I built a failed startups goods website and named it VcSubsidized.com
vcsubsidized.comEverything for sale on this site seems to be a joke, but there are real firms that specialize in liquidating the assets of failed startups. There was an HN post about this a few weeks ago:
I'd be surprised if $1 of cash changes hands due to this website. It seems like he whipped it up in an hour using Cursor to promote his main business, which he linked at the top of the page
Is there anything about it that screams cursor to you?
Or was that just a throwaway statement
EDIT: nvm literally says at the bottom of the page
I remember at the start of COVID, scoring a Steelcase Leap v2 from a guy who was scooping up office chairs from failed Silicon Valley startups and hauling them up to Canada. Super chill dude, and totally upfront about basically making a 100% profit margin by gluing on new armrests to these wholesale fire-sale finds. It really highlighted the interesting economics of the time - a lot of businesses probably thrived just by redistributing stuff from regions in freefall. You have to wonder how much of the "supply chain" was actually just people moving stuff from places that were dying to places still kicking. Kind of a morbid redistributive supply chain, when you think about it.
These are fungal organisms that break apart dead matter. The ecosystem cannot survive without them.
I think I got my V1 cheap when Lehman bros kicked the bucket.
I worked on warehouse software in the late aughts that did this in the housing shit in the us. Literally it was a bunch of companies buying pallets of shit from other companies. Basically, whomever was left holding the bag at the end, lost.
Hey, I am the one that built it.
A spammer added a bunch of fake listings, which have since been removed.
Sorry about that.
Flagged:
- should be a [Show HN]
- two plausibly real listings, neither of which is a deal ($700 aeron which are $540 new, 8 year old alexa for $25)
- many spam/joke listings, and 1 of the 2 real listings is a joke (the aeron)
- there's plenty of real sites for this
- "Built with Cursor by Heshie Brody (on @heshiebee also Stop Being Broke)"
- Comments not pointing these things out are odd in a way that is strongly indicative of spam
-- "will you open source it?" (I rarely see this on HN, and makes ~0 sense in this context)
-- "have you considered making a startup for this?" (the website purports to be a business?)
Neat idea. Random initial impressions:
* On search listings, make clicking anywhere in the rounded-rectangle for the search hit go to the details view. (Actually, maybe make the whole rectangle a hyperlink, so people can middle-click and do all the normal browser link things with it.)
* On the detail view, there's no obvious button to go back to the search view. Even if you support old-school browser back feature, which is commendable, you might want to also have a button/link.
* On the detail view, the Twitter/X logo button in the upper right corner of the window almost looks like a close-window X like we see on some other sites for going back to the search view.
* You might want to make a clear argument for why people should use this instead of a liquidator, eBay, CraigsList, Facebook Marketplace, etc. (As a buyer, I'm thinking maybe I can find a deal here because there's not many other buyers. But as a seller who just lost their startup, I'd be thinking what's the easiest way to make these Aeron chairs and standing desks go away, with money a second priority, since there are better uses of my time and storage space.)
* You have a spam.
> On search listings, make clicking anywhere in the rounded-rectangle for the search hit go to the details view
These are the kinds of small issues which compound into a shitty product that you get from wholesale relying on AI.
The AI tools will do this OK, once trained to plagiarize better code. :)
The issue isn’t code quality, it’s intentionality.
There’s nothing wrong with the code on this site, from what I can tell.
It’s just obvious that nobody put any care towards making it (not everything needs to be a work of art, mind you).
From the title I thought this would be a site to get, like, weird startup gadgets that never took off. Looks like this is just craiglist for office furniture/IT from startups.
I thought the title was saying that OP's e-commerce website had failed
This grammar issue is often solved by adding a hyphen, as in "failed-startups"
I dunno about Herman Miller but my local Steelcase dealer (an hour away) was pretty pissed when I showed up wanting repairs for a chair I bought on eBay.
(Personally I can't sit in the Aeron, the mesh causes my hamstrings to explode in pain, so I could care less that I have a Herman Miller dealer in town.)
From the name I was hoping this would be a list of services being offered at a loss as they burn VC money to get marketshare.
This would be the same list as those startups whose initial investors have not yet exited.
Here you go https://news.ycombinator.com/launches
My first thought was that the was gonna be more like the defunct VC Fund My Life (vcfml.com), but I suppose growth-hacking startups that offer extravagant coupon codes for "Uber for naps" are so last decade. The new hit thing is apparently startups folding.
ZeroInterestWaste dot com
Beware dangling modifiers!
> I built a failed startups goods website and named it VcSubsidized.com
Is better written as: I built a website named VcSubsidized.com for failed startups goods
I think as social satire it's pretty funny.
What satire?
"Used Herman Miller Aeron chair. Has been put to use launching our company and pivoting from CPG to Crypto to AI to Deep Research Agent. Unfortunately, our latest deal only resulted in cloud credits and we can no longer fund our payroll and office equipment. Must be sold. Chair wheels have been upgraded to polyurethane "rollerblade" wheels to maximize glide and save wood floors (they don't light up)."
Oh, I thought he meant the site, not the fake listings
I meant both (or the combination depending on how one looks at these things). I read that site as a very 'tongue-in-cheek' to use the English phrasing, from the name 'Vcsubsidized' (which is a dig on VCs who think they are investing, not subsidizing) to the listings (like the chair and the Rick Astley picture) to the concept (startups are so ludicrous these days with 'stupid' money that they buy stuff they don't even get around to using). All of it, to me, spoke of satire about the venture capital ecosystem of today.
Looks like you'll need to curate that front page at least, if not all the listings :)
wow, memelord.tech is… cringe.
& this whole post seems like a slight joke / promo for it.
looks great, have you considered making a startup business for this?
they should track the office furniture provenance with blockchain, that way you could verify what startup it came from, and then when your startup fails and you sell the aeron chairs again it can be an added bonus to the item value.
It's largely overpriced.
Another post flagged for dubious reasons?
I thought this meant the website was a failure... and looking at it, I think its due to become one.