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"Over the past 10 years, technological advances dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great comp
by akkartik 15y ago
"Over the past 10 years, technological advances dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been."
Not quite, because technology has chipped away at least a little bit at the number of fork-in-the-road decisions that can't be undone. If a choice is easily undone it's not really a choice anymore. You can just try both options, in series or in parallel.
- ca136 15y agoTrying multiple options in series or in parallel is often not the best business decision. What type of choices are easily undone by new technology?
- akkartik 15y agoThe technological choices are the obvious ones. Should we build on this platform or that one? They're probably not the highest priority in the grand scheme, but their effects are also most systematically underestimated, I think. As technologies add leverage the same number of people can do more. So you can get away with hiring less, and run less risk of needing to close down divisions. Or you can raise less money and run less risk of too-many-cooks syndrome in the boardroom. I'm sure these considerations are more obvious in small internet startups that are struggling to get off the ground. My point was just that you don't need quite the same amount of courage as before because at least a few life-or-death decisions have been taken off the table.