LARP – Revenue infrastructure for serious founders(larp.website)
larp.website
LARP – Revenue infrastructure for serious founders
https://www.larp.website/
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Yeah but like, most of us work in tech and sure a lot of this money is getting “wasted,” but on what and who? Often on people who spend it elsewhere, a little bit gets siphoned off every time for living costs, luxuries, and side projects of individual employees, or other benefactors thereof. I wouldn’t call this excess a “bad” thing, the excess is what allows us any reprieve in the rat race, time to spend with loved ones, time to engage or worthy pursuits. It funds professor’s salaries (and administrator’s!), its what pays artists, its why all these engineers retire early and make posts about porting Doom to a microwave. Of course it would often be better if this excess was taken elsewhere, so that we wouldn’t have people dying needlessley just because they lost out in life, but even that wouldn’t require a fraction of the wealth of our society generates on top of its basic needs. Excess is not a bad thing!
If you go through the most recent YC batches, it's insane how much of their "customer list" is just other companies in the same or recent batches
That phenomenon is neither new nor just a YC thing.
A huge share of B2B SaaS startups have long relied on recirculating VC money, buying from one another with just enough indirection for the accounting to be sensible, baiting bigger fish into swallowing them up with an exit so that the bigger fix can either get rid of nuisance competition or stake their claim in a new market. Earnest innovation ceded to creative financialization well over a decade ago now.
And it works great, until the music stops.
A huge share of B2B SaaS startups have long relied on recirculating VC money, buying from one another with just enough indirection for the accounting to be sensible, baiting bigger fish into swallowing them up with an exit so that the bigger fix can either get rid of nuisance competition or stake their claim in a new market. Earnest innovation ceded to creative financialization well over a decade ago now.
And it works great, until the music stops.
One of Micheal and Dalton video does address this
Even if you larp revenue, when you get acquired or go public auditors will figure stuff out. Or worse you go to prison. Its like cheating in college-youre just hurtung yourself and others
Even if you larp revenue, when you get acquired or go public auditors will figure stuff out. Or worse you go to prison. Its like cheating in college-youre just hurtung yourself and others
It's the YC playbook. I guess it works, Corgi for example a "AI" insurance company with like only 5 real engineers and a bunch of growth people. Their main customer is other startups mostly YC. Same with Delve.
Corgi is even worse than just circular revenue, their entire insurance business is a house of cards: https://reticulating.substack.com/p/ycombinators-corgi-insur...
I've been out of the valley (circular) loop for a bit so I'd never heard of Corgi. OMFG...
"Fake it till you make it" has long been a classic maxim among many a vc startup founder. It's like the elementary ingredient of "growth hacking".
Clicks on link. Reads this thinking it's gotta be a joke... continues reading not sure if it's a joke. Relieved to find out it's a joke.
I guess that's the joke.
Heavies have been playing this "pretend internet money" game off and on for decades. In investment analysis, details matter.
I guess that's the joke.
Heavies have been playing this "pretend internet money" game off and on for decades. In investment analysis, details matter.
Third post in three day, not counting the ones that have been removed:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869910
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48852458
The joke is getting tired.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869910
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48852458
The joke is getting tired.
it is the same link so you are complaining about a HN system failure which should have upvoted the first submission.
Okay, that's genuinely funny. Sadly, it might be a little subtle for the folks who need to feel the mockery most.
I was able to close my first series A after just a few hours of using this. I wish the rate limits were higher though.
> … the fake version and the "strategic partnership" version are separated mostly by vibes, scale, and whether a bank structured it.
I have a new business idea …
I have a new business idea …
I just valued my buddy at 1.2 Trillion
I had serious concerns as an accountant until I realized how familiar everything sounded.
I was genuienly confused till the pricing and tipping section.
It worked for NVidia.
The creator of this has a good note on how the Nvidia situation relates, under his diagram of their circular deal:
"To be clear: every deal here is legal, publicly announced, and defended by the people in it — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called the structure "nothing inappropriate in principle." Critics compare the pattern to 1990s dot-com vendor financing and warn it can inflate the appearance of demand. As Bloomberg puts it, a circular deal is legally different from a fraudulent "round-trip" — regulators' term for sham trades with no economic substance designed to inflate results. LARP is a joke about the round-trip. This is the legal cousin it rhymes with."
"To be clear: every deal here is legal, publicly announced, and defended by the people in it — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called the structure "nothing inappropriate in principle." Critics compare the pattern to 1990s dot-com vendor financing and warn it can inflate the appearance of demand. As Bloomberg puts it, a circular deal is legally different from a fraudulent "round-trip" — regulators' term for sham trades with no economic substance designed to inflate results. LARP is a joke about the round-trip. This is the legal cousin it rhymes with."
Nvidia makes real things, grinds to push computing forward and are coincidentally wrapped up in the latest hype cycle in a big way
Software-only startups make nothing but hype and (these days) merely copy-paste existing frameworks and libraries into an AWS account, fill in predefined config parameters, generate zero net new knowledge
Studied applied physics and EE in college, been in high tech eng for almost 3 decades and lived through the evolution of software truth still being discovery into streamlined template filling.
People need jobs in this political system so whatever but I know a lot about engineering across contexts and where the bleeding edge is and know SaaS startups are rarely engaged in pushing the edge out further. It's a jobs program to validate political memes
Software-only startups make nothing but hype and (these days) merely copy-paste existing frameworks and libraries into an AWS account, fill in predefined config parameters, generate zero net new knowledge
Studied applied physics and EE in college, been in high tech eng for almost 3 decades and lived through the evolution of software truth still being discovery into streamlined template filling.
People need jobs in this political system so whatever but I know a lot about engineering across contexts and where the bleeding edge is and know SaaS startups are rarely engaged in pushing the edge out further. It's a jobs program to validate political memes
YC be like: hold my beer
What I wonder is what LARP stands for. something like “looped/linked annual revenue platform”? (Don’t answer with something about role playing, it’s definitely not that)
Now everyone can play like the big boys!
What people miss from these things is that there is economic value being created.
For example, if you gift someone a $100 Amazon gift card, but they also gift you a $100 Amazon gift card. Has any gift actually been exchanged? Yes, the sentiment of giving.
Or if someone pays you $100 to eat a pile of shit, and then you use the same $100 to pay them to eat a pile of shit, you both have eaten, but the money is in the same place it started.
In the end, if you paint a big enough picture, all money flow in an economy is circular anyway.
For example, if you gift someone a $100 Amazon gift card, but they also gift you a $100 Amazon gift card. Has any gift actually been exchanged? Yes, the sentiment of giving.
Or if someone pays you $100 to eat a pile of shit, and then you use the same $100 to pay them to eat a pile of shit, you both have eaten, but the money is in the same place it started.
In the end, if you paint a big enough picture, all money flow in an economy is circular anyway.
The moving of money across time is 100% central to money's value. Passing digital money around to cook the books is moving money... fraudulently. So yeah, they're not the same unless you're goaling on the semantic purity of the word "move".
I'm confused how circulating legal tender between 2 parties could be cooking books or fraud. Each party can absolutely claim they made money from the transaction. The fact they lost money in a different transaction is a separate concern.
Rather than claim that they passed money around to make money, a nice income statement demonstrates that they made money.
Cooking up fake transactions to make an investor think there is business happening is the definition of fraud.
Cooking up fake transactions to make an investor think there is business happening is the definition of fraud.
Gross Revenue is sometimes passed off as Revenue in reports, until you examine the fine print.
you’re literally scamming VCs lol