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Seems like the graveyard of a lot of those '06 - '08 dreams. Imagine all the things we can do with these new iphones, and so cheaply too! -> no that world didn

Seems like the graveyard of a lot of those '06 - '08 dreams. Imagine all the things we can do with these new iphones, and so cheaply too! -> no that world didn't happen -> working for the BIG 4.

Apocryphon 8y ago
> They ran an experiment. None of their lives have been ruined.” He knew they’d get good jobs, even if it meant the life of a project manager at Yahoo. “And none of their investors’ lives have been ruined either. When they close up shop, their investors will say, ‘That’s one more off the books. I don’t need to help them anymore. I get my time back.’” [...] “Let me tell you what the worst thing would be. The worst thing is that these guys get their funding tomorrow and are stuck doing this for another year. So far, they only lost one.” [...] All the while, Martino’s ultimate warning—that they might someday regret actually getting the money they wanted—would still hang over these two young men, inherent to a system designed to turn strivers into subcontractors. Instead of what you want to build—the consumer-facing, world-remaking thing—almost invariably you are pushed to build a small piece of technology that somebody with a lot of money wants built cheaply. As the engineer and writer Alex Payne put it, these startups represent “the field offices of a large distributed workforce assembled by venture capitalists and their associate institutions,” doing low-overhead, low-risk R&D for five corporate giants. In such a system, the real disillusionment isn’t the discovery that you’re unlikely to become a billionaire; it’s the realization that your feeling of autonomy is a fantasy, and that the vast majority of you have been set up to fail by design. No Exit: Struggling to Survive a Modern Gold Rush by Gideon Lewis-Kraus https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7643902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7643902
- baxtr 8y ago
  Some thoughts: - I agree with the notion but I don’t think it’s only because it’s cheap. It’s also about speed. Some projects take ages at large companies no matter how much you throw at them - that’s the reason they havin PMF before you get funding is key. Show the models works and then get money for scaling the business - I imagine getting VC money for a moonshot is great though when you don’t need to get rich anymore. See Musk
  - leksak 8y ago
    > - I agree with the notion but I don’t think it’s only because it’s cheap. It’s also about speed. Some projects take ages at large companies no matter how much you throw at them I believe one thing that really kills (software) projects is throwing too much resources (people) at them too soon in the anticipation of growth and success.

Seems like the graveyard of a lot of those '06 - '08 dreams. Imagine all the things we can do with these new iphones, and so cheaply too! -> no that world didn't happen -> working for the BIG 4.

Apocryphon 8y ago

> They ran an experiment. None of their lives have been ruined.” He knew they’d get good jobs, even if it meant the life of a project manager at Yahoo. “And none of their investors’ lives have been ruined either. When they close up shop, their investors will say, ‘That’s one more off the books. I don’t need to help them anymore. I get my time back.’” [...] “Let me tell you what the worst thing would be. The worst thing is that these guys get their funding tomorrow and are stuck doing this for another year. So far, they only lost one.” [...] All the while, Martino’s ultimate warning—that they might someday regret actually getting the money they wanted—would still hang over these two young men, inherent to a system designed to turn strivers into subcontractors. Instead of what you want to build—the consumer-facing, world-remaking thing—almost invariably you are pushed to build a small piece of technology that somebody with a lot of money wants built cheaply. As the engineer and writer Alex Payne put it, these startups represent “the field offices of a large distributed workforce assembled by venture capitalists and their associate institutions,” doing low-overhead, low-risk R&D for five corporate giants. In such a system, the real disillusionment isn’t the discovery that you’re unlikely to become a billionaire; it’s the realization that your feeling of autonomy is a fantasy, and that the vast majority of you have been set up to fail by design. No Exit: Struggling to Survive a Modern Gold Rush by Gideon Lewis-Kraus https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7643902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7643902

baxtr 8y ago
Some thoughts: - I agree with the notion but I don’t think it’s only because it’s cheap. It’s also about speed. Some projects take ages at large companies no matter how much you throw at them - that’s the reason they havin PMF before you get funding is key. Show the models works and then get money for scaling the business - I imagine getting VC money for a moonshot is great though when you don’t need to get rich anymore. See Musk
- leksak 8y ago
  > - I agree with the notion but I don’t think it’s only because it’s cheap. It’s also about speed. Some projects take ages at large companies no matter how much you throw at them I believe one thing that really kills (software) projects is throwing too much resources (people) at them too soon in the anticipation of growth and success.