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What’s a good thing that the culture of entrepreneurship has brought? If you were to “destroy” that culture, would it be impossible to achieve otherwise?

chrisco255 6y ago
Electricity, the light bulb, the automobile, the washing machine, the air conditioner, the personal computer, etc etc. I really can't tell if this is a troll question or not. Clearly there was nothing stopping humanity from discovering these things 1000 years ago. What changed? A culture that balances capital and risk call achieve extraordinary things. There is no substitute for it.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  everything you just named had little to do with what is today called "entrepeneurship" and more to do with either rigorous corporate scientific activity (the automobile), solitary tinkering (the lightbulb, early advances in software) or was simply the byproduct of genuinely, informal scientific pursuit. None of those inventions were made because of VC hypecycles, or two billion in bogus bank accounts, or marketing and customer aqcuisition. In fact everything you named predates the era of high risk venture capital. It wasn't primarily a culture of entrepreneurship but a culture of tinkering and invention that got us those fundamental technologies.
  - cnasc 6y ago
    I’m not sure why you’re conflating entrepreneurship with Silicon Valley-style VC.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      because we're in the comment chain about wirecard and their behaviour is the result of that sort of culture. It's also still, despite the immense criticism touted around the world as something to emulate. You see billions of cash pumped into say, 'incubators' in Paris and other large cities around the globe with for the most part no results.
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Wirecard is a financial services provider founded in 1999. I would not conflate their troubles with marginal contributions from start-up incubators that are chasing diminishing returns in the tech sector. The latter is just a result of a normal market cycle. Clearly, plenty of multimillion and multibillion dollar companies have been founded from start-ups in the past decade or two. And clearly we're reaching a point where it's more challenging to make a hit. That's ok, that's normal. Same thing happened in the auto industry 100 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... Look at all those manufacturers you never heard of.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Nonsense, Henry Ford invented the Model T invention at home working nights while he was by day working for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, a company founded by the inventor of the light bulb, who himself invented it while burning midnight oil at home. It was clearly motivated and capitalized by the patent system and an effort to earn a profit. That is entrepreneurship. https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/model-t https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/model-t I would argue that businesses that were founded before bankruptcy law in 1898 were far more risky than modern ventures. In addition, there were no social safety nets to pick you back up if ended up impoverished in the 1890s. But that's quite a tangent from the core overarching theme of the modern era, in which entrepreneurial economies have consistently beat out command and control economies. The main difference between today and 100 years ago, is now we have an abundance of capital. It was much, much harder to get capital back then. Even loans for houses were hard to come by.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      >I would argue that businesses that were founded before bankruptcy law in 1898 were far more risky than modern ventures For the individuals themselves possibly, not for the business model, because the high risk business model of today did not exist. In your own examples Both Ford and Edison worked on their inventions as a side hustle in addition to their regular jobs. They were not professional entrepreneurs when they worked on original inventions. In fact this is almost necessarily true for any paradigm changing invention, it happens outside the status quo. As Schumpeter pointed out, as soon as someone is drawn into a formal mode of invention they're just replicating, not jumping ahead of what came before. Every truly important invention is entirely original almost by definition. The defining feature of entrepreneurship today is that it is like a Keynesian beauty contest. You check a few boxes and we give X dollars for Y shares and we show you "how to do" entrepreneurship.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  > Electricity, the light bulb, the automobile, the washing machine, the air conditioner, the personal computer, etc etc. All of these inventions involved a real, tangible, desirable product, and they were successful because real people were willing to pay their inventors real money for them. Increasingly, it appears that Wirecard was none of these things. A payment services company is not some sort of masterpiece of innovation, and one which was built on a foundation of financial fraud clearly does not have any net value to humanity. > Clearly there was nothing stopping humanity from discovering these things 1000 years ago. Of course there was. Technology does not exist in a vacuum.

chrisco255 6y ago

Electricity, the light bulb, the automobile, the washing machine, the air conditioner, the personal computer, etc etc. I really can't tell if this is a troll question or not. Clearly there was nothing stopping humanity from discovering these things 1000 years ago. What changed? A culture that balances capital and risk call achieve extraordinary things. There is no substitute for it.

Barrin92 6y ago
everything you just named had little to do with what is today called "entrepeneurship" and more to do with either rigorous corporate scientific activity (the automobile), solitary tinkering (the lightbulb, early advances in software) or was simply the byproduct of genuinely, informal scientific pursuit. None of those inventions were made because of VC hypecycles, or two billion in bogus bank accounts, or marketing and customer aqcuisition. In fact everything you named predates the era of high risk venture capital. It wasn't primarily a culture of entrepreneurship but a culture of tinkering and invention that got us those fundamental technologies.
- cnasc 6y ago
  I’m not sure why you’re conflating entrepreneurship with Silicon Valley-style VC.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    because we're in the comment chain about wirecard and their behaviour is the result of that sort of culture. It's also still, despite the immense criticism touted around the world as something to emulate. You see billions of cash pumped into say, 'incubators' in Paris and other large cities around the globe with for the most part no results.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Wirecard is a financial services provider founded in 1999. I would not conflate their troubles with marginal contributions from start-up incubators that are chasing diminishing returns in the tech sector. The latter is just a result of a normal market cycle. Clearly, plenty of multimillion and multibillion dollar companies have been founded from start-ups in the past decade or two. And clearly we're reaching a point where it's more challenging to make a hit. That's ok, that's normal. Same thing happened in the auto industry 100 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... Look at all those manufacturers you never heard of.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Nonsense, Henry Ford invented the Model T invention at home working nights while he was by day working for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, a company founded by the inventor of the light bulb, who himself invented it while burning midnight oil at home. It was clearly motivated and capitalized by the patent system and an effort to earn a profit. That is entrepreneurship. https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/model-t https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/model-t I would argue that businesses that were founded before bankruptcy law in 1898 were far more risky than modern ventures. In addition, there were no social safety nets to pick you back up if ended up impoverished in the 1890s. But that's quite a tangent from the core overarching theme of the modern era, in which entrepreneurial economies have consistently beat out command and control economies. The main difference between today and 100 years ago, is now we have an abundance of capital. It was much, much harder to get capital back then. Even loans for houses were hard to come by.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >I would argue that businesses that were founded before bankruptcy law in 1898 were far more risky than modern ventures For the individuals themselves possibly, not for the business model, because the high risk business model of today did not exist. In your own examples Both Ford and Edison worked on their inventions as a side hustle in addition to their regular jobs. They were not professional entrepreneurs when they worked on original inventions. In fact this is almost necessarily true for any paradigm changing invention, it happens outside the status quo. As Schumpeter pointed out, as soon as someone is drawn into a formal mode of invention they're just replicating, not jumping ahead of what came before. Every truly important invention is entirely original almost by definition. The defining feature of entrepreneurship today is that it is like a Keynesian beauty contest. You check a few boxes and we give X dollars for Y shares and we show you "how to do" entrepreneurship.
duskwuff 6y ago
> Electricity, the light bulb, the automobile, the washing machine, the air conditioner, the personal computer, etc etc. All of these inventions involved a real, tangible, desirable product, and they were successful because real people were willing to pay their inventors real money for them. Increasingly, it appears that Wirecard was none of these things. A payment services company is not some sort of masterpiece of innovation, and one which was built on a foundation of financial fraud clearly does not have any net value to humanity. > Clearly there was nothing stopping humanity from discovering these things 1000 years ago. Of course there was. Technology does not exist in a vacuum.