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I’m picking out two statements that seem questionable. The rest of what you say, I am in agreement with. > Tesla does not have a special advantage over other

by zepto 5y ago

I’m picking out two statements that seem questionable. The rest of what you say, I am in agreement with. > Tesla does not have a special advantage over other car makers. This seems like the least accurate of your statements. Tesla has a very different engineering culture to other car makers and a very different outlook on what it is trying to achieve. Culture is impossible to replicate. This is very similar to the advantage Apple had in early 2000s, and is very real. > Historically innovation has almost always come from small companies. Does it? What makes you say this? It’s hard to think of examples.

smackeyacky 5y ago
Apple is a great example of innovation coming from a small company at the start. Although to be more precise, it was the application of somebody elses innovation they got right (and more importantly, got the timing right). It took Apple and the other personal computer companies a couple of tries to get their product fit and pricing right but when it happened they created an entirely new market segment. The only really big player in that segment for a long time was Tandy. Big companies all start small, they innovate their way to big and then start crushing innovation in every way they can in their market segment, which makes them stagnant and leaves room for new innovations from small companies to take over. It happens over 10, 20 and even 50 year time frames depending on how good the big companies are at crushing innovation (buying them out, pricing them out etc). As a small company, your best bet is start in some niche they don't notice until you get big enough that you can't go away any more. Which brings us back to the Apple 2.
- zepto 5y ago
  Yes, it’s almost the only example anyone can think of, and yes, I agree that the Apple 2 was good product innovation and identified a new segment. However that segment was transient. The business use case in the medium term was far better served by the IBM PC, which all but eliminated the use of the Apple 2 as anything more than a home computer. The Mac, of course, was largely based on innovations made by Xerox, then a giant corporation, who licensed them to Apple on ludicrously favorable terms. This was an example of Jobs as a great dealmaker. Of course Apple built on top of the innovation they bought, but without Xerox there would have been no Mac.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Well then, compaq is another great example. Quickest company to a billion in sales at the time. Built an IBM clone on venture capital and IBM ignored them until they were first to market with a 386, managed to kill the PS/2 architecture and became.the industry trend setter in desktops for a decade. Every american household had an RCA product at one time, dominant electronic manufacturer torn to shreds by upstart Japanese minnows who became giants (Sony, Pioneer). Tandy, once a minnow, then an innovative giant in PCs killed dead by Dell and other startup clone makers. Yahoo and AOL murdered by a tiny startup called Google. Digital Equipment Corporation, once giant killers themselves in minicomputers, a segment they defined with the pdp and vax machines, slaughtered by upstart Sun Microsystems. The examples are literally endless.
    - zepto 5y ago
      These aren’t examples of ‘innovation’ coming from small startups at all. All you’ve really shown is that startups can be successful sometimes, and simply ignored the fact that large companies keep going and in fact do keep innovating. Take Google for example. AOL wasn’t murdered by Google at all. It was murdered by the internet. Yahoo, wasn’t murdered by Google either. It simply made bad investments. Google on the other hand, came up with one excellent innovation as a startup. But everything else they have done, they did as a giant company. Google proves that almost all innovation comes from large companies.
      - smackeyacky 5y ago
        Maybe pick up a book now and again. Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Android being the most obvious one. Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live.
        zepto 5y ago
        > Maybe pick up a book now and again. Maybe try reading the HN guidelines. > Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Obviously false. They bought technologies from startups, but those products didn’t stand on their own. Maps is the obvious example. > Android being the most obvious one. If you had any idea what Android was before Google bought it you wouldn’t say this. I do. I saw it. > Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live. Do you even know what Yahoo and AOL were? Yahoo was a web directory, and later a portal. That wasn’t killed by Google. Indeed Google was offered for sale to Yahoo for $1M. What killed Yahoo was just not being good at business. AOL was a dial up information service that pre-dated the consumer internet. It had groups and communication services and in fact everything it needed to be Facebook. Failure to adapt to the internet killed AOL. Not Google.

by zepto 5y ago

smackeyacky 5y ago

Apple is a great example of innovation coming from a small company at the start. Although to be more precise, it was the application of somebody elses innovation they got right (and more importantly, got the timing right). It took Apple and the other personal computer companies a couple of tries to get their product fit and pricing right but when it happened they created an entirely new market segment. The only really big player in that segment for a long time was Tandy. Big companies all start small, they innovate their way to big and then start crushing innovation in every way they can in their market segment, which makes them stagnant and leaves room for new innovations from small companies to take over. It happens over 10, 20 and even 50 year time frames depending on how good the big companies are at crushing innovation (buying them out, pricing them out etc). As a small company, your best bet is start in some niche they don't notice until you get big enough that you can't go away any more. Which brings us back to the Apple 2.

zepto 5y ago
Yes, it’s almost the only example anyone can think of, and yes, I agree that the Apple 2 was good product innovation and identified a new segment. However that segment was transient. The business use case in the medium term was far better served by the IBM PC, which all but eliminated the use of the Apple 2 as anything more than a home computer. The Mac, of course, was largely based on innovations made by Xerox, then a giant corporation, who licensed them to Apple on ludicrously favorable terms. This was an example of Jobs as a great dealmaker. Of course Apple built on top of the innovation they bought, but without Xerox there would have been no Mac.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Well then, compaq is another great example. Quickest company to a billion in sales at the time. Built an IBM clone on venture capital and IBM ignored them until they were first to market with a 386, managed to kill the PS/2 architecture and became.the industry trend setter in desktops for a decade. Every american household had an RCA product at one time, dominant electronic manufacturer torn to shreds by upstart Japanese minnows who became giants (Sony, Pioneer). Tandy, once a minnow, then an innovative giant in PCs killed dead by Dell and other startup clone makers. Yahoo and AOL murdered by a tiny startup called Google. Digital Equipment Corporation, once giant killers themselves in minicomputers, a segment they defined with the pdp and vax machines, slaughtered by upstart Sun Microsystems. The examples are literally endless.
  - zepto 5y ago
    These aren’t examples of ‘innovation’ coming from small startups at all. All you’ve really shown is that startups can be successful sometimes, and simply ignored the fact that large companies keep going and in fact do keep innovating. Take Google for example. AOL wasn’t murdered by Google at all. It was murdered by the internet. Yahoo, wasn’t murdered by Google either. It simply made bad investments. Google on the other hand, came up with one excellent innovation as a startup. But everything else they have done, they did as a giant company. Google proves that almost all innovation comes from large companies.
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      Maybe pick up a book now and again. Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Android being the most obvious one. Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live.
      - zepto 5y ago
        > Maybe pick up a book now and again. Maybe try reading the HN guidelines. > Google did stop innovating, all the subsequent progress they made aside from gmail was acquisition of startups. Obviously false. They bought technologies from startups, but those products didn’t stand on their own. Maps is the obvious example. > Android being the most obvious one. If you had any idea what Android was before Google bought it you wouldn’t say this. I do. I saw it. > Yahoo and AOL were killed by google, i am old enough to have seen that play out live. Do you even know what Yahoo and AOL were? Yahoo was a web directory, and later a portal. That wasn’t killed by Google. Indeed Google was offered for sale to Yahoo for $1M. What killed Yahoo was just not being good at business. AOL was a dial up information service that pre-dated the consumer internet. It had groups and communication services and in fact everything it needed to be Facebook. Failure to adapt to the internet killed AOL. Not Google.