[DethNinja]

On the other hand, my first self-funded startup got destroyed by a VC funded venture. They had a worse product but far better marketing and they used every dirty trick in book to tarnish my company’s reputation.

There is no way I’ll start another startup unless I receive backing from a huge VC company.

Current economic paradigm is more similar to centralised/controlled economies of USSR. Thus if you want to succeed, you will need friends with connections to central banks.

[echelon]

I self-funded my startup to the tune of half a million dollars.

I've had what I can only assume to be a VC-funded competitor study my endpoints for high latency / expensive queries, then saturate them with millions of requests a second across thousands of simultaneous IP addresses.

Business is survival of the fittest. Pressures and growth gradients come in all shapes and sizes.

[tester457]

How did you mitigate the attack?

[t0mas88]

Why would that be a VC funded competitor specifically?

[jacquesm]

I had this happen, we survived though, and they failed (spectacularly so). Camarades/ww.com: 1, Spotlife: 0.

And Logitech, who backed Spotlife was more than gentlemanly about it, they sent us all of their traffic for years and years.

[dinp]

> On the other hand, my first self-funded startup got destroyed by a VC funded venture. They had a worse product but far better marketing and they used every dirty trick in book to tarnish my company’s reputation.

Would you be willing to give a few more details about what happened? I'm not interested in the identities of the companies or people, just interested in a high level overview of what happened. We don't hear these stories often.

[DethNinja]

- Hired a journalist on some mid-size news company to tarnish the company’s reputation. I never imagined they would bother to do this, but I was wrong.

- Used an APT for hire but I don’t believe they did succeed , still it is quite insane. I was lucky enough to catch a targeted rootkit but issue was quickly remediated. I’ll eventually find a consultant to analyse the Win 11 rootkit. They were definitely not script kiddies.

- Some black hat SEO and shills for hire, but that is expected.

I’m really surprised by hired journalist / APT aspect. Something I never imagined would happen, but apparently it does happen.

[uLogMicheal]

Between the bot farms, members of media in pockets, and inflation; the boat of traction does seem a bit rigged eh?

Probably someone asked long ago "What if traction itself could be a moat?" and the rest is history.

[jorvi]

> central banks

I think you mean big banks. Aside from maybe a line of communication due to their financial size, VCs have very little to do with the Fed or ECB.

[boppo1]

Well, directly, no. But QE and ZIRP were pretty fundamental in their current ubiquity.

[uLogMicheal]

You missed a step, it goes from the central banks to the LPs to the VCs. The big hedge funds that get all of that low/zero interest money are certainly active in private equity AND forcing their behaviors/policies on companies far and wide.

[molave]

Not surprised. If they can't have you, then no one can. It's sad that startups either die quickly a hero or live long and be a villain.

[Sosh101]

I second this. Have had a similar experience.

[getmeinrn]

I'm interested, can you share?

[chris_j]

What does SSBC mean in this context?

[DethNinja]

Sorry, it was meant to be USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

[DeathArrow]

Can you share the story?