[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Any advice on pivoting out of VC-backed tech?
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Ask HN: Any advice on pivoting out of VC-backed tech?
I'm exploring moving away from work with VC-backed B2B SaaS
startups and towards working with B2C businesses on Main Street.
For anyone else who's felt inclined to make a similar pivot - any
advice? Particularly when it comes to remaining challenged,
informed, and translating valuable hype-cycle concepts to people
who don't care about hype. While it's interesting to play with
shiny toys, helping investors make money by creating products
related to the hype-cycle de jour that get used by other B2B SaaS
companies just feels soulless. (My background is in GTM systems
and data analytics mostly, but I think the question applies to
anyone)
Author : AbstractH24
Score : 29 points
Date : 2025-10-05 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Having worked in both startups funded by VC's (or wishing to be),
| and for businesses not part of that, the primary difference is in
| the attitude towards boring technology. Main Street is not really
| any better at seeing through hype cycles than anyone else, but
| they are less up-to-date on what is currently hyped, and they
| also are more likely to think that they hired the programmer to
| make technical decisions, rather than wanting to make those
| technical decisions themselves. They have other (often equally
| technical) decisions to concentrate on, in different areas, so
| they are wanting you to just Make It Work.
|
| The downside is they are unimpressed with refactoring, updating
| to new versions, and the like. The upside is they are ok with you
| using boring technology that works, even at times when a VC-
| backed tech company would insist on something new and
| overcomplicated.
|
| Also, the pay is ok, but honestly it's not going to be as high as
| in VC-backed employers.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| That's mostly what I've come to expect. One thing I think you
| added, though, is that there's a greater expectation to be the
| expert in the room.
|
| Any advice on taking the best parts of working at VC-backed
| startups (outside of comp) and applying them to roles on Main
| Street?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Version control! Testing! Deployment with a user-acceptance
| stage! A commitment to tracking bugs and solving them prior
| to new features! Talking to end-users after the first roll-
| out!
|
| Some or all of those will come as a surprise to the people
| you are working for.
| al_borland wrote:
| This was my experience, until a bunch of startups tried to come
| after the boring business I work for. They've since brought in
| a bunch of new people who brought hype cycles with them, and
| have pushed out the boring and stable solutions, in favor of
| more complicated trends that need to be migrated or re-written
| every couple years.
|
| My job satisfaction has dropped dramatically. I found meaning
| in the boring stuff. The hyped solutions that will be thrown
| out in a year feel so meaningless.
|
| This is all to say that not all Main Street businesses will
| appreciate the boring solutions. And if they do right now,
| things can and will likely shift at some point.
| codingdave wrote:
| Ignore hype cycles. Let the hype die down, and use tech when it
| has proven itself. Your run-of-the-mill business doesn't try to
| stay on the leading edge. When not working in the "startup"
| world, it becomes a good guideline that if you need to be
| challenged and informed and parse the hype in order to use a new
| tech... then you probably should _not_ use it. Boring tech is
| stable tech.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| "just use postgres" should be tattood on every junior engineer
| right out of college
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I don't really get why Postgres is touted as "boring"
| technology. It's literally the "exciting" SQL server.
|
| Surely you mean MySQL / MariaDB.
|
| With Postgres I literally have to re-read docs every time
| there is a major version upgrade because I need to remind
| myself how to dump the database and re-import it into the new
| version because it's 2025 and Postgres still hasn't come up
| with a way to not have you do this.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Run your cluster on Debian. Make a backup. Run
| pg_upgradecluster. In a week, throw away the backup.
|
| (You should be checking for regressions and behavior
| changes in your app, too, but you always need to do that.
| Have a QA database.)
| dm03514 wrote:
| How are you defining "B2C businesses on Main Street."
|
| The reason I'm wondering is because it's striking how much more
| financially challenged my Main Street is compared to Vc texh.
|
| I see so much opportunity for a small medium business
| consultation in the analytics and process space but these
| companies are like really strapped for money and largely set in
| their ways in my experience.
|
| In my experience, people are open to solving their problems. It's
| just the money is hard making it financially viable so it's just
| the big money is just like an order of magnitude smaller.
|
| Another thing I've noticed is that I think the general level of
| sort of like process thinking and data driven decision making in
| tech is at just like a higher baseline than on Main Street
|
| A lot of my discussions are challenging how to sort of like
| present the problem in a way that somebody that doesn't have
| decades of experience and operations understands.
|
| Another challenge that I face regularly with Main Street
| companies is just people seem to be happy like they're not trying
| to continuously optimize like I'm used to doing coming for a big
| tech. Even when it's easy to present like positive ROI
| opportunities there's just like a comfort with the way things are
| done and a lot of people seem just happy governed by their
| scaling factors in exchange for that that comfort.
|
| TLDR; challenges are financial and mentality.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| > Even when it's easy to present like positive ROI
| opportunities there's just like a comfort with the way things
| are done
|
| I could see that getting pretty frustrating
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I define B2C businesses on main street as everything from a
| regional chain of plumbers to a medical practice with 10 or 15
| doctors in one area, to a realtor.
|
| It sounds like you are very much motivated by optimizing
| processes and profitability, and/or the income that doing so
| provides you. What I've realized is that in many ways I'm not
| sufficiently motivated by that. What motivates me is the
| gratification I get from seeing every day people impacted by my
| work.
|
| Nothing wrong with that, just different things for different
| people. In fact, you may be a more "enlightened" being because
| you can focus on the longer term rewards.
| jbs789 wrote:
| I think you're right. For many businesses the tech is a
| background enabler rather than the focus. But if you find the
| right business and culture and leverage the tech, that's the
| sweet spot. Tough to find though...
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| 100% right. Any tips on finding it?
|
| One thing I'm hearing over and over is "focus on impact, not
| process." Which is something I think is something you're
| seeing become a growing need in tech as well.
| jbs789 wrote:
| Tough to say without knowing you, but I'd say figure out
| what you're good at, what motivates you and look for people
| you enjoy working with. Maybe that takes you to a certain
| industry but maybe not.
| dustingetz wrote:
| companies outside the venture ecosystem need a lot more help.
| This is because they're a lot harder to help. So, expect a
| Serenity Prayer situation. There is much less you can change. In
| return, you're allowed to be older than 35. I would not say the
| work life balance is that different. bigger companies have
| deadlines and crises too. The crises are often worse because the
| management is looser.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I once worked for VC backed start-up, I've not been VC backed
| myself, but I worked for Australia's science and technology
| research agency, so let's somewhat consider what I worked on was
| funded, cutting-edge development. Normally too early for VC, and
| often very shiny thing, or polishing things expected to be shiny
| in the future.
|
| I've only once worked on main street when I was managing the app
| for a pizza chain.
|
| One day, sitting in a quarterly planning meeting for the pizza
| company, they were discussing changes they could make to the app
| and the comment that stood out in my head was "we forecast this
| change could help us sell x% more garlic bread".
|
| In my head I thought, "I don't care how much garlic bread we
| sell...this is not why I'm on the planet".
|
| I know not every mains st. business is selling pizza, and lots of
| B2B companies, VC backed or not, would not excite me.
|
| You're right, helping investors make money isn't very compelling,
| and I think B2B, has that kind of focus, but many ventures aren't
| B2B SaaS.
|
| There is lots going on in health, energy, space, etc. right now.
| I do expect many of these bubbles will pop, but is there
| something there that interests you?
|
| I didn't see a contact in your profile, but I'm the founder off
| https://affectablesleep.com, we're not hiring a GTM person, but
| I'm currently reaching out to a few people for advice. Drop me a
| line if you're interested in chatting, and maybe I can help you
| find your next thing too.
| hotstickyballs wrote:
| Main Street sells pizza but VCs sell Ponzi schemes
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| > In my head I thought, "I don't care how much garlic bread we
| sell...this is not why I'm on the planet".
|
| This is a great analogy, because I feel like "I don't care how
| we optimized the conversion rate for the ads directing traffic
| to the website for your new data enrichment tool...this is not
| why I'm on the planet"
|
| You are right, in many ways its related to the products impact
| more than it is the source of funding. I have found that
| oftentimes VC-backed products of all sorts, regardless of their
| mission, get backed into a corner where founders are focused on
| an exit over real impact. That the model inherently discourages
| really caring about your customers.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I had forgotten that when I was raising money for my previous
| company, there was a great meeting I had with a VC. I thought
| we were going to raise. At the end he said.
|
| "This was fun. All day long, I have founders pitch me these
| SaaS companies that have found this tiny arbitrage of a few
| bucks a month. It's so BORING. But at the end of the meeting,
| even though I don't care what the product is, I can look at a
| spreadsheet, and say, the market is X, they're making Y, can
| grow to Z, and I can make a decision to invest without
| thinking.
|
| When you're creating a new market, I have to think, and I
| risk losing money. I like what you're doing, but from an
| investment perspective, I wouldn't touch you with a 10 foot
| pole, but it was fun to think about what the future might
| look like."
|
| The thing is, I really appreciated his reasoning and honesty.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| That's interesting.
|
| While I've met tech investors who invest for reasons other
| than profit, all the ones I can think of do so to empower
| certain demographics. Never thought about ones who might do
| so because they are interested in a particular space.
|
| But what are success metrics and OKRs for an investor like
| that?
| Prcmaker wrote:
| I quit my job. Its forced me out of the cycle of 'just a bit
| more' and made change the only option. Is it the smartest move,
| likely not, but so far I stand by it.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I'm in the process of doing the same. From a dollars and cents
| perspective not the smartest move, but from a finding value in
| life seems like quite the right direction.
|
| Any advice on staying informed and challenged? Some of the
| recent changes and new products in tech are actually quite
| interesting. When you are on the hype-cycle hamster wheel
| you're forced to stay informed about both the hype and the
| interesting stuff. I feel like it's quite easy to tune it all
| out otherwise though.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| Boston is less frothy than SF or NY and there's a ton of
| experienced professional grad students at a pivot point in their
| careers looking for a way to start a business, not just hook a VC
| with tech and try to growth hack from there. Loads of education,
| politics, healthcare and biotech folks. You could try hanging out
| there?
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Not a bad idea
|
| And how did you know where lived ? (Interestingly, since 2020
| almost all my colleagues have not been in those cities. But
| they've acted like they are still. Particularly the leaders of
| the companies.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Don't become dependent on it in the first place.
|
| You are usually forced to come to this conclusion, if you hadn't
| already, after your experience with a rug-pull or two.
| bitwize wrote:
| Ask around on Hackernews. Post on the "Who wants to be hired?"
| thread at the top of each month. See what the local job scene is
| like in a city whose major industries are not "tech". Use
| Craigslist, Indeed, etc. as guides.You will find that they need
| software and automation in all sorts of industries and many would
| love to hire someone who'd proven themself in the SV world.
|
| Oh, and uh, get used to boredom. Java and .NET, maybe some Python
| if you're lucky. If you love Rust, get comfortable loving it on
| your own time. Most of the world out there runs on time-honored
| technology that's been proven to work, and what you'll find is...
| that's not really a bad thing. Knowing you have a stable
| foundation on which to build lets you focus on the things that
| matter to _your_ business.
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(page generated 2025-10-05 23:00 UTC)