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> Do not have world conquering ambitions - which kinda works against them. Works against them towards what? Not wanting to conquer the world is legitimate, I d
by Voloskaya 9y ago
> Do not have world conquering ambitions - which kinda works against them.
Works against them towards what? Not wanting to conquer the world is legitimate, I don't see why everyone should absolutely want to become the next Bezos.
- whatshisface 9y agoSure, but if nobody in your country wants to conquer the world then the others will never reap the benefits of someone having conquered a piece of it.
- coldtea 9y agoNo, but they'll reap the benefits of being decent people.
- llukas 9y agoHow they'd reap the benefits if big corps and rich individuals do not pay their share of taxes? SF locals that are priced out of their city would have likely different opinion.
- whatshisface 9y agoYou have to strike a balance. If there's no personal ambition then there's no wealth to redistribute. If there's no fairness then one person takes everything and the whole thing stops. To that end, why shouldn't people fully invest themselves in their role? Expecting CEOs to manage social fairness would be a massive conflict of interest - so we should probably expect other people to keep tabs on that.
- llukas 9y agoCEO's already manage social fairness. Just look at lobbying efforts.
- throwawayfinal 9y agoIt also means that they have trouble acquiring certain types of talent (reputation is free talent advertising). In addition, having a few world conquerers around helps bring talent and money which is then turned into startups - there are a lot of great companies and non-profits that make SV what it is because some founder or early employee exited with retirement money and decided they wanted to apply their skills to helping society. Not that's the norm, mind you, or that world-conquerers are amazing. Just, why having the occasional "big vision" around helps out.
- Voloskaya 9y agoGood point :)
- gervase 9y agoBased on the other context from the comment, probably something like "[...] works against them [when they are looking to fundraise from SV VCs]."
- timewarrior 9y agoImagine you build an AirBnb like solution limited to Switzerland market. AirBnb will eventually come and eat your lunch. In today's globalized world - if you are not one of the bigger players and do not have moat (govt contract, some other kind of exclusivity) - other bigger players will come after you.
- quickthrower2 9y agoYeah plus the Y-combinators of this world won't want to throw cash at a 10-1 chance of making a few million, when they can do the same on a 100-1 chance of making a few billion.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThis is a great observation: we need better accelerators to incubate startups that are more realistic and not willing to salt the earth to win at all costs [1]. [1] I'm not referring to YC specifically, but investors and incubators who are comfortable with Uber-esq behavior.
- timewarrior 9y agoNot all global mega corps need to salt the earth. To some extent disruption will have side effects. Some like Uber are deliberately evil and others like Apple, Salesforce etc might not. My original point was that people were attempting ideas which were in the realm of potential global mega corps. If you don't grow to be one, you get eaten up!
- ZenoArrow 9y ago> "This is a great observation: we need better accelerators to incubate startups that are more realistic and not willing to salt the earth to win at all costs [1]." We already have that. They're called banks.
- beatpanda 9y agoThere's a huge gap between investments banks consider too risky and the kinds of things SV investors in particular want to fund.
- kuschku 9y agoLook at the example of Taxi apps. There are many in the European market, Germany alone has half a dozen local to the country. Yet, while uber operated in Germany, they could get basically 100% of the customers – simply by throwing billions of VC money at the task to subsidize rides. If competitors use such methods, there’s little you, as smaller company, can do.
- timewarrior 9y agoNot just that. This happened when a Uber like model doesn't have any inherent global market place advantages. Most users in a city take a cab in their own city most of the time. If even having this in their favor, small players are finding it difficult to survive - imagine if a bigger player comes in a space where there is a play for global level market place.
- itronitron 9y agowhere there is a play for global level marketplace you will see real competition (smart phones seem to be a good example here) ... Uber is basically alone at the global level because of the local advantage as suggested and also the unwillingness of other big players to lose hundreds of millions of dollars each year or ignore local laws.
- untog 9y agoWhile Uber operated in Germany... shall we recount the reasons why they do not do so any more? There are two sides to a coin: while Uber has world-dominating ambition, that also means they aren't anywhere near as flexible to local market conditions as a local startup is. And I wouldn't consider Uber an unmitigated success yet - they still depend on VC cash to keep going, we'll see what happens when it runs out.
- kuschku 9y ago> While Uber operated in Germany... shall we recount the reasons why they do not do so any more? They refused to pay insurance for their drivers? That's the reason why Uber stopped. Because they didn't want to pay for the time between the driver leaving their home and entering the car, and the time that the driver picked up the first customer. Which meant that during this time the driver was entirely uninsured, which in turn is illegal.
- tomc1985 9y agoAgreed. The world is saturated with wannabe empires. Stop trying to take over the world!