28 ms·

Why "Start-ups" Will Destroy Us

16 points by PetoVera_Matt 16y ago

pg 16y ago
Local bakery = shrub; IBM = redwood; startup = redwood seedling.
- hsmyers 16y ago
  Not quite: startup = cheatgrass: see http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06310.html http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06310.html
  - PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
    Potentially, yes, but I do NOT believe this definition could be applied universally.
- panarky 16y ago
  The author's point is that both IBM and the local bakery are built to last, patiently building value over time. Startups are too often get-rich-quick schemes whose founders want to work hard for 3 years, then cash out and spend the rest of their time on 'speeches and beaches'.
  - pg 16y ago
    IBM wasn't "built to last." It was a rollup of a bunch of cash register companies, handed to Watson to run by the financier who bought them. The truth is that in reality there's usually less planning than there later seems to have been. Things that turn out big were often small and tentative initially.
    - PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
      I am not sure how accurate your history of IBM is since I myself am not an expert. I agree with your last 2 statements completely though.
  - PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
    This was exactly the point I was trying to convey :) "Speeches and beaches" -- my man, such a desire is a wholly lazy and narcissistic dream.
- cellucci 16y ago
  There are certainly startups hoping to become redwoods, but there seem to be many with goals or target markets that would likely limit them to shrubs at best. Of course, there is also a large class of "startups" that are a lot more like Christmas tree farm seedlings.
- PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
  In an ideal world, this is true. However, pay attention to what the ingredients of that seed are. That is why there are "startups" (the type I described in the article) and then there are Startups.
gte910h 16y ago
The author of the article paints with too broad of a brush something not everyone shares. Lots of people would love to turn their companies into large going concerns.
- PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
  I agree (I am one of them), but there are also lots of people who get into business and start a company for the exact opposite reason: cash out as big and as fast as possible.
tomjen3 16y ago
Honestly this kind of drivel needs to be kicked out of hn. Start-ups create value and what companies do with these start-ups once they have been acquired is their own problem. Big companies a constantly screwing up left and right, but that is not our fault. Yes we lust for new things, which is why the author can afford a computer to write his article on; yes we lust for profit, that is why joining a start-up and taking up the huge risk is something one is willing to do; yes we make old businesses obsolete, but that just frees people to join other companies which are capable of creating stuff, not sucking up resources. The only thing start-ups forces people to do is to think and adapt. And if they aren't willing to do so, they have nobody but them-self to complain about. And no start-up can create a bubble, those bubbles come from the insane recklessness of the FEDs dollar printing and the resulting super low interest rates because there is too few productive places to invest ones money. We need more start-ups, not fewer; We need more economic activity, not less and we need more people with ability, not clones who will never amount to anything.
- johnrob 16y ago
  I think we over estimate the impact startups have on job creation. The recent home runs (google, facebook, zynga, groupon) have created astonishingly large value with relatively few employees - a few thousand on average. Startups are good at creating wealth, but not necessarily jobs (we still have record level unemployment in silicon valley). Our country needs to put millions of people to work; the 20k jobs created by startups are not going to solve that problem. Theoretically, the unemployed workers can adapt to the "new economy" and re-establish themselves. Empirically, however, that's not happening. Startups are more likely to aid the jobless via welfare (from tax revenue) than by actually employing people.
  - gsmaverick 16y ago
    New startups don't just create jobs for the people they themselves hire. Google & Facebook in particular have created far more jobs than those on their payrolls.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    It is possible for a writer now to make a good living selling his self-published ebooks on Amazon's kindle platform, to maintain a living writing blogposts for an audience larger than many smaller magazines ever had, etc. But that is beside the point: job creation isn't the goal of any business nor is it the responsibility of any business to hire a certain amount of people, and the country as such doesn't need to put a large number of people to work - people are responsible for their own life and if they are not willing to do that (and you may very well be right about that I don't know), that is their own problem.
Mz 16y ago
It seems to me that part of what he is complaining about is that startups are basically designed with scaling in mind. In other words, he is bitching about the fact that there are now 6 billion or so people on the planet, so if some service of a particular sort does well, good god, it needs to be fed like a growing baby whale on steroids -- something a couple of guys in a garage probably can't pull off by themselves without some of infrastructure you see in the form of YC, venture capital, et al. PS: Really hideous website, offensively so given the title (or whatever it is) "The Difference between good and great web design". PPS: Sentence #2, which starts with the word "this", I think you mean "think". Think hard about that for a minute.

16 points by PetoVera_Matt 16y ago

pg 16y ago

Local bakery = shrub; IBM = redwood; startup = redwood seedling.

hsmyers 16y ago
Not quite: startup = cheatgrass: see http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06310.html http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06310.html
- PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
  Potentially, yes, but I do NOT believe this definition could be applied universally.
panarky 16y ago
The author's point is that both IBM and the local bakery are built to last, patiently building value over time. Startups are too often get-rich-quick schemes whose founders want to work hard for 3 years, then cash out and spend the rest of their time on 'speeches and beaches'.
- pg 16y ago
  IBM wasn't "built to last." It was a rollup of a bunch of cash register companies, handed to Watson to run by the financier who bought them. The truth is that in reality there's usually less planning than there later seems to have been. Things that turn out big were often small and tentative initially.
  - PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
    I am not sure how accurate your history of IBM is since I myself am not an expert. I agree with your last 2 statements completely though.
- PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
  This was exactly the point I was trying to convey :) "Speeches and beaches" -- my man, such a desire is a wholly lazy and narcissistic dream.
cellucci 16y ago
There are certainly startups hoping to become redwoods, but there seem to be many with goals or target markets that would likely limit them to shrubs at best. Of course, there is also a large class of "startups" that are a lot more like Christmas tree farm seedlings.
PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
In an ideal world, this is true. However, pay attention to what the ingredients of that seed are. That is why there are "startups" (the type I described in the article) and then there are Startups.

gte910h 16y ago

The author of the article paints with too broad of a brush something not everyone shares. Lots of people would love to turn their companies into large going concerns.

PetoVera_Matt 16y ago
I agree (I am one of them), but there are also lots of people who get into business and start a company for the exact opposite reason: cash out as big and as fast as possible.

tomjen3 16y ago

Honestly this kind of drivel needs to be kicked out of hn. Start-ups create value and what companies do with these start-ups once they have been acquired is their own problem. Big companies a constantly screwing up left and right, but that is not our fault. Yes we lust for new things, which is why the author can afford a computer to write his article on; yes we lust for profit, that is why joining a start-up and taking up the huge risk is something one is willing to do; yes we make old businesses obsolete, but that just frees people to join other companies which are capable of creating stuff, not sucking up resources. The only thing start-ups forces people to do is to think and adapt. And if they aren't willing to do so, they have nobody but them-self to complain about. And no start-up can create a bubble, those bubbles come from the insane recklessness of the FEDs dollar printing and the resulting super low interest rates because there is too few productive places to invest ones money. We need more start-ups, not fewer; We need more economic activity, not less and we need more people with ability, not clones who will never amount to anything.

johnrob 16y ago
I think we over estimate the impact startups have on job creation. The recent home runs (google, facebook, zynga, groupon) have created astonishingly large value with relatively few employees - a few thousand on average. Startups are good at creating wealth, but not necessarily jobs (we still have record level unemployment in silicon valley). Our country needs to put millions of people to work; the 20k jobs created by startups are not going to solve that problem. Theoretically, the unemployed workers can adapt to the "new economy" and re-establish themselves. Empirically, however, that's not happening. Startups are more likely to aid the jobless via welfare (from tax revenue) than by actually employing people.
- gsmaverick 16y ago
  New startups don't just create jobs for the people they themselves hire. Google & Facebook in particular have created far more jobs than those on their payrolls.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  It is possible for a writer now to make a good living selling his self-published ebooks on Amazon's kindle platform, to maintain a living writing blogposts for an audience larger than many smaller magazines ever had, etc. But that is beside the point: job creation isn't the goal of any business nor is it the responsibility of any business to hire a certain amount of people, and the country as such doesn't need to put a large number of people to work - people are responsible for their own life and if they are not willing to do that (and you may very well be right about that I don't know), that is their own problem.

Mz 16y ago

It seems to me that part of what he is complaining about is that startups are basically designed with scaling in mind. In other words, he is bitching about the fact that there are now 6 billion or so people on the planet, so if some service of a particular sort does well, good god, it needs to be fed like a growing baby whale on steroids -- something a couple of guys in a garage probably can't pull off by themselves without some of infrastructure you see in the form of YC, venture capital, et al. PS: Really hideous website, offensively so given the title (or whatever it is) "The Difference between good and great web design". PPS: Sentence #2, which starts with the word "this", I think you mean "think". Think hard about that for a minute.