4 ms·

Does it matter if it's large? I was just talking to a friend who started a small company, merged with a bigger company and thought he had done everything right.

Does it matter if it's large? I was just talking to a friend who started a small company, merged with a bigger company and thought he had done everything right. After a few years, he regretted selling the company. Small is beautiful. We learned this as children. Challenge the mantra of size and growth.

donmatito 7y ago
it matters but not in the sense that everybody should aim for a super large corporation. It matters because it validates that cooperatives can grow very large, and refutes the claims such as "yes it's nice, but of course it works only for small ventures and could never grow)
- q3k 7y ago
  But the answer to that shouldn't be "here's an example of a large one" but "why do you care so much for growth, it's fine to be small".
  - donmatito 7y ago
    No it shouldn't (even if I agree with your sentiment about company, growth and probably life in general). People interested in coop model have a legitimate interest in proving that it can work for various business size
arkitaip 7y ago
I agree but let's also understand the damaging dynamics we see on HN everyday where some people consider a multi million dollar operation a "lifestyle business".
- ghaff 7y ago
  "Lifestyle business" is generally not a very good term. On the one hand there's a small company that isn't very growth-oriented, throws off a modest amount of cash, and is very full-time job for the owner/operator. (Think a lot of franchise/retail or solo consulting.) On the other hand, you have a business that generates a decent largely passive income that lets the owner take lots of time off and basically not work any harder than they want to. I consider the latter a lot more lifestyle-businessy than the former.
ksdale 7y ago
I think from an aesthetic perspective, there's no difference between large and small, but from an efficiency perspective, sometimes it's important for things to be large. And this isn't heartless, capitalist efficiency, sometimes there's a large environmental cost to distributing work across a population, like if everyone dumps a little bit of waste into the sewer because it's too expensive to treat (or burns their own coal for cooking), where a much larger entity has the efficiencies to treat the waste properly (or generate electricity much more cleanly) and the government can actually monitor the single entity. Additionally, a lot of things are only affordable to most people because they are mass produced. There's a very good argument that a lot things that are produced are just utterly unnecessary, but that doesn't invalidate the point that some very necessary things are only affordable to the poor because they are made by the million.

donmatito 7y ago

it matters but not in the sense that everybody should aim for a super large corporation. It matters because it validates that cooperatives can grow very large, and refutes the claims such as "yes it's nice, but of course it works only for small ventures and could never grow)

q3k 7y ago
But the answer to that shouldn't be "here's an example of a large one" but "why do you care so much for growth, it's fine to be small".
- donmatito 7y ago
  No it shouldn't (even if I agree with your sentiment about company, growth and probably life in general). People interested in coop model have a legitimate interest in proving that it can work for various business size

arkitaip 7y ago

I agree but let's also understand the damaging dynamics we see on HN everyday where some people consider a multi million dollar operation a "lifestyle business".

ghaff 7y ago
"Lifestyle business" is generally not a very good term. On the one hand there's a small company that isn't very growth-oriented, throws off a modest amount of cash, and is very full-time job for the owner/operator. (Think a lot of franchise/retail or solo consulting.) On the other hand, you have a business that generates a decent largely passive income that lets the owner take lots of time off and basically not work any harder than they want to. I consider the latter a lot more lifestyle-businessy than the former.

ksdale 7y ago

I think from an aesthetic perspective, there's no difference between large and small, but from an efficiency perspective, sometimes it's important for things to be large. And this isn't heartless, capitalist efficiency, sometimes there's a large environmental cost to distributing work across a population, like if everyone dumps a little bit of waste into the sewer because it's too expensive to treat (or burns their own coal for cooking), where a much larger entity has the efficiencies to treat the waste properly (or generate electricity much more cleanly) and the government can actually monitor the single entity. Additionally, a lot of things are only affordable to most people because they are mass produced. There's a very good argument that a lot things that are produced are just utterly unnecessary, but that doesn't invalidate the point that some very necessary things are only affordable to the poor because they are made by the million.