For me it happened around my first week after the bootcamp, so about 6 weeks from joining.
An important nuance - most Facebook engineers don't believe that Facebook/Meta would continue to grow next year; and that disbelief had been there since as early as in 2018 (when I'd joined).
very few facebook employees use their products outside of testing, which is a big contributor to that fear - they just can't believe that there are billions of people who would continue to use apps to post what they had for lunch!
And as a result of that lack of faith, most of them believe that Meta is a bubble and can burst at any point. Consequently, everyone works for the next performance review cycle, and most are just in rush to capture as much money as they could before that bubble bursts.
> don't believe that Facebook/Meta would continue to grow next year
Huh.
The time I worked at a hyper growth company, us working in the coal mine had much the same skepticism. Our growth rate seemed ridiculous, surely we're over building, how much longer can this last?!
Happily, the marketing research team regularly presented stuff to our department. They explained who are customers were, projected market sizes (regionally, internationally), projected growth rates, competitive analysis (incumbents and upstarts), etc.
It helped so much. And although their forecasts seemed unbelievable, we over performed every year-over-year. Such that you sort of start to trust the (serious) marketing research types.
1. The only result I'd expect from posting on launch platforms/software directories is a huge number of spam in my inbox to take my product to the top of the list.
2. Selling lifetime deals is the easiest way to become a slave of small paying customers without even knowing if your product is going to find PMF ever.
3. You can't just go to a subreddit and post your product. And the ones that allow anyone to post, well, you can guess the expected outcome from those.
I run a full stack digital marketing service, and here's what I'd recon:
1. If you're developing for developers, HN is the best place to post. For both to collect feedback, and to get early customers.
2. If you're building a B2C business, start with a social presence. This is a must in today's ecosystem. DON'T LAUNCH TO THE VOID.
3. If you're building a B2B business, try to get into an accelerator like YC, who can make lots of customer intros in the early days. And given how hard it's to get into an accelerator - you should try Google ads, and maybe a couple of linkedin campaigns if you've a sharp First Target Customer Profile (not vague ICP) as fallback.
Moltbook Valuation & Funding
Deal Type Date Amount Raised to Date Post-Val Status Stage
2. Merger/Acquisition 10-Mar-2026 - - - Announced Startup
1. Early Stage VC 01-Mar-2026 - - - Completed Startup
"Does a launch make any impact if there's no audience?"
We've found most early-stage startups ignore social media until after a launch. Things like “$0 spent on ads” sound cool, but they don’t help if no one knows your product exists.
I'm building Appents to provide a done-for-you social media solution for startups.
I'm not an entrepreneur, just a developer with some side projects and zero marketing skill. So this would be ideal for me. However, given my non-entrepreneur mindset, I immediately think it's too expensive / does not pay off for me when I don't see any pricing indicators. It would be great to see some success stories with numbers.
Congress must approve any renaming the Department of Defense... They haven't. Stop giving them what they want without them even doing it in good faith at all.
Pretty ironic because for once, they went with the more accurate description instead of the euphemisms. It's no longer "protecting freedom of speech" or "ending wars," just full-on bombings and invasions with glee.
They'll do nothing. It's really hard to take the morals of these devs seriously when they're already fine working for, and have a history with, some of the most evil companies in current existence.
And when you suggest unions and worker organization to them they gloat that the company takes better care of them without it. They don't want to be in the same class as the peasantry.
This thread would've been way more fun with a couple of middle managers and product managers in the mix ;-)
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