alt Hacker NewsYou hold ZIRP caused this, then cite crypto and AI as continuations, both post-ZIRP. Which is it?
> as long as cheap money is around you could endlessly "engineer" and pivot and bullshit around
I lived this in a particular industry firmly inside the ZIRP era. It doesn't begin to describe how things actually worked. Even if ZIRP is synonymous with endless money to you, on their end, they still had to choose how to allocate it, and it was finite. You're not going to a bank for a loan, you beg people with experience in software to believe you're trending up.
> During the ZIRP era it was all about "engagement" and DAUs/MAUs, then it was blockchain, and now it's all about AI.
Do you genuinely believe DAUs/MAUs stopped mattering once crpyto, then AI, arrived?
Your argument requires believing that engineers collectively ran a con that no investor, board member, or executive noticed for a decade, and the only people who figured it out were PE firms after 2022. That's conspiracy theory dressed in finance vocabulary.
The leveraged buyout model you're praising as "normal capitalism" is itself subsidized by cheap debt. You've correctly identified that cheap money distorts incentives. You've just misidentified which side of the transaction is the distortion.
ZIRP was the era of where any tech startup was seen as a good investment no matter how stupid. Take any stupid business that doesn't work, say you do it with tech, get millions thrown at you. Then it was blockchain - same story, conventional business that doesn't work, but with blockchain - boom, instant money. Now the same with AI.
> you beg people with experience in software to believe you're trending up
Considering how much stupid shit I've seen funded (that quietly "incredible journey'd" away or folded by now) I don't think much begging was involved. Capital was desperate to find a place, no matter how ill-advised. Everyone in the startup food chain enjoyed it.
> Do you genuinely believe DAUs/MAUs stopped mattering once crpyto, then AI, arrived?
What started mattering is a clear path to monetize said DAUs/MAUs. You can't just show up with (potentially flawed) analytics saying you have DAUs and you're gonna figure out monetization later. Now you need to actually figure it out now and show up with analytics + proof of actually monetizing those users. Well, except if you're selling AI - then it's ok to sell inference at a major loss and figure out monetization later.
> collectively ran a con that no investor, board member, or executive noticed for a decade
"Investing" in a Ponzi can still be profitable as long as you get out before it collapses. There was a lot of passing around the hot potatoes between VCs too, so a VC can rightfully determine something to be a scam, but still invest if they believe SoftBank will happily hold the bag (and those guys ended up taking a lot of bags).