7 ms·

Who's Going to Fund the Next Steve Jobs?

31 points by Mrinal 18y ago

nickb 18y ago
Next 'Steve Jobs' will probably be Chinese.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  Maybe, but I bet he'll be working in America.
  - nickb 18y ago
    The way things are going, I seriously doubt that.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      "The way things are going" ... someone must be watching TV news. :) While America is having problems in the housing and financial sectors, it still has the best environments for fostering innovation. Can you name any new industries created in China in the last 20 years? China's main advantages are a huge (and increasingly skilled), labor force, excellent infrastructure, an eroding cost advantage, a great environment for foreign investment, and a government that can get things done. Which one of those things is critical to creating a revolutionary company? And which of them are unavailable to entrepreneurs in the US? If I had to be on the next big industry to be created outside the US, I'd bet on India rather than China.
      - nickb 18y ago
        You're stuck in a historical bias. Don't discount the future based on past! India does not have as much middle class as China so I don't think you will have have a big rise in India as we'll see in China.
        pchristensen 18y ago
        Historical bias? When China creates a new industry rather than improving and reducing the cost structure of existing industries, then I'll be a believer. BTW, Are we talking about two different things? The article was talking about venture investment in general (which you seem to be talking about) but the title (and your original comment) was about "Who will fund the next Steve Jobs?". While I think China's rise in wealth, middle class, political influence, etc are nearly unstoppable, I doubt that the next Steve Jobs will come from there (or if he is Chinese, he will work in the US). My interpretation of "the next Steve Jobs" is: 1) starts a many billion dollar company 2) that company creates (ie Apple and the PC) or matures (Google and search) a big, new industry 3) retains control of that company and is the global face of that company (ie Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Phil Knight, Oprah, Larry + Sergei, Buffet, Bezos, heck even Astor, Carnegie, JP Morgan, Hughes, etc) I can't make any useful predictions about where someone like that would come from because I can't predict the new industry, but the safe bet for those criteria would still be the US. 4) success of personality and company make them widely known and recognized outside of their industry and their country
      - cglee 18y ago
        One huge impediment of starting up in China is the legal hurdle. YC tries to help young hackers navigate the relatively easy legal formalities in the States, but China is ten times worse. Not only does it require much more money, but it also often requires political connections. Young hackers cannot even think about doing a startup without first considering funding and finding connections. Also, working for Microsoft or Google, you can make very very good salary (perhaps multitude more than your folks), so if you're a capable young hacker, the typical path is going corporate or study abroad for grad school. Before we can get a Chinese Jobs, we need a Chinese PG to insulate the potential Jobses from the legal mess, provide key connections and offer validation to family and friends.
- j2d2 18y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - nickb 18y ago
    China is the next big empire and money is starting to flow more and more into China. In US, there is a credit crunch and in China, there is a dearth of companies to fund. Clearly, it's easier to fix the latter. I see China eclipsing US entrepreneurship scene in less than 10 years.
    - ojbyrne 18y ago
      An analyst I respect says that China is the next bubble. http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2007/01/we-all-know-how-this-story-ends.html http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2007/01/we... Actually he uses the phrase "Mother of All Bubbles" elsewhere. Uncritical optimism is a sure indicator.
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        That's why I'm always scared to bet on the safe bet.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      Sure, number of companies may be easy to fix with population and money, but the number of good companies is a lot harder. Just ask all the VCs with fat funds and sleepy portfolios.
      - nickb 18y ago
        You do realize that China has 3x+ more population and that they have a bigger pool of people, companies to pick from, right? You need to go there and see it with your own eyes... I was skeptical too but not anymore. China is rising and they will eclipse us all.
        davidw 18y ago
- menloparkbum 18y ago
  Steve Jobs is great at making "luxury" products and marketing them. Marketing high-end products is not what China is good at. China is good at other things, like actually building the products that Jobs markets. But, the article isn't about who will be the next Steve Jobs - it is about who is going to fund the next Steve Jobs. Given China's economic growth, there is a good chance that the next Steve jobs could be funded by investors from/in China.
  - hugh 18y ago
    You're thinking of Steve Jobs circa 2008, who makes pretty white luxury boxes. But the Steve Jobs that counts for is Steve Jobs circa 1978, the Steve Jobs that was making cheap ugly boxes that plugged into your TV. (And of course it was really Woz, but let's leave that aside for the moment.) The point is that Apple started and became big by being a low-end company, and only turned high-end once they were already huge.
    - menloparkbum 18y ago
      China has the cheap and ugly market sewn up, so by that definition of Steve Jobs, there are already dozens, if not hundreds of Chinese Steve Jobses.
      - hugh 18y ago
        Hmm. The Apple I/II wasn't just a cheap and ugly knock-off of another product though, it was an innovative machine that changed the way computers were built. It challenged the existing notions of what a computer had to be and how much it had to cost. The closest analogue I can think of in recent years is the Eee PC, which interestingly comes not from China but from Taiwan. (Support for the notion that innovation comes more easily in democracies? It's only one data point, but still...)
    - bootload 18y ago
      "... But the Steve Jobs that counts for is Steve Jobs circa 1978, the Steve Jobs that was making cheap ugly boxes that plugged into your TV ..." The (production) Apples you refer to have never really been ugly nor cheap. If I remember they had sleek design with easy to get at insides so you could add slots. They always seemed to be on, around the magical $2-3K dollar mark no matter what country you lived in. Who needs monitors when you could use a spare tv? I remember getting my first PC and asking if they had a card to support TV and got blank stares... "no you need a high quality CGA screen instead or an EGA for $$$ more"
- sophist 18y ago
  I think only western culture can produce someone with that kind of boldness and lack of humility.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Mao Zedong? Stalin? The Japanese circa 1943?
    - hugh 18y ago
      Genghis Khan? Muhammad? Cheops?
thinkcomp 18y ago
It's a really good question. I posted something I just wrote which basically asks the exact same question from the opposite perspective, coming from the entrepreneur's viewpoint: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249453
petuniapredator 18y ago
With the kinds of tools now available I'm wondering if the next Steve Jobs will even need funding.
- hugh 18y ago
  How is the next Steve Jobs going to produce millions of hardware units without funding?
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Apple didn't have any for the Apple I. Jobs secured orders from a computer store who paid up-front. This money was then used to produce the machines. Funding did, of course, follow quite quickly from this for the Apple II.
pg 18y ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- pchristensen 18y ago
  From the man too modest to directly name his own name... :) I guess that changes the question - will the next Steve Jobs need a traditional VC?
  - pg 18y ago
    I didn't mean that to be a reference to YC. I was just pointing out that Sam was as good a candidate as anyone for "next Steve Jobs," and that he did in fact get funded by VCs-- Sequoia and NEA.
    - mariorz 18y ago
      He did get funded, but is he really in it for the long run? My uninformed prediction on the matter is loopt gets acquired by MS in a few years, which does seem to be the goal of most startups these days.
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        I don't know Sam at all, but if all he wanted to do was sell out in a few years, I could think of better ways to pass the time than negotiating with (ick) cell phone carriers. That's some serious muck he and the other Loopts waded through, and it makes me think they're in it for the long haul.
tx 18y ago
The question is wrong. They should have asked "Who wants to be next Steve Jobs?" I suspect not too many: most technical entrepreneurs are more interested in quickly making a "widget" of some sort and sell out to the first real business that comes along. Some may argue that personal computers in the 70s can be compared to web-widgets of today: the public at large didn't look at them as at "real computers" and few believed in truly global adoption. In that regard early PC pioneers were swimming against the flow. While today, the entrepreneurial mantra is to "figure out where everybody is going and be there first", being "part of the flow" is crucial (any VC will tell you that). And nobody bothers with re-thinking anything: hey, ideas are nothing, execution is the king. Build something fast. Be in a browser. Get on TechCrunch. Next Steve won't grow out of making half-assed JavaScript reimplementations of existing desktop software. And I honestly have no idea what the Next Steve will do. I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files" for software built in the 50s. Perhaps this is what they call a "matured industry" and perhaps looking for a next Steve Jobs is as practical as looking for a next Henry Ford.
- aston 18y ago
  Steve Jobs probably should not be compared to Henry Ford. Apple, if anything, is a great fast-follower with an incredible sense of design and marketing. Henry Ford, on the other hand, was mainly responsible for the initial commercialization of something that's pretty much reshaped culture. If anyone's had a similar impact in the computer industry, it's Microsoft, not Apple.
  - mlinsey 18y ago
    I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before that market existed. Microsoft's big break was when they were called upon by IBM to provide the OS for IBM's competitor to Apple. Had not Apple taken IBM by surprise, IBM may have eventually decided to go into that market anyway. But absent competitive pressure from Apple compressing their timeline, they probably would have gone with a more proprietary design and wouldn't have even needed Microsoft.
    - 18y ago
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
"I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files" for software built in the 50s." BINGO, i talk about this all the time and no one listens! the move to multi-core is a chance for a real reboot, rather than optimizing old software to run slightly faster on the new hardware.
- MaysonL 18y ago
  And really multi-core machines, like the Ambric MPPA (Massively Parallel Processor Array) with (currently) 336 cores on one chip, with very fast on chip communications, have the potential to change everything.

31 points by Mrinal 18y ago

nickb 18y ago

Next 'Steve Jobs' will probably be Chinese.

pchristensen 18y ago
Maybe, but I bet he'll be working in America.
- nickb 18y ago
  The way things are going, I seriously doubt that.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    "The way things are going" ... someone must be watching TV news. :) While America is having problems in the housing and financial sectors, it still has the best environments for fostering innovation. Can you name any new industries created in China in the last 20 years? China's main advantages are a huge (and increasingly skilled), labor force, excellent infrastructure, an eroding cost advantage, a great environment for foreign investment, and a government that can get things done. Which one of those things is critical to creating a revolutionary company? And which of them are unavailable to entrepreneurs in the US? If I had to be on the next big industry to be created outside the US, I'd bet on India rather than China.
    - nickb 18y ago
      You're stuck in a historical bias. Don't discount the future based on past! India does not have as much middle class as China so I don't think you will have have a big rise in India as we'll see in China.
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        Historical bias? When China creates a new industry rather than improving and reducing the cost structure of existing industries, then I'll be a believer. BTW, Are we talking about two different things? The article was talking about venture investment in general (which you seem to be talking about) but the title (and your original comment) was about "Who will fund the next Steve Jobs?". While I think China's rise in wealth, middle class, political influence, etc are nearly unstoppable, I doubt that the next Steve Jobs will come from there (or if he is Chinese, he will work in the US). My interpretation of "the next Steve Jobs" is: 1) starts a many billion dollar company 2) that company creates (ie Apple and the PC) or matures (Google and search) a big, new industry 3) retains control of that company and is the global face of that company (ie Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Phil Knight, Oprah, Larry + Sergei, Buffet, Bezos, heck even Astor, Carnegie, JP Morgan, Hughes, etc) I can't make any useful predictions about where someone like that would come from because I can't predict the new industry, but the safe bet for those criteria would still be the US. 4) success of personality and company make them widely known and recognized outside of their industry and their country
    - cglee 18y ago
      One huge impediment of starting up in China is the legal hurdle. YC tries to help young hackers navigate the relatively easy legal formalities in the States, but China is ten times worse. Not only does it require much more money, but it also often requires political connections. Young hackers cannot even think about doing a startup without first considering funding and finding connections. Also, working for Microsoft or Google, you can make very very good salary (perhaps multitude more than your folks), so if you're a capable young hacker, the typical path is going corporate or study abroad for grad school. Before we can get a Chinese Jobs, we need a Chinese PG to insulate the potential Jobses from the legal mess, provide key connections and offer validation to family and friends.
j2d2 18y ago
Can you elaborate?
- nickb 18y ago
  China is the next big empire and money is starting to flow more and more into China. In US, there is a credit crunch and in China, there is a dearth of companies to fund. Clearly, it's easier to fix the latter. I see China eclipsing US entrepreneurship scene in less than 10 years.
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    An analyst I respect says that China is the next bubble. http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2007/01/we-all-know-how-this-story-ends.html http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/2007/01/we... Actually he uses the phrase "Mother of All Bubbles" elsewhere. Uncritical optimism is a sure indicator.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      That's why I'm always scared to bet on the safe bet.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    Sure, number of companies may be easy to fix with population and money, but the number of good companies is a lot harder. Just ask all the VCs with fat funds and sleepy portfolios.
    - nickb 18y ago
      You do realize that China has 3x+ more population and that they have a bigger pool of people, companies to pick from, right? You need to go there and see it with your own eyes... I was skeptical too but not anymore. China is rising and they will eclipse us all.
      - davidw 18y ago
menloparkbum 18y ago
Steve Jobs is great at making "luxury" products and marketing them. Marketing high-end products is not what China is good at. China is good at other things, like actually building the products that Jobs markets. But, the article isn't about who will be the next Steve Jobs - it is about who is going to fund the next Steve Jobs. Given China's economic growth, there is a good chance that the next Steve jobs could be funded by investors from/in China.
- hugh 18y ago
  You're thinking of Steve Jobs circa 2008, who makes pretty white luxury boxes. But the Steve Jobs that counts for is Steve Jobs circa 1978, the Steve Jobs that was making cheap ugly boxes that plugged into your TV. (And of course it was really Woz, but let's leave that aside for the moment.) The point is that Apple started and became big by being a low-end company, and only turned high-end once they were already huge.
  - menloparkbum 18y ago
    China has the cheap and ugly market sewn up, so by that definition of Steve Jobs, there are already dozens, if not hundreds of Chinese Steve Jobses.
    - hugh 18y ago
      Hmm. The Apple I/II wasn't just a cheap and ugly knock-off of another product though, it was an innovative machine that changed the way computers were built. It challenged the existing notions of what a computer had to be and how much it had to cost. The closest analogue I can think of in recent years is the Eee PC, which interestingly comes not from China but from Taiwan. (Support for the notion that innovation comes more easily in democracies? It's only one data point, but still...)
  - bootload 18y ago
    "... But the Steve Jobs that counts for is Steve Jobs circa 1978, the Steve Jobs that was making cheap ugly boxes that plugged into your TV ..." The (production) Apples you refer to have never really been ugly nor cheap. If I remember they had sleek design with easy to get at insides so you could add slots. They always seemed to be on, around the magical $2-3K dollar mark no matter what country you lived in. Who needs monitors when you could use a spare tv? I remember getting my first PC and asking if they had a card to support TV and got blank stares... "no you need a high quality CGA screen instead or an EGA for $$$ more"
sophist 18y ago
I think only western culture can produce someone with that kind of boldness and lack of humility.
- petercooper 18y ago
  Mao Zedong? Stalin? The Japanese circa 1943?
  - hugh 18y ago
    Genghis Khan? Muhammad? Cheops?

thinkcomp 18y ago

It's a really good question. I posted something I just wrote which basically asks the exact same question from the opposite perspective, coming from the entrepreneur's viewpoint: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249453

petuniapredator 18y ago

With the kinds of tools now available I'm wondering if the next Steve Jobs will even need funding.

hugh 18y ago
How is the next Steve Jobs going to produce millions of hardware units without funding?
- petercooper 18y ago
  Apple didn't have any for the Apple I. Jobs secured orders from a computer store who paid up-front. This money was then used to produce the machines. Funding did, of course, follow quite quickly from this for the Apple II.

pg 18y ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhhId_WG7RA

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
pchristensen 18y ago
From the man too modest to directly name his own name... :) I guess that changes the question - will the next Steve Jobs need a traditional VC?
- pg 18y ago
  I didn't mean that to be a reference to YC. I was just pointing out that Sam was as good a candidate as anyone for "next Steve Jobs," and that he did in fact get funded by VCs-- Sequoia and NEA.
  - mariorz 18y ago
    He did get funded, but is he really in it for the long run? My uninformed prediction on the matter is loopt gets acquired by MS in a few years, which does seem to be the goal of most startups these days.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      I don't know Sam at all, but if all he wanted to do was sell out in a few years, I could think of better ways to pass the time than negotiating with (ick) cell phone carriers. That's some serious muck he and the other Loopts waded through, and it makes me think they're in it for the long haul.

tx 18y ago

The question is wrong. They should have asked "Who wants to be next Steve Jobs?" I suspect not too many: most technical entrepreneurs are more interested in quickly making a "widget" of some sort and sell out to the first real business that comes along. Some may argue that personal computers in the 70s can be compared to web-widgets of today: the public at large didn't look at them as at "real computers" and few believed in truly global adoption. In that regard early PC pioneers were swimming against the flow. While today, the entrepreneurial mantra is to "figure out where everybody is going and be there first", being "part of the flow" is crucial (any VC will tell you that). And nobody bothers with re-thinking anything: hey, ideas are nothing, execution is the king. Build something fast. Be in a browser. Get on TechCrunch. Next Steve won't grow out of making half-assed JavaScript reimplementations of existing desktop software. And I honestly have no idea what the Next Steve will do. I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files" for software built in the 50s. Perhaps this is what they call a "matured industry" and perhaps looking for a next Steve Jobs is as practical as looking for a next Henry Ford.

aston 18y ago
Steve Jobs probably should not be compared to Henry Ford. Apple, if anything, is a great fast-follower with an incredible sense of design and marketing. Henry Ford, on the other hand, was mainly responsible for the initial commercialization of something that's pretty much reshaped culture. If anyone's had a similar impact in the computer industry, it's Microsoft, not Apple.
- mlinsey 18y ago
  I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before that market existed. Microsoft's big break was when they were called upon by IBM to provide the OS for IBM's competitor to Apple. Had not Apple taken IBM by surprise, IBM may have eventually decided to go into that market anyway. But absent competitive pressure from Apple compressing their timeline, they probably would have gone with a more proprietary design and wouldn't have even needed Microsoft.
  - 18y ago

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

"I know for sure, that what we're doing today is sorta "configuration files" for software built in the 50s." BINGO, i talk about this all the time and no one listens! the move to multi-core is a chance for a real reboot, rather than optimizing old software to run slightly faster on the new hardware.

MaysonL 18y ago
And really multi-core machines, like the Ambric MPPA (Massively Parallel Processor Array) with (currently) 336 cores on one chip, with very fast on chip communications, have the potential to change everything.