pass on costs to the consumers.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| The company's out of business. What do you expect them to do?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I mean when they originally went hog wild buying stuff at God
| knows what prices new. At least this company is recycling the
| waste.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| OK. And why is that a waste? If you need it, you need it.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I wonder what was in the Juicero auction ;)
| jonfromsf wrote:
| During the great recession I went to the Kodak offices that were
| shutting down. I bought 4 aerons for $25 each, but could only fit
| 2 in my car. Fortunately, I sold 2 to a guy in the parking lot
| for $40 so my chairs were almost free.
| Onavo wrote:
| I will take Universal Hydrogen's Piper Dakota for $5.
| sciencesama wrote:
| One mans trash is an another mans treasure !!
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