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by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel.

by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel. both of the mentioned companies are totally disrupting entire industries and the world, solving people's problems in transportation and in hospitality in ways the world never saw at scale before. I would venture to say that your advice would result in these solutions not coming into existence: with respect, I think your suggestion is not only not necessary, but doesn't work and may prevent certain solutions from coming into existence.

stinkytaco 11y ago
I think we ought to be very careful putting Uber and Airbnb in the same boat as, say, gun control and malaria. They are websites that make an existing market more efficient by directly connecting two parties, but they are basically EBay: a platform for two parties to exchange services all parties opted into and agree they need. They are not developing policy solutions and they are certainly not trying to connect multiple parties who do not even agree that problems exist or may even be actively hostile to solutions because they stand to gain from said problems.
- logicallee 11y ago
  I bet on the whole if you compare malaria, a single disease wherein the interests of every human on earth are aligned with no competition toward any limited resource (0 people want any cases of malaria, 7 billion people are better off if the disease falls off the face of the planet by tomorrow) with something like housing where lots of people are competing for a limited resource, then housing is a lot more difficult to solve in a sustainable way than malaria is. There is some chance of eradicating malaria worldwide in the next 20 years, and then just forgetting about it, the way we have for smallpox (eradicated by vaccination - literally smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the planet through vaccination to such an extent that vaccines no longer even need to be given to anyone.) There is no chance of "eradicating" and completely solving the issue of housing for every human worldwide in the next 20 years. (It's a ridiculous thought on its face). Because it's a limited resource people are competing for, with lots and lots of overlapping interests going back thousands of years and indeed perhaps responsible for much/most of history itself. malaria is not even within an order of magnitude of difficulty. I mean we're talking about the difference between $100 billion and $100 trillion. (to completely solve the problem for everyone forever.) so yeah, I would plot them in the same boat (as you put it).
  - tedsanders 11y ago
    But interests aren't aligned. Most people would rather have $3,000 in their pocket than have that $3,000 directed toward buying insecticide treated bednets.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Not just that. Remember that we're talking about companies that tend to benefit one subgroup of a community at the expense of another. This is a very bad approach if you want to do some good in this world.
    - logicallee 11y ago
      this is a correct point, thanks, but you've discussed interests around a means, not interests around the end. there's zero pressure in the opposite direction, for maintaining malaria, except the pressure from the natural world making it a somewhat tricky problem. if someone can solve it cheaply and easily they wouldn't face resistance from anyone.
      - stinkytaco 11y ago
        Not resistance against solving malaria, but quite possibly resistance to solutions. That resistance can come in the form of "don't spray insecticides because that causes other harm" to "I'm going to profit off of all this money, but not really align my interests to that money's goal" (i.e. corruption, theft, etc.).
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    AirBnB did not solve housing, nor their proposed "solution" is in any way sustainable. It's completely based on pitting people against each other. While there are some places where AirBnB is a pure win, the most "value" seems to come from people deciding to ignore the rules and earn some quick buck at the expense of other people living in the area. Zoning laws were invented for a reason.
lsc 11y ago
>by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel. Yeah. That's actually a really appealing idea. At one point, I wanted to write software to help individuals and small bookstores sell online. So what did I do? I bought a bunch of books and sold them online! I'm not saying that's why I failed... but I failed to come up with a product worth using before the market became crowded with much better products.
- logicallee 11y ago
  well, come on, you have to at least try - I mean if you literally come up with a business plan to sell books online "after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the business plan on the way", which is a quote I got from Jeff Bezos's wikipedia page on how he founded Amazon...oh.
  - lsc 11y ago
    Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing how wrong I proved myself to be about business. But... on the other hand, one thing I am still certain of... 90% of business advice and business stories are bullshit from people who don't know what they are doing. the other 10% is lies from people who do.
    - logicallee 11y ago
      no, what I'm saying is that contrary to the point I was disagreeing with, Jeff Bezos didn't know anything about bookstores. This is a direct refutation of "live in that world". the fact that you didn't personally succeed in online bookselling actually doesn't mean that to succeed in online bookselling, you first have to understand bookselling. You don't!
      - lsc 11y ago
        Right. I'm mostly in agreement. I did live in that world and still failed miserably, in part because I was spending a lot of the effort I should have been spending programming on, you know, selling books. I just find this apparent truth to be deeply unsatisfying, that's all, and "live in that world" is a good example of business advice that sounds really good, really true, and really satisfying, but that doesn't seem to hold up when you subject it to the harsh tests of reality. That, and I don't think I'd believe anything written by a successful businessman like Bezos. Who knows what he actually knew, who he talked to, who helped him or what his intent was at the time. now he's going to tell the best story he can, because that's what a competent businessperson would do. Because of this, I think reading advice or stories of success from proven masters is way less useful than it sounds.
wfo 11y ago
Uber did not solve a serious problem. They built a very convenient and useful app that let you call a cab. Which you could do before, but you had to talk to a real person and take a minute to give your credit card info and now you don't. And they did live in the world. The world of people who rely on cabs/transport. And found it wanting, the primary motivation for starting their company. Then they learned about the industry and tried to fix it and it took years of hard work. Airbnb hosted a nicer-looking craigslist specialized to make it really easy for people worldwide to conspire with each other to violate the terms of their leases to make a couple extra dollars while breaking a law that is hard to enforce. And I think you'll find the founders didn't just come up with this idea out of nothing. They solved a problem that came up in their real lives. Either way, it's entirely predictable for someone in the tech community though gross to compare these silly cash grabs to solving real cultural, social, and political problems that actually effect people in a serious way like FGM, clean drinking water in the third world, mass incarceration.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
forgottenpass 11y ago
by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world The didn't change anything about taxis, they restricted the meter and administrative side of a taxi company into an app. From the town that restructures business processes into software.
- logicallee 11y ago
  Your point doesn't change mine, the parent said you have to know about the world you're disrupting, for example the taxi world (my example). But you don't have to know anything about the taxi world to make a taxi app (as you put it) and a ten billion dollar company around it. You don't need to "live in" the industry or sector you're disrupting.
- prodigal_erik 11y ago
  They got drivers to agree to incentives for actually showing up and choosing reasonable routes, which taxi companies had been failing to do for decades.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
If following GP's advice would prevent Ubers and AirBnBs of charity from happening, then we absolutely should heed this advice! The last thing the people in need would want would be initiatives designed to turn the local society against itself. Like Uber does with people vs. drivers vs. local governments, and like AirBnB does with tenants vs. landlords vs. community around them. Uber and AirBnB base their business model on taking the social trust and burning it to make dollars. That's exactly what we don't want charities to do.

stinkytaco 11y ago

I think we ought to be very careful putting Uber and Airbnb in the same boat as, say, gun control and malaria. They are websites that make an existing market more efficient by directly connecting two parties, but they are basically EBay: a platform for two parties to exchange services all parties opted into and agree they need. They are not developing policy solutions and they are certainly not trying to connect multiple parties who do not even agree that problems exist or may even be actively hostile to solutions because they stand to gain from said problems.

logicallee 11y ago
I bet on the whole if you compare malaria, a single disease wherein the interests of every human on earth are aligned with no competition toward any limited resource (0 people want any cases of malaria, 7 billion people are better off if the disease falls off the face of the planet by tomorrow) with something like housing where lots of people are competing for a limited resource, then housing is a lot more difficult to solve in a sustainable way than malaria is. There is some chance of eradicating malaria worldwide in the next 20 years, and then just forgetting about it, the way we have for smallpox (eradicated by vaccination - literally smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the planet through vaccination to such an extent that vaccines no longer even need to be given to anyone.) There is no chance of "eradicating" and completely solving the issue of housing for every human worldwide in the next 20 years. (It's a ridiculous thought on its face). Because it's a limited resource people are competing for, with lots and lots of overlapping interests going back thousands of years and indeed perhaps responsible for much/most of history itself. malaria is not even within an order of magnitude of difficulty. I mean we're talking about the difference between $100 billion and $100 trillion. (to completely solve the problem for everyone forever.) so yeah, I would plot them in the same boat (as you put it).
- tedsanders 11y ago
  But interests aren't aligned. Most people would rather have $3,000 in their pocket than have that $3,000 directed toward buying insecticide treated bednets.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Not just that. Remember that we're talking about companies that tend to benefit one subgroup of a community at the expense of another. This is a very bad approach if you want to do some good in this world.
  - logicallee 11y ago
    this is a correct point, thanks, but you've discussed interests around a means, not interests around the end. there's zero pressure in the opposite direction, for maintaining malaria, except the pressure from the natural world making it a somewhat tricky problem. if someone can solve it cheaply and easily they wouldn't face resistance from anyone.
    - stinkytaco 11y ago
      Not resistance against solving malaria, but quite possibly resistance to solutions. That resistance can come in the form of "don't spray insecticides because that causes other harm" to "I'm going to profit off of all this money, but not really align my interests to that money's goal" (i.e. corruption, theft, etc.).
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  AirBnB did not solve housing, nor their proposed "solution" is in any way sustainable. It's completely based on pitting people against each other. While there are some places where AirBnB is a pure win, the most "value" seems to come from people deciding to ignore the rules and earn some quick buck at the expense of other people living in the area. Zoning laws were invented for a reason.

lsc 11y ago

>by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel. Yeah. That's actually a really appealing idea. At one point, I wanted to write software to help individuals and small bookstores sell online. So what did I do? I bought a bunch of books and sold them online! I'm not saying that's why I failed... but I failed to come up with a product worth using before the market became crowded with much better products.

logicallee 11y ago
well, come on, you have to at least try - I mean if you literally come up with a business plan to sell books online "after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the business plan on the way", which is a quote I got from Jeff Bezos's wikipedia page on how he founded Amazon...oh.
- lsc 11y ago
  Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing how wrong I proved myself to be about business. But... on the other hand, one thing I am still certain of... 90% of business advice and business stories are bullshit from people who don't know what they are doing. the other 10% is lies from people who do.
  - logicallee 11y ago
    no, what I'm saying is that contrary to the point I was disagreeing with, Jeff Bezos didn't know anything about bookstores. This is a direct refutation of "live in that world". the fact that you didn't personally succeed in online bookselling actually doesn't mean that to succeed in online bookselling, you first have to understand bookselling. You don't!
    - lsc 11y ago
      Right. I'm mostly in agreement. I did live in that world and still failed miserably, in part because I was spending a lot of the effort I should have been spending programming on, you know, selling books. I just find this apparent truth to be deeply unsatisfying, that's all, and "live in that world" is a good example of business advice that sounds really good, really true, and really satisfying, but that doesn't seem to hold up when you subject it to the harsh tests of reality. That, and I don't think I'd believe anything written by a successful businessman like Bezos. Who knows what he actually knew, who he talked to, who helped him or what his intent was at the time. now he's going to tell the best story he can, because that's what a competent businessperson would do. Because of this, I think reading advice or stories of success from proven masters is way less useful than it sounds.

wfo 11y ago

Uber did not solve a serious problem. They built a very convenient and useful app that let you call a cab. Which you could do before, but you had to talk to a real person and take a minute to give your credit card info and now you don't. And they did live in the world. The world of people who rely on cabs/transport. And found it wanting, the primary motivation for starting their company. Then they learned about the industry and tried to fix it and it took years of hard work. Airbnb hosted a nicer-looking craigslist specialized to make it really easy for people worldwide to conspire with each other to violate the terms of their leases to make a couple extra dollars while breaking a law that is hard to enforce. And I think you'll find the founders didn't just come up with this idea out of nothing. They solved a problem that came up in their real lives. Either way, it's entirely predictable for someone in the tech community though gross to compare these silly cash grabs to solving real cultural, social, and political problems that actually effect people in a serious way like FGM, clean drinking water in the third world, mass incarceration.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

forgottenpass 11y ago

by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world The didn't change anything about taxis, they restricted the meter and administrative side of a taxi company into an app. From the town that restructures business processes into software.

logicallee 11y ago
Your point doesn't change mine, the parent said you have to know about the world you're disrupting, for example the taxi world (my example). But you don't have to know anything about the taxi world to make a taxi app (as you put it) and a ten billion dollar company around it. You don't need to "live in" the industry or sector you're disrupting.
prodigal_erik 11y ago
They got drivers to agree to incentives for actually showing up and choosing reasonable routes, which taxi companies had been failing to do for decades.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

If following GP's advice would prevent Ubers and AirBnBs of charity from happening, then we absolutely should heed this advice! The last thing the people in need would want would be initiatives designed to turn the local society against itself. Like Uber does with people vs. drivers vs. local governments, and like AirBnB does with tenants vs. landlords vs. community around them. Uber and AirBnB base their business model on taking the social trust and burning it to make dollars. That's exactly what we don't want charities to do.