Top all-time · #652
Alex Danco
Personal blog · alexdanco.comstartupseconomics
Alex Danco's personal blog at alexdanco.com covers startups and economics. Since 2015, 96 different Hacker News readers have linked it 148 times, most often “How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 6 of 34 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Danco's essays on startups, venture funding and social class, such as his Michael Scott theory and predictions posts; some call them enlightening or well written.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- far better written than the Girard intro in the submission; nice, detailed, insightful essay; enlightening; another great article
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 34 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
join 30,000 fellow subscribers at danco.substack.com
Most-linked posts?
- How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-01-11
- Ten Predictions for the 2020s8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-12-17
- The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-01-22
- Making is show business now (2020)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-10-10
- How Scenes Work4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-03-21
- Cooking as a Service4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-05-09
- Antifragility4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-12
- Secrets about People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to René Girard (2019)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-01
- Debt is coming to the tech industry4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-02-08
- Are Founders Allowed to Lie?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-09-18
What Hacker News says?
Saw this on a YC thread a while back, but I keep witnessing examples of it every couple weeks: https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/26/everything-is-amazing-but-n... Everything is amazing but nothing is ours.
Comment linking /2019/10/26/everything-is-amazing-but-nothing-is-ours/?fbclid=IwAR1tz3Et74UqcIQ_ZSjEW2NOWeInLN3AR3yU3EUcLDdnx0OdG2QTG31Z98Y
on “Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair”Submitted Debt is coming to the tech industry as a story · 541 points
HN discussionMost of your problems sound like they stemmed from VC. Similar story. It's a good, and hard, lesson. Two things one should not touch when it comes to building healthy companies in 2020: crypto and equity sales to VC. They're going to become fossils soon anyhow [1]. Read Rework by Basecamp. Read The Beginning of Infinity by Deutch. Read the Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Hamming. Watch some Bret Victor talks…
Comment linking /2020/02/07/debt-is-coming/
on “Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help”Submitted Never Hertz to Ask as a story · 433 points
HN discussion> Why does that feel naive to you, though? The 3 ladders. People on the sociopaths (Elites) ladder think of everyone else – the clueless (educated gentry) and economic losers (labour) – as naive. The clueless ladder comes off as most naive. Labour knows they're losing and focuses on their own thing. Sociopaths know they're winning and focus on power accumulation. The clueless don't notice any of this and focus on be…
Comment linking /2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social-class/
on “Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness”Submitted Everything is amazing, but nothing is ours as a story · 344 points
HN discussionI wrote a post with my predictions here https://medium.com/swlh/9-predictions-for-2020-2029-555312fc... TLDR 1. Federated Learning will unlock value from previously inaccessible sensitive data. 2. Deepfakes will impact democracy and bring about a need for publisher certified content. 3. Nationalism will rise around the world, the internet will splinter. 4. eSports will take a huge chunk of attention and advertising…
Comment linking /2019/12/17/ten-predictions-for-the-2020s/
on “Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?”Submitted Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain? as a story · 244 points
HN discussion> Meanwhile in JS it seems like you can’t go more than six months without having to rewrite something. And by "in JS", you really mean, "in NPM land". So long as folks keep remaining seemingly (almost willfully) ignorant of the source of their pain and/or running right back into the fire the next time the opportunity presents itself, that pain is going to continue. NPM sucks. It's not the way to do JS. Everyone who…
Comment linking /2020/10/08/making-is-show-business-now/
on “The Frontend Treadmill”Submitted Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips as a story · 236 points
HN discussionanemic growth Twitter may primarily be a text-based medium and for that reason it appeals to people who are more textually and informationally oriented. This idea isn't original to me: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2018/5/21/invisible-asymptote... , https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/ . Maybe there's much more growth in it: or maybe that's the nature of the company and product.
Comment linking /2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/
on “Twitter’s founder admits that shutting down the API was “worst thing we did””Submitted The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015) as a story · 222 points
HN discussionThis post from Alex Danco contains a similar but much more opinionated and falsifiable set of predictions: https://alexdanco.com/2019/12/17/ten-predictions-for-the-202...
Comment linking /2019/12/17/ten-predictions-for-the-2020s/
on “What Will Happen in the 2020s”Submitted Lessons from six months at Shopify as a story · 216 points
HN discussionFor more background on what we're doing and what recurring revenue financing can mean to companies trying to grow without diluting their equity, check out Alex Danco's interview with Harry Hurst, one of our founders -- https://alexdanco.com/2020/07/28/its-not-debt-its-better-an-... For a little more explanation of why we give stock rather than option grants, see Harry's twitter post and some of the replies https://t…
Comment linking /2020/07/28/its-not-debt-its-better-an-interview-with-harry-hurst-of-pipe/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2020)”Submitted Making is show business now (2020) as a story · 209 points
HN discussionThis article demonstrates the Michael Scott Theory of Social Class: https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of... In short, they write "posturetalk" over reporting news. This is why these articles are written this way. It is not to inform, it is to peacock.
Comment linking /2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social-class
on “When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?”Submitted Cooking as a Service as a story · 160 points
HN discussionEurope undervalues their engineers - and it seems like it's some sort of cultural thing that favors management. Their tax structure isn't great either, there's a reason zero billion dollar companies were founded in Europe (with the possible exception of Spotify). There's also the cultural pessimism and ambition being 'uncool' - there's a similar thing in Australia/New Zealand (at least I've heard from immigrant frie…
Comment linking /2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene-doesnt-work/
on “Remote work will break the US monopoly on global talent”Submitted How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay as a story · 155 points
HN discussionOf course these types of articles were bound to come out, but part of why Karikó and others like her are successful is because they did not get showered with funds and success. The grit is part of the recipe. It reminds me of Alex Danco's Scene discussions ( https://alexdanco.com/2021/03/19/how-scenes-work-with-jim-os... ).
Comment linking /2021/03/19/how-scenes-work-with-jim-oshaughnessy/
on “The Karikó problem: Lessons for funding basic research”Submitted Positional Scarcity as a story · 146 points
HN discussionI think you can replace EU with "the rest of the world". In Asia, we are also jealous of Silicon Valley. Obligatory article: https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene...
Comment linking /2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene-doesnt-work/
on “How Huawei controls its employees in Europe”Submitted Would you accept cheaper rent in exchange for a monthly Amazon purchasing quota? as a story · 121 points
HN discussionRelevant essay for the uninitiated: https://alexdanco.com/2019/05/30/google-chrome-the-perfect-a...
Comment linking /2019/05/30/google-chrome-the-perfect-antitrust-villain/
on “Plausible Deniability and Gaslighting in Fighting Ad Blockers”Submitted Dancoland as a story · 68 points
HN discussion> User profiles including bio, location, photo avatar, and chronological post listings Please (and this goes to anyone trying to do similar work in the "social" space[1]): make sure that users have the ability to turn off post indexing if they desire (at least for people they haven't approved to "follow" them). The ability to pore over and leer at every other comment that any given person has made that day (let alon…
Comment linking /2020/10/08/making-is-show-business-now/
on “Show HN: Sqwok – A social chat alternative to Twitter and Reddit”Submitted Why I don’t love light rail transit as a story · 62 points
HN discussionFrom working in adjacent companies and doing marketing I can guess what the objections were to that: 1. It specifically mentions another company -> this often feels like a jerk move or from a branding standpoint something that diminishes your product. There's another front page HN article right now that leads with this: https://alexdanco.com/2019/09/07/positional-scarcity/ 2. It mentions nothing from the actual prod…
Comment linking /2019/09/07/positional-scarcity/
on “Don't build growth teams”Submitted What happens if building more housing doesn’t work? as a story · 62 points
HN discussion
