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Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

• bawana 6y ago
  There should be more incentives to keep businesses small. That way there wont be an incentive to 'grow for money'. The little guy has a disproportionate amount of struggle.
• dschuetz 6y ago
  That assertion is nothing new. I believe there were even studies made about that, comparing economies to organisms, and high-growth companies as cancerous manifestations. But don't ask me what and where.
• sunstone 6y ago
  To push the metaphor a bit further isn't humanity itself a kind of cancer of the earth?
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    It may have become, but it wasn't until we figured the physics out.
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      It was already. We've been a rolling ecological disaster way before we figured out writing. We just went from place to place, leaving burned forests and extinct species behind. Grokking physics definitely accelerated this, but we have an opportunity ahead of us to stabilize. Not sure we'll be able to take it, though. Not with the systems of incentives that we have now.
      • agumonkey 6y ago
        At that scale it's not much more than other species can do. I remember an article of the effects of less wolves on the eco system (yellowstone?). The whole area became a swamp. What changed since is the scale at which human societies impacted the ecosystem.
  • HenryKissinger 6y ago
    "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet." - Agent Smith, The Matrix
    • the_cramer 6y ago
      To this day I don't see how this "revelation" had an impact on anything. It's certainly interesting and I think it's inherently true (we're based of the same biology) but it doesn't change anything. Agent Smith certainly was the most high-tech philosoph...
  • cgriswald 6y ago
    That remains to be seen: It’s possible we are the reproductive system.
    • digitalsushi 6y ago
      This is like a frame of reference thing. Your response is fascinating. It could spark hours and hours of debate. What an amazing response. If life is growth, the goal is to spread as far and wide as possible. Life will spread to Mars, the moon, and beyond. (Or die trying, and inevitably, literally). If life is balance, the goal is to exist as long as possible. To which we are not the reproductive system, but the cancer attacking it. I believe there is a reasonable chance that the existing human generation is the one that will have a global discussion about this as a way to frame balance as a possible goal of humanity. And maybe that discussion will not go well, but simply to have it would be noteworthy.
  • odopodo 6y ago
    Not humanity, but capitalism. This need of constant growth is a phenomenon most other economic systems don't have.
    • valvar 6y ago
      How do these other economic systems you speak of ensure that reproduction remains below replacement levels?
      • odopodo 6y ago
        Not below, but somehow balanced? This explosion of growth we are seeing is relatively recent, and is due not only to advances in technology, but also to cultural changes which may perhaps have been more important to enable this relentless expansion. What was the most recognized traditional means to become rich if not by pillaging and military conquest? The idea that you could (and should!) become rich by individual economic effort was not common at all. To the contrary, it was frequently taken to be immoral, like the Medieval condemnation of usury, or the ostracism of rich people in Ancient Greece.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • szatkus 6y ago
    It's expected that the population will stabilize around 10-15 billions.
    • bmitc 6y ago
      At the cost of the destabilization of many other species and ecosystems.
  • rollulus 6y ago
    If so, then space colonisation is metastasis.
    • Ekaros 6y ago
      I would call industrialisation metastasis... Colonisation is jumping hosts...
  • bmitc 6y ago
    I think of this every time I’m in an airplane looking down. I can’t see the effects of all the other animals, but the effects upon Earth by humans is drastic and very infectious looking.
  • meowster 6y ago
    No. I feel like a lot of people aren't parsing the title correctly. IF the purpose of the company. Not the purpose of all companies. Humanity doesn't have purpose other than what we make of it. We can strive to maximize enjoyment while keeping population flat if we wanted to. Edit: The title was changed, it was something like: If a company's sole purpose is to grow, then it is no different from a cancer.
    • LockAndLol 6y ago
      We can but we don't. Our biological drive, coupled with our lack of volition to reason about it, is to reproduce. Most people don't care if pumping out a unit is the worst thing contribution to the planet's environment, they'll do it just because.
      • vharuck 6y ago
        This idea doesn't grok with falling birthrates in wealthy nations. People don't just live to reproduce. There is a biological drive to reproduce, but it is not unchecked. So the cancer metaphor is apt.
        • swagasaurus-rex 6y ago
          Island nations have always had to deal with the realities of Malthusian limits.
  • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    No, the current mainstream economic system is the cancer and it's killing the host. Throughout history many civilizations based on endless growth started to collapse when they run out of territories to conquer or simply fuel. (e.g. the roman empire)
  • nickflood 6y ago
    Yes it is
• howaboutnope 6y ago
  > The so-called accumulation of capital which gave birth to the bourgeoisie changed the very conception of property and wealth: they were no longer considered to be the results of accumulation and acquisition but their beginnings; wealth became a never-ending process of getting wealthier. The classification of the bourgeoisie as an owning class is only superficially correct, for a characteristic of this class has been that everybody could belong to it who conceived of life as a process of perpetually becoming wealthier, and considered money as something sacrosanct which under no circumstances should be a mere commodity for consumption. [..] > [Hobbes] even, through sheer force of imagination, was able to outline the main psychological traits of the new type of man who would fit into such a society and its tyrannical body politic. He foresaw the necessary idolatry of power itself by this new human type, that he would be flattered at being called a power-thirsty animal, although actually society would force him to surrender all his natural forces, his virtues and his vices, and would make him the poor meek little fellow who has not even the right to rise against tyranny, and who, far from striving for power, submits to any existing government and does not stir even when his best friend falls an innocent victim to an incomprehensible raison d'etat. > For a Commonwealth based on the accumulated and monopolized power of all its individual members necessarily leaves each person powerless, deprived of his natural and human capacities. It leaves him degraded into a cog in the power-accumulating machine, free to console himself with sublime thoughts about the ultimate destiny of this machine, which itself is constructed in such a way that it can devour the globe simply by following its own inherent law. [..] > By "Victory or Death," the Leviathan can indeed overcome all political limitations that go with the existence of other peoples and can envelop the whole earth in its tyranny. But when the last war has come and every man has been provided for, no ultimate peace is established on earth: the power-accumulating machine, without which continual expansion would not have been achieved, needs more material to devour in its never-ending process. If the last victorious Commonwealth cannot proceed to "annex the planets," it can only proceed to destroy itself in order to begin anew the never-ending process of power generation. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" Mind you, IIRC Arendt didn't argue that the above "leads to totalitarianism", it's just something she wrote about in that tome, too.
  • jariel 6y ago
    "a Commonwealth based on the accumulated and monopolized power of all its individual members necessarily leaves each person powerless," ? It was like that way before the 'bourgeois' ever even existed. Roman Empire? Charlemagne? Louis XIV? Habsburgs? The problem with these Enlightenment era definitions is they fail to take into consideration that the quest for power has been there since the start, it was just never generally available to the merchant class. i.e. the notion that the Roman Empire wouldn't fit any of these social distinctions doesn't quite add up - it's just that those wanting power had to take on perfunctory civic roles and be involved in politics in order for their mercantile quests to thrive. The other thing missing from these quotes is ahem Adam Smith: trade, economies of scale, division of labour, comparative value etc. create enormous value and most of that value ends up in the hands of consumers. The Nobility were beaten by the Merchants because the Nobility were only interested in control, the Merchants created a lot of value.
• sweetheart 6y ago
  Do lifestyle businesses really have the negative connotation that I’ve been told they have? I’ve heard about this stigma of a lifestyle business numerous times, but everyone Ive ever actually talked to has said they sound lovely: you maintain a lot of control over your life and business, at the expense of perhaps more (unnecessary) money. I had thought for a long time that lifestyle businesses which weren’t optimizing to grow would be looked down upon, but I’ve never seen that. I think maybe there is some bias because of course we will hear more about the Ubers and Doordashes of the world, rather than the Basecamps of the world.
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Do lifestyle businesses really have the negative connotation that I’ve been told they have? My cynical hypothesis is that it's 50/50 of a good chunk of tech community feeling FOMO ("I want to get rich quick too!"), and VCs creating this perception. VCs need fresh young blood to push through the startup grinder. That said, I haven't noticed much of this connotation here on HN (which is ironic, this being ex-Startup News, and a board attached to an VC company). For this I have another hypothesis: HN has a slightly different bias when the EU is awake, which is now.
    • hef19898 6y ago
      I never thought about the regional bias of HN. But it sounds reasonable. And being from the EU, I probably wouldn't notice.
  • codegeek 6y ago
    First, stop calling any business a lifestyle business. Business is always hard no matter how much time you put into it. I run a bootstrapped SAAS bsiness that grew "only" 20% last year. I know that is not even close to what VCs want if I wanted money but that 20% growth was great for our team and we can continue to working on building a great sustainable and profitable business. However, I can assure you there is nothing "lifestyle" about it. As the founder, I grind my ass as much as the founder of a VC backed company.
  • redis_mlc 6y ago
• simon_000666 6y ago
  I'm not the biggest fan of this analogy. I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. The problem with cancerous cells is that the body stops recycling them and so then they grow unchecked. Modern companies are more like skin cells, they need to grow new capabilities and shed old ones as the environment changes. If they don't then they will die, the same way I will die if my body stops growing new cells to replace the old one. Saying a company purpose is merely growth is nonsense, different companies have different purposes, mostly they want to survive which involves both growth and decay.
  • wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Yes – until you bring the stock market and investors into the picture. Oftentimes, companies will have a legal obligation to their stockholders to (attempt to) maximise profit…
    • mfer 6y ago
      Are you suggesting that the stock market and investors are carcinogens?
      • TeMPOraL 6y ago
        And the legal environment is carcinogenic, too.
      • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
        Yes, and they are killing the host.
    • RivieraKid 6y ago
      Maximizing profit is a good thing.
      • TeMPOraL 6y ago
• cheph 6y ago
  Paywalled. But the claim sounds a bit dubious. A cancer is not the same as a company, and the growth of a cancer is not the same as a growth of a company. Living things increases entropy faster than dead things[1][2], and companies or organized economic activity increase entropy faster than non organized economic activity, and better (more profitable) companies do this better than less profitable ones, and bigger ones do this faster than smaller companies. On average, the amount something costs is highly correlated to the how much it increased the entropy of the universe, where something that was more expensive than something else usually resulted in a higher increase in entropy. This does not make companies that grow cancer any more than it makes life that evolves to increase entropy faster is cancer, it just in line with the universe's tendency to transition to states of higher entropy and to select for processes that increase entropy faster, like life on earth, which is much better at increasing entropy now than 4 billion years ago. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbJ9leUNDE&list=PLoaVOjvkzQtyZF-2VpJrxPz7bxK_p1Dd2&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKbJ9leUNDE&list=PLoaVOjvkzQ... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life
• trestenhortz 6y ago
  Ugh. This person is kinda suggesting that companies should have some noble higher purpose. Companies are entities for making money for investors and employees and maybe having fun doing it. The irony is this person is suggesting companies should be “changing the world” a la Silicon Valley TV show. The author probably had no idea.
  • dukeyukey 6y ago
    > Companies are entities for making money for investors and employees and maybe having fun doing it. Not necessarily. Companies are entities composed of people for some purpose or another. If a company is privately owned, while profit is probably in there somewhere, the actual goal is up to the owners. Maybe the owners want to make the game they always dreamed of, and prioritise that over extra profit.
  • wizzwizz4 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
  • WitCanStain 6y ago
    Shouldn't they? The world would probably be a nicer place if companies had goals other than profit. The fact that this is how companies currently operate has no bearing on how they should operate.
  • vidarh 6y ago
    Corporations have charters, and historically a lot of jurisdictions placed a whole lot of limitations on corporate charters, ranging from time limiting them, to holding the corporations to their charter - that is, limiting them to do what they were chartered to do. It has not always been a given that you would just get a charter, because a corporate charter imbues a corporation with rights that affects society that only exists by society deciding to honour them. So this idea of making demands of corporations to have charters that maintains some balance of public benefit is not at all new (that is not to say that a corporation that primarily focuses on making profit does not provide some benefit, but it's not some sort of automatic given that is enough). There's a whole movement around the idea of pushing governments to revoke corporate charters that do not benefit the public beyond the immediate economic effects (effectively dismantling the corporations in question). You don't need to agree with them, but it's worth realising that the history of the modern, purely profit-seeking corporation with expansive rights is not a very long one, and not at all the only model of how to deal with corporations.
• helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  But the universe is growing. OMG THE UNIVERSE IS A CANCER!
  • elygre 6y ago
    The article didn’t say “If a company is growing”, but “if the purpose of a company is merely growth”.
    • helsinkiandrew 6y ago
      Fair enough, but to survive a company needs to aim to grow - existing customers will always leave (die or go out of business). Making products that make their customers lives better, providing a living for its employees, and a service to its community, are by-products of survival and of the process of growing. A well run 'evil' company that just cares about growing may do more good because of the people it gives a good living to than a poorly run social enterprise.
      • elygre 6y ago
        You probably noticed that I didn’t really object to any content in the article or your comment. It was all about the way you created an incorrect analogy to make fun of the article. Don’t do that.
  • pegasus 6y ago
    Could you say that the only purpose of the universe is to grow? Not at all - so the analogy wouldn't apply. As someone else said above, this actually is more relevant to publicly traded companies, which by law have an obligation to maximize shareholder value - or even more precisely, to the ethos that greed should be welcomed because it will lead to wealth and well-being for all. Sure, there's more nuance to it, so it's not a perfect analogy (no analogy is) but there's definitely some relevance to the comparison.
  • gchamonlive 6y ago
    From the point of view of an observer INSIDE the universe. You have no idea how it looks like outside the universe, so you can't really say that.
• lnsru 6y ago
  There are 2 states in the forest: growing trees and rotting trees. Nothing in between. So this cancer analogy is a bit absurd. The same with business: business is growing or dying, I am not buying “we don’t want grow” argument.
  • pulse7 6y ago
    Please look at this list of the oldest companies in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies They are still operating, but they didn't grow. Even trees in the forest don't grow indefinitely...
    • kgwgk 6y ago
      > Even trees in the forest don't grow indefinitely... Their trunks keep getting wider.
    • slightwinder 6y ago
      Kinda interessting how majority seem to be from japan or german countries. And they all have very specific business. I wonder how big they are, and whether their size is somewhat constant through their history. Also, how many of them are really the same company, and not actually a batch of different companies just operating under the same name.. Like if a company operated for some time before it goes bust and some years later a different company continues the operation under the same name, but with different people, concepts, etc. would it still be regarded the same companies on that list? In certain cases continuing the tradition and a good name is worth big money and asien companies seem to have traditions around this concept.
  • lm28469 6y ago
    > The same with business: business is growing or dying I know plenty of people with small businesses that are neither growing nor dying, just paying the bills and making enough money to live happily. I'm kind of scared that people can't even imagine this is a possibility to be honest... Not everything has to be the next facebook and have 100% yoy growth
• aglavine 6y ago
  Biology metaphors are similar to cancer.
• jspash 6y ago
  I often question the motives of my company. It has only 100 or so employees. Has been in business for 25+ years. But we are on a continual drive to increase sales, hire new people, add size to the facilities. But it wasn't always this way. It only happened once it went public. Now we are working for the investors. They need to see an increasing return on their investment. Management choices are no longer about the customer or providing a great product/service. It's about squeezing margins and duping the customer to join our mailing list or accept cookies. Otherwise "the list won't grow". And how can we market to more and more people if we can't track how many pages they've viewed? I've gone a bit off track there, but the point being, there IS no answer when I've explicitly asked "why" with regards to these things. Nobody knows. They just know they have "targets" and the targets are constantly moving. /rant over
  • jariel 6y ago
    "there IS no answer" Sure there is. 'In the begging' it was was invariably led by some kind of founder/owners, and the values of the company were intimately related to their values. For better or worse. A public or widely held company not led by founders tends to have a more political class of executives who are more likely to report to the board on the basis of 'making them money'. Maybe not, but probably a little more so than otherwise. Every situation is different. So the answer to 'why' is simple: the board probably makes the expectation of the CEO, who requires that of the team, one way or another, and that trickles down into various plans of various kinds. It's really just that.
  • melomal 6y ago
    Shareholder value above all else is what is important. Unfortunately, VC money needs to be returned to their shareholders too. It's a ponzi scheme and somebodies next big idea will be the catalyst for additional money and so on and so on. It almost feels like startups are the get rich quick scheme of the moment.
    • sizt 6y ago
      Squirrels who don't like the nuts, complaining about the tree.
• jariel 6y ago
  A company is a balance of power between: Owners, Debtors, Executives, Employees, Customers and Suppliers - and the Externalizations (i.e. governments, regulations, treaties). The purpose is whatever the owners want it to be, in the context of that balance of power. Sometimes Execs or Employees have incredible power. As a supplier to a monopsony like Apple, the 'purpose' may largely be dictated by that relationship. Company owners tend to want to make money, the do so typically by growing. To the extent that externalizes are minimized, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes externalizations are unavoidable (i.e. imagine a Starbucks on every corner of every street), ergo, it can't make sense, but it's not always the case.
• samuelizdat 6y ago
  "Infinite growth is the ideology of a cancer cell" was written by Edward Abbey a ecologist and author of the book Desert Solitaire. Might be worth looking into.
• modi15 6y ago
  Purpose of a company is to create value in whatever way it has identified. Growth is a corollary of that purpose. Once the company has identified what value it provides, creating more of that value is the next logical step - hence the pursuit of growth.
• bregma 6y ago
  I suspect the initial premise is incorrect. The purpose of a company that makes widgets is to make widgets. Nothing more. Some rent seekers realized that they could extract some of the wealth created by the company making widgets, and that they could manipulate various people involved in other enterprise to enhance and enforce their rent-seeking abilities. To that end, they have manipulated the various controls on the use of violence in our society such that they can not only continue to extra wealth from the labour of the widget-makers, but that the widget-makers are required to make more widgets and give up increasing portions of the wealth they create. The cancer is not the company, whose purpose is not growth. The cancer is the rent seeker who sucks the life out of the company causing it to swell and fester and eventually autolyse.
  • cmiles74 6y ago
    I think the purpose of a healthy company is to make widgets. A company that's unsuccessful or on the path to failure will thrash about and, I think, eventually decide their purpose is simply "to make money". Clearly we should invest in the former companies but even the latter, in some cases, stumble on something worthwhile and become successful.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • eternalban 6y ago
    We can get our analogy ducks in order: - The economy is an ecology. - A company is an organism. - Rentiers are carcinogens. It would be interesting to know if there have been models of economies that disallow usury and rent seekers. I know Michael Hudson has made the distinction between industrial and rentier capitalism [1], and there is also CASSE [2] (but that seems to be aligned with the "too many people" ideological line), but I am not aware of any contemporary writing on the nature and dynamics of economies that disallow usury and rent seeking in principle. [1]: https://michael-hudson.com/2021/01/the-rentier-resurgence-and-takeover-finance-capitalism-vs-industrial-capitalism/ https://michael-hudson.com/2021/01/the-rentier-resurgence-an... [2]: https://steadystate.org/ https://steadystate.org/
• gog 6y ago
  Is there a way to read this story without creating a Medium account?
  • freeflight 6y ago
    https://outline.com/APu5Kg https://outline.com/APu5Kg
  • plesiv 6y ago
    In chrome "Settings" -> search for "Always clear cookies when windows are closed" and "Add" "medium.com"
• beyondcompute 6y ago
  Just remember that during the “growth” company apparently delivers useful goods and services (otherwise people wouldn’t pay it money). In the process company might increase customers’ standard of living and productivity which in turn causes positive effects and growth elsewhere.
  • Nextgrid 6y ago
    A lot of companies in pursuit of "growth" provide their goods/services at a loss and/or break laws or behave unethically in the process. Often when investors finally seek a return on their investment and the company adjusts their prices to a realistic level (or that law enforcement catches up) the company withers away, often leaving devastation behind (such as wronged employees, business partners or customers).
• u678u 6y ago
  Its basic evolution - any successful species is programmed to increase in numbers. A species that aims to stay static will die off when conditions change, and of course one that aims to shrink in size will not last. The cancer word is just clickbait.
  • paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Evolution pressures reward adapting and surviving. Unlimited growth is fatal. Bacteria in a closed jar will consume all resources put inside then die out. Sentient species can learn to limit their consumption to maximize their survival. Companies with sentient leadership can too.
  • freeflight 6y ago
    A species that grows so much that it outgrows its own habitat will often end up destroying said habitat due to overpopulation, with ramifications usually going way past the species that actually triggered it. That's why not everything that is natural is automatically "good"/sustainable. Because if we go about it that way we might as well never have come down from those trees, as humans we can think ahead and conceptualize possible long-term consequences of our actions. That's an advantage not many animals have, we best make some proper use of it.
• hyko 6y ago
  No. A growing company can enrich society. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with growth. A civilisation where the only firms allowed to operate were small 500-year-old artisans would be–let’s face it–absolutely crap.
• p2t2p 6y ago
  Oh my god, I needed that. I always felt that there's something wrong with this obsession with growth but could put it into worlds. Bit thank you to that human being for doing that for me.
• jokethrowaway 6y ago
  That's a great article. I'd rather see a market full of small independent, ever growing operators than zombies drinking VC money before getting sold for a billion to some giant and become terrible. Those small independent companies are all people who traded a life of soul-less employment for the digital equivalent of a mom and pop store. That's the life and the society I want. An interesting question may be, how did we get here? Why there is so much money to invest? In other words, why there is so much inequality? Part of it is natural, the Silicon Valley created a lot of value through technology and it's been rewarded nicely. But I think the answer is deeper and lies in the centralised economy we have, in corrupted government officials assisting monopolies creation through regulation and the government being a monopoly itself.
  • pietrovismara 6y ago
    > An interesting question may be, how did we get here? I think a very important factor in getting us where we are has been the Friedman Doctrine[0]. Its essence can be basically described using Friedman's words: "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits". - [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
• pinky1417 6y ago
  In business school, we'd say that, for growth to be value-creating, the return on invested capital has to exceed cost of capital. All that means is that a dollar invested in a company has to turn into something more than a dollar in earnings, by how much more depends on what rate you estimate your cost of capital to be. With respect to money-consuming, high growth tech companies, we have to figure out if they're cable companies or airlines. Cable companies required lots of capital to grow for a number of years. Once they built out their networks, their capital expenditures went down and they could post major profits. But airlines, probably since deregulation and perhaps even since their invention, have likely been net capital destroyers: they keep having to buy/lease new aircraft to keep up with the competitors. Even prior to COVID, airlines had to buy new planes or risk losing money on each flight due to higher operational costs vs. the competition. Tech companies that lose gobs of money, if they want to avoid becoming airlines, need to be building some sort of moat. Too often, investors and founders look at 20+% revenue growth and think that's good in itself. Or they think "industry X is going to be huge in the future" and they invest willy-nilly in companies in that industry (often at seemingly any implied valuation). But even if they're right about massive industry growth, they could still lose money if competition is high enough. In 1999, tons of people believed the internet was the future and they were right. But very few people realized which companies would succeed and even fewer people held on long enough to realize the gains of the ultimately successful companies.
• mrkramer 6y ago
  The purpose of every living being is to spread and grow. Bacteria, virus, animal, human even universe and unfortunately cancer. Companies are no different. Author's statement reminds me of Agent Smith's statement about humans, virus and cancer. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5foZIKuEWQ&t
  • Kbelicius 6y ago
    > The purpose of every living being is to spread and grow. Bacteria, virus, animal, human even universe and unfortunately cancer. The purpose is to spread their genes and not to spread and grow themselves.
    • mrkramer 6y ago
      I meant growing your population when speaking about living begins. Author of the article probably implies growing in size (growing your company). Looking at the evolution [1] life evolved from single cells microorganisms to multi cellular complex organisms like for example mammals. Growth is the result of the evolution of those organisms and increased complexity of its parts and the whole system. If a company rapidly grows because of its success and increased complexity of doing business (Organic growth) then good if it is artificially inflated growth then it is bad and such company will collapse sooner or later. Organic growth is the most healthiest one but inorganic growth like acquiring market share by doing mergers and acquisitions can also be a way to grow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
• pietrovismara 6y ago
  Funny that I've been using this analogy for a while in comments on HN. The perpetual growth model really is the root of most evil.
• KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago
  Life is cancer
• andyjohnson0 6y ago
  Replicators using directed mutation to compete in a free energy medium will inevitably discover uncontrolled replication. Doesn't matter whether its viruses or cells or businesses or memes.
  • aaaxyz 6y ago
    Corporations aren't replicators though (thankfully).
    • andyjohnson0 6y ago
      I'd argue that they are. They physically split and merge via the creation os subsidiaries and mergers. They shaed and absorb "dna" (people, carrying their culture). If we ever get to an _Accelerando_-type situation where businesses are spinning-off and merging thousands of times per hour then I'll get worried.
• soVeryTired 6y ago
  I think one interesting way of looking at a company is as a power struggle between - the owners - the employees - the managers - the clients - (and sometimes) the government / general public Companies can benefit all of these parties, but a good system should have forces in place to prevent any of them from getting the upper hand. Some of those forces include competition, unionisation, labour mobility, fiduciary duty to shareholders, and the existence of boards of directors. The view that a company's sole duty is to provide value to shareholders (i.e. to grow) is blinkered and damaging. I'm tempted to heap blame for that way of thinking on the economics establishment and on anti-comunist sentiment from the 20th century but that's probably naive.
  • ROARosen 6y ago
    Sure there's the ongoing struggle. But the basic fact will always stay that the point of founding and putting in the effort to establish a commercial company in the first place is to "provide value to the shareholders" (i.e. the owner/founder). If not for that, why anyone go through that hassle? All that Silicon-Valley-esque "We founded the company because we wanted to make the world a better place" is only when the company is also making money for the stakeholders. Once you take out that point, there goes you company. It is now officially a charitable organization (which, BTW also provides value to the "stakeholders", but that discussion is for a different time)
    • danaris 6y ago
      There's a big difference between "provide a decent living for the founders of the company" and "provide ever-increasing profits to the already-wealthy shareholders", and I believe that difference is at the heart of the article's point.
  • wpietri 6y ago
    I'm definitely with you on the last bit. As are plenty of others. Jack Welch famously called it the "dumbest idea in the world" and it has been widely panned: https://www.google.com/search?q=dumbest+idea+in+the+world+shareholder+value https://www.google.com/search?q=dumbest+idea+in+the+world+sh... If I squint at it from the right angle, it's not terrible, in that in theory many of the other kinds of value should roll up to long-term company value. E.g., healthy employee relationships are a real asset. Being a good community member should pay off in the long term. Etc, etc. But in reality, when you crossbreed this with the "efficient markets hypothesis" [1] and managerialism [2], it becomes dangerous. Mix in a live stock ticker plus ways for executives to cash out and a declining CEO tenure and you get an excuse for doing anything that boosts the share price long enough to unload the shares on a sucker. Or, at lower levels, anything that boosts a metric that drives stock price gains. So instead of building long-term value, the "maximize shareholder value" mantra ends up doing the opposite. E.g., cutting long-term R&D spending to fund stock buy-backs. Laying off long-term employees in favor of an outsourcing deal that cuts short-term costs while raising them down the road. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerialism
• koonsolo 6y ago
  I once worked at a company where I didn't understand why they took certain decisions. In the end, it all became very clear. My mindset from "these guys have no idea" shifted towards "wow, they are smart, I didn't get this part". Basically, they were acquiring customers faster than anyone could follow. Our development goal was "fast and opportunistic". As you can expect, the product was full of bugs, and customer support had their hands full. It was a shitty product with a lot of customers. I didn't see how this would ever turn into a success story. We were digging a grave. But I didn't realize 1 thing: we were not selling a product, we were selling the company. In the end, a huge Canadian competitor wanted a foothold in the European market, and so they bought us (and our customers). They were going to introduce their own product to the customers, and so our product was thrown in the wastebasket. In the end, it all ended as planned, and the founders walked away with a lot of money. Basically they built a customer base in EU, and sold that one to another company. Big eye opener for me. Looking back, it is also very interesting to see how they positioned their company within that market, to be acquired.
  • chii 6y ago
    > I didn't see how this would ever turn into a success story. We were digging a grave. But I didn't realize 1 thing: we were not selling a product, we were selling the company. why don't the executive making this goal clear to the "underlings"?
    • batmenace 6y ago
      I'm guessing you want to avoid word getting out that could spoil the deal / depress the price?
    • SpocksBrain 6y ago
      Because if they did, that info would most certainly get out and negatively affect the company’s reputation.
    • 3np 6y ago
      I don't know thei particular situation, but it can be many things. The executive might have a lare degree of congnitive disonnance (still fully beliving in the things they tell their employees in the moment). Alternatively they may judge that being fully open with their employees will have negative consequences. And, heck, I think many are fully transparent but some employees just turn a deaf ear to certain things in order to maintain some variety of identity.
• fit2rule 6y ago
  All companies must grow until they become a cult, a religion, or a government.
• wpietri 6y ago
  The title reminds me of a comment from a regional bank CEO during the mortgage bubble. When asked why his bank wasn't going whole hog for the newer sorts of loan, which were growing like crazy at the time, he said, "If it grows too fast, it's a weed." That's always stuck with me.
• neximo64 6y ago
  A young baby thats purpose is to grow is similar to cancer. Reductionist enuf?
  • refurb 6y ago
    Exactly. The title is one of those statements that sounds smart at first, but then you realize is kind of silly in a “i’m 12 and this is profound” way.
• Eddy_Viscosity2 6y ago
  Reminds of this discussion between a physicist and an economist: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
• fithisux 6y ago
  Exactly. And this is why our economy (?? society) is terminally ill. It is full of tumors.
• erik_kemp 6y ago
  An example of post-growth entrepreneurship in the Netherlands is Radically Open Security, the world's first not-for-profit computer security consultancy company: https://www.radicallyopensecurity.com/business-model.htm https://www.radicallyopensecurity.com/business-model.htm An interview with CEO Melanie Rieback: https://www.codemotion.com/magazine/video/radically-open-security-and-post-growth-entrepreneurship/ https://www.codemotion.com/magazine/video/radically-open-sec... Of course, a TEDx-talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW8umQWXFIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW8umQWXFIM A longer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkyNG0IRd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkyNG0IRd8
• throwaway9870 6y ago
  Clearly the purpose of a company is to provide value to customers that they are willing to pay for. Any company where the sole purpose is to grow will find itself out of business quickly.
• pdimitar 6y ago
  > Fashion changes all the time, but it does not last. I am so stealing this quote. Now that I think of it, fashion does not last by definition and I feel stupid for not coming up with the same quote myself but oh well.
• ubermonkey 6y ago
  He's not wrong. Growth above all else is just toxic. In the dot-com era, I worked for a custom software shop. This was a time when you could quote $1MM for a dynamic web site, and get it. We built fancy marketing sites and then moved into other bespoke systems using mostly Java and a little Cold Fusion, and we did well in this niche in our region. But the C-suite got the growth bug, and I didn't have enough stock to stop it, and so we did this crazy land grab thing with outside investment and mergers with other smaller shops elsewhere (NYC, inevitably SF), and all of a sudden instead of a profitable regional player we were on a treadmill race with others (like Agency.com, etc) that really only had room for a couple "winners." If we'd stopped at 100-150 people, we could have been a very successful profitable player in Texas. And we'd probably either still be in business, or would have been acquired by somebody who wanted our client base (heavy O&G, obviously), and I'd have seen some upside. None of that happened because c-suite wanted to get big and go public and cash out with $20MM each or whatever. It was a dumb plan.
• wildermuthn 6y ago
  This is a sloppy argument that mixes virtue-signaling, cherry-picks anecdotes, and doesn’t address the core topic: is growth always good? There are many reasons a company might grow. One is that a company, flush with VC funding, effectively gives away money to buy customers and growth. I’m skeptical that there is enough VC money to buy hockey-stick growth, but if I’m incorrect, then the real issue is, “VC money is poisonous to the free-market,” and not that growth is cancerous. The other reason for growth is that a startup is making what people want. People might want it so badly that they will put up with buggy and incomplete products — as long as those products fulfill an unmet need. If what people want is shortsighted (gas guzzling devices?) or just wrong (short selling?), then yes, growth is cancerous. But again, the real issue is “the failure of Governmental regulation against unsafe or unethical products is cancerous.” The problems identified with growth are not essentially about companies. A company that is growing, given proper private and public regulation, is by definition providing more value to the world. So in some sense at least, the article is right — there are more important things than growth, if you simply add an adjective: legitimate growth.
  • moduspol 6y ago
    > is growth always good? Perhaps we are glossing over the real question: > is the pursuit of growth always good? And perhaps even more accurately: > is a strategy of not pursuing growth better for a company? I think this might lead to a more relevant discussion than is happening elsewhere in this thread. Besides--"perpetual growth" as a concept is on the same plane as "the customer is always right." It's not expected to be literally true, it's a mindset. If you're not trying to improve, you're likely stagnating or getting worse. If you're consistently at-odds with what your customer is expecting, it may mean you should be re-assessing how you're doing business. I think ultimately it is healthy for businesses to be constantly re-evaluating whether they can do more, or do it for less. And that's all "perpetual growth" means.
• api 6y ago
  Cancer is a concept with context: cellular behavior within a multicellular organism. Companies are not cells in a multicellular organism. They're a totally different thing, and you can't just drop context like that. Context-free reasoning by analogy is horrible. To illustrate, I'll give a more obviously and dangerously wrong example: humans are cells in the body of humanity, so therefore we should kill weaker and older humans for the same reason the body disposes of senescent cells. See the problem? That being said: there are definitely valid social criticisms of the idea that the only purpose of a company is shareholder value for the sake of shareholder value. This is part of why Elon has stated that SpaceX will not go public until they are flying to Mars; SpaceX has a purpose beyond just making money.
• MarkusWandel 6y ago
  "Go big or go home". This seems to be a uniquely north-American attitude. Germany, or maybe Europe, is full of so-called "Mittelstand" companies that are good in what they do, have 500-ish employees, have been in the same family ownership for generations and provide a good solid living for everyone involved. What is wrong with that? It goes without saying that staying mid-sized doesn't mean staying complacent, but you can innovate without growing huge. Here in Ottawa, there was a debacle a few years ago. A typical such company, Swiss Pastries, changed ownership or at least management. The new attitude was "grow at all costs", they overextended themselves, went bankrupt, and Swiss Pastries is no more. Ottawa now has no local source of soft pretzels along with other delicacies that they made. It's almost a scorched earth approach. If you can't make the company huge, you might as well destroy it, because not being huge means you've failed. The previous paragraph is based on reading a few news articles at the time. If I'm wrong, I'm guessing it still makes a textbook example of "go big or go home" going wrong and I'd love to see more details.
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  • lazide 6y ago
    Per my comment above - those industries tend to be government protected in a variety of different ways, and with all the fundamentals (sustainable company culture, most capital expenditures done, capital available as needed). It's essentially a sheltered niche. Germany is also quite 'stodgy' and not adopting many of the changes (social, technical, etc.) until things have been worked out. Which just isn't the way the US works. For better or worse, the US is the wild west in these issues. You end up with companies overextending themselves and blowing up (not just here of course), or companies not pushing hard enough and getting swallowed by or crushed by competitors - churn is harder, faster here, as is the adoption of new ideas. There is a reason Germany has essentially zero interesting tech companies, and it isn't because engineers don't like beer.
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• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I worked for 27 years, for a company (Japanese) that is over 100 years old. It is world-renowned, and one of the top brands in the world; a synonym for "Quality." I won't name it, because I don't want them to have to deal with my random stuff (although I won't say bad things about them). It's easy to figure out, if you care enough to look at my profile. Although I often had fierce disagreements with their management and engineering process, these folks had "Quality" in their DNA, and inculcated a basic mindset of quality in me. To this day, I actually get physically uncomfortable, if I know of bugs in my work. My goal is to write 100% bug-free software. We all know that's basically impossible, but it is possible to write software of such Quality, that the bug count approaches zero. In most cases, I don't bother setting up bug tracking systems, because the reports are so few that it's not worth the agita. GitHub Issues is fine for me. Most of the interactions that I have are about usability and UX. These tend to be more casual, and "back-and-forth," than formal bug reports. I have been sneered at for this attitude. I find that annoying, but it doesn't stop me. I'm currently working on a fairly ambitious project, where my approach is very much appreciated. I would be unable to do it, if I applied the typical "churn out crap to reach MVP" that seems to be de rigeur, in the industry. The Quality of my work, means that I can develop a platform, alone, that usually requires a team.
  • anchochilis 6y ago
    While this is an admirable approach in theory, I noticed you don't mention how much time (i.e., money) it takes you to implement a high-quality platform relative to people with lower quality standards. There are massive economic benefits to shipping something early but a little buggy or even incomplete. Does it take some of the artistry out of being a programmer? Sure! In fact the ability to compromise on quality, to tolerate a little technical debt, is a sign of maturity I look for when interviewing senior engineers. In software it's possible to waste months and months of engineering time endlessly iterating on the implementation in the name of "quality" while realizing minimal value to the business. For example, obsessively aiming for 100% test coverage, rewriting working code in accordance with a new fad style or framework, adding a new abstraction layer where it isn't required, etc. An engineer who refuses to fix a minor bug in a "crufty" part of the codebase without spending a month rewriting it from scratch is not the kind of engineer I want on my team -- it usually goes hand in hand with a lot of nitpicking on pull requests, overambitious designs, derailing of technical discussions. In other words, ego. It's not that I don't care about quality. It's just that I've worked with lots of people who equate quality with their own tastes, and they can be really unpleasant to work with. (Note: none of this is meant as a criticism of you, OP, more a general rant about the flip-side of "quality" in software engineering.)
• notacoward 6y ago
  Growth doesn't necessarily mean being the biggest. Unbounded growth is strongly analogous to cancer, but bounded growth up to a certain point is a valid way of getting to an ideal team size/composition, economy of scale, or customer-base diversification to limit risk. Back in 1989, I interviewed at a place called Daedalus something-or-other in Ann Arbor, MI. They had about a dozen employees crowded into an old Victorian house. They said that they had been around for more than a decade, never had anybody leave, and this was their first hire in a few years. They had a comfortable niche in desktop publishing (IIRC) and didn't particularly intend to grow beyond that. I guess nowadays we might call it a lifestyle business. I ended up going elsewhere, but even then - at 24 - I could see the appeal and sanity of such an approach. I wish there were more such companies, but the existence of VC-funded behemoths leaves precious little oxygen for more than a few.
  • danaris 6y ago
    I think it's about the difference between having your goal be "growth" and having your goal be "(grow to) have X customers and Y employees" or "(grow to) have $X profit per year". In the latter case, growth is a means to an end—a specific goal that is (at least potentially) achievable, and can yield a sustainable, profitable steady-state for the foreseeable future. In the former case, growth is seen as an end in itself—or, to the extent that it's a means, the end is simply "more profit, forever".
• villasv 6y ago
  I enjoyed the article and mostly agree with the authors opinions, but I think it glances over some important shifts in modern economies. 1) It is becoming increasingly hard to stay small if you have a competitor taking advantage of economies of scale and network effects. 2) It is becoming increasingly common for new sectors to discover economies of scale and network effects as digital transforms products and services. So from a game theoretical point of view, it is kind of inevitable that "being the best" will start to be shadowed by "being big" if size becomes relevant for survival. If you don't want to be part of something big, the alternative is to build something incredibly differentiated (like sake with 800 years of history). Basecamp is cited in the article and their approach is exactly this. They build something incredibly differentiated like Hey (a 100 USD/year email service). But "email services" is not a market with significant economies of scale nor network effects, Google and Microsoft would not offer such service for free if it was. But if you're interested in, say building a job board, where there are strong network effects. You'll never be able to be at peace regarding size. As soon as a direct competitor becomes bigger, you're in danger. There is room for a few medium size contenders, not infinitely many artisans with their slow-going shops. The thing is: if you open a sake brewery today, can you survive long enough to make it highly differentiated and earn your place in the market? Not an easy task. So I don't blame founders if most companies today are born with growth in mind. Some if it might be tunnel vision and articles like these are good to remind everyone that "big" is not the only option, but it's not like the other options are always feasible either.
• antoniuschan99 6y ago
  I agree with this article personally, but don’t economies (which comprise of businesses) have to grow to either compete or reduce inequality? Seeing how China is continuously growing at a higher rate, eventually that growth will outpace other economies proving the country a higher standard of living, technological advancement, and power. Vietnam just reported 3% growth which is good in 2020 when countries had negative growth, however, but it was growing at 7% the last few years. If it can’t sustain growth, the labour market won’t be healthy. In turn, inequality will rise, and social mobility will be depressed. In the article it mentions Japan a lot. I love Japan, but the stagnating economy (and aging population) is a very visible reason why 0 growth is a big issue.
  • ghoward 6y ago
    I'm no expert, so take what I say with a grain of salt. There are two ways economies can grow: * More customers. * More value. The first is obvious, just grow the population (and it's one reason a shrinking population is bad), but the second is more subtle. When someone invents a new product, say when the vacuum cleaner was invented, whether or not it adds value is determined by how much the product helps its user either: 1) Save time (so that more time can be spent creating something else of value). 2) Make something else of value possible. 3) Increase the quality of life. In the case of the vacuum, it does at least 2 and 3 (less dust is definitely better quality of life). But when it comes to growing economies, things that do number 1 and number 2 are huge. That was why the Industrial Revolution and Computer Revolution were so huge; both produced things that did 1 and 2. And because time was saved and not things became possible, those things started to get done, growing the economy. And all of that included companies growing big, but in the presence of 1 and 2, the growth of companies isn't necessary to grow the economy.
    • antoniuschan99 6y ago
      Very cool. Thank you for your explanation :)
      • ghoward 6y ago
• vpmpaul 6y ago
  Being good is hard. Being big is easy.
• lamename 6y ago
  Consider reading The Growth Delusion by David Pilling https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Delusion-Poverty-Well-Being-Nations/dp/0525572503 https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Delusion-Poverty-Well-Being-Na...
• julianlam 6y ago
  I have a feeling that historically, we've always put high-growth companies on a pedestal. It's not something that is unique or novel to this particular time. The way which companies GET there (via VC) is novel, yes, but companies have stood the test of time and toiled quietly building great products before, and they continue to do so now. The only reason you don't hear much about them isn't because we hype on high growth companies, but because slow careful growth isn't sexy, that's all.
• smcg 6y ago
  Shareholders and worker are always in direct conflict. Shareholders are always prioritized first. If your company takes money from investors, their wishes are always going to take precedent over everything else. And they want money. (Not that being self-funded is immune to wage theft. What we really need is more employee-owned cooperatives.)
  • andrekandre 6y ago
    > If your company takes money from investors, their wishes are always going to take precedent over everything else. i think this is a big part of where the "capital" in "capitalism" comes from. ownership and return on said capital ownership is the primary concern > And they want money. not just money, they want money as capital for further investments.... i am not an economist, but this seems to me where over financialization starts to loose the plot and go off the rails imo... eveything becomes about finanicial tools and "ownership" control to accumulate more capital, for capitals sake... this wrecks companies and economies alike
    • fuzzfactor 6y ago
      >this wrecks companies and economies alike I don't think it has to be this way, there was once more structural soundness. A good reason to get more consistent with terminology where the capital in capitalism actually just means "other peoples' money" and everything that implies which is different when other peoples' money is not involved. This never means that evil or greed needs to be involved in any way. Even Mr. Wonderful is not evil or greedy except when he wants to be. Those defects can be leveraged by capital or other resources to the same degree that beneficial characteristics could be. Now the other resources I like to look at as simply resources. When an entrepreneur makes a million after starting with $20,000 in wage savings that doesn't make him a capitalist to me even if he did it swimming in the same sea as capitalistic sharks, well though there can still be capitalistic lifebuoys sometimes too. They did it with their own resources, often with a rate of return which investing capitalists hardly ever get. So as much as you would like to think of yourself as a capitalist, if you are just a wage earner or at the other end of the spectrum, a resource heir who is not deploying their resources at the time under other peoples' (hopefully) responsible management, I don't think so. This really narrows the field since even the most capitalistic countries have only a very small percentage of citizens, especially among wage earners, benefitting the most from the direct use of other people's money, so it can drive entire financial systems to prosperity without including wage-earners. Capitalism can be the best thing since sliced bread while still being out-of-reach for those who don't already have the resources to make it to the bread line. It's not very much of a capitalist country if there's only a very small minority of citizens benefitting from the capitalism. Shadow of what it could be. When a non-capitalist entrepreneur does take on funds from other people, that can turn them into a capitalist for the first time in their life. This is not always looked at this way but it can have some interesting effects. They and their funder become capitalists together, and should have a forseeable bright future together but it's not supposed to be the same after that. Limited runways, more consequential deadlines or milestones, new and different financial controls and more are often all normal expectations. The requirement for good stewardship and growth of the capital as intended by the entrepreneur can sometimes best be unlike the handling of other key resources, bigger or smaller, whether cash or not. On the other side of the coin the investing capitalist should take growing responsibility for good stewardship of the relationship with the entrepreneur that made it possible for the investment to be made in the first place. And good stewardship of backup resources if further capital deployment is intended, or to avoid the need for unanticipated capital withdrawl. So that new coin can be utilized in the most worthwhile way possible for all concerned. It doesn't need to grow beyond belief, but if it shrinks too much too long it's gone. Either way financial failures can occur that would not have to happen. So I always prefer value-added action over pure financial positioning. That way the bigger it gets more wealth can actually be created compared to that banked, as opposed to merely taking a cut when previously existing wealth is just creatively reshuffled.
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• 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  One factor that plays an important role in justifying growth is scale. Scale provides lower costs so that sellers have more pricing flexibility. Pricing flexibility provides resilience. For example, Starbucks vs. Red Rock Coffee. Scale enables Starbucks to enjoy lower costs for just about all elements of their business and thereby withstand economic cycles. Scale enables them to introduce 'lifestyle' products into their stores. Scale enables them to experiment with more new ideas. It provides them with more data on customer behavior to guide pricing, product introduction, as well as on how to set wages and structure employee benefits. To be sure, scale also presents business challenges that Red Rock will never see. Product consistency among stores, supply chain management, public financial reporting and all the associated liabilities are non-issues for Red Rock. I'd also point out, as several others have, that electronics and computing introduce an element of ephemeris into all businesses. Drinking sake is almost a ritual. Ritual relies on heritage in order to be meaningful. Hence, by its nature, it's not to change and claiming an 850 year legacy makes it all the more meaningful. The smartphone in your pocket has the inverse attribute. The older it gets, the more likely you'll infer scorn from your colleagues.
• Cyberthal 6y ago
  There is no need to be the best, either. Look at an ecosystem. Do organisms need to try to be the "best"? Of course not. Businesses are similar to organisms. They compete in an ecosystem to convert syntropy to entropy.
• Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
  One of my all-time favourite quotes: > Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of Wall Street types why his company is not interested in “monetizing” his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates — and not so much to make money. > Wendy Davis of MediaPost describes the presentation as a “a culture clash of near-epic proportions.” She recounts how UBS analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to maximize revenue. It doesn’t, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know this). “That definitely is not part of the equation,” he said, according to MediaPost. “It’s not part of the goal.” https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/craigslist-meets-the-capitalists/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/craigslist-meets-the...