Metadata
- Author: Benn Stancil
- Full Title:: Startups (Still) Aren’t Businesses
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: Career Tips, Data Culture,
- URL:: https://benn.substack.com/p/startups-still-arent-businesses-yet
- Read date:: 2025-04-19
Highlights
despite the lofty language that people use to talk about Silicon Valley and its ambitions to build enduring companies, very few startups are, or even aspire to be, businesses that make money. Instead, they are assets that are meant to be sold. (View Highlight)
it seem unlikely that Silicon Valley’s “year of efficiency” and “era of grit” lasts for very long. So long as startups are built to be assets, there is no fundamental gravity around efficiency. It’s marketing, more or less. Businesses care about profit; assets care about perception. (View Highlight)
The bitter lesson comes at you fast: (View Highlight)
When asked if this meant that Linear expected AI agents to create product specs, write code, and do design work, Linear CEO Karri Saarinen said yes: “Linear can become a home for agents, tackling tasks across the entire product development workflow.” Compete with a factory of overwhelming compute at your own peril, y’all. (View Highlight)