12 ms·

Sean Parker: “Little Startups Are Ridiculously OverFunded”

171 points by llambda 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
chegra84 15y ago
I think what happens is the price of an engineer has gone up. Engineer starts a start-up, big company buys start-up at a million per Engineer - Everybody happy.
ghc 15y ago
How exactly does he expect the internet to consolidate like the PC industry? How can the internet consolidate?
- byoung2 15y ago
  How exactly does he expect the internet to consolidate like the PC industry? How can the internet consolidate? He said the internet industry would consolidate like the PC industry did. We can see that happening already, with the trend of big companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft acquiring smaller companies to fill voids in their product offerings, talent pool, etc. Google is the definite poster child for consolidation, having bought YouTube, DoubleClick, GrandCentral, etc.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  It's happening already. Salesforce is buying up a bunch of different online b2b tools. Google is trying Google+, integrated Google Voice. Skype and MS. Facebook places. Games are growing on social networks instead of standalone flash game sites. Techcrunch is bought by AOL.
  - jbjohns 15y ago
    So what? New ones also spring up and sometimes the new ones are big enough to eat the old ones. From what I can see, the market is in a continuous state of expand->consolidate->repeat.
- wisty 15y ago
  Simple. Everyone standardizes on the same OS (Linux, or maybe Windows if you want .Net or MSSQL) and the same infrastructure (EC2 or equivalent). Then you run your apps on there. Facebook and Twitter are becoming infrastructure too (or at least, their login systems are), but not necessarily profitable ones. Sure, they'll tell the advertisers that I'm a left-handed avocado farmer in New Orleans, but it will be the content providers who'll know when I'm looking for a book of funny kitten jokes
- jbigelow76 15y ago
  What I'm wondering is, how do more and smaller startups equate to eventual consolidation? His preference seems to be that engineers would elect to become agents or enablers of consolidation by joining the very companies that have the scale to consolidate a market. His two points don't seem to have any intersection that I can see.
  - forzano 15y ago
    "What I'm wondering is, how do more and smaller startups equate to eventual consolidation?" It doesn't, if anything it slows down any eventuality of it. He's saying it does to try and scare talent on the fence and talent that has already gone the startup route by saying its a misguided and futile effot. Ask yourself this, if this big companies werent hurting because of these loses, would they waste time making the comments in the first place? Its cheaper to try scare tactics then to offer them more money.
earl 15y ago
"The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook, and they in turn will have a hard time attracting the best talent because those people can get funded to start their own projects as well." Obviously I just read TC's article and didn't see what Parker said, but what's notably missing from that statement is any discussion about what is best, or highest expected value, for the engineer or designer. It's obviously better for Facebook/Google/Yahoo/et al if great engineers and designers have to work for them because they can't get funding. It's not obvious this leads to better outcomes for the people in question. It kind of feels like Parker is talking his book. edit: formatting
- arthurgibson 15y ago
  As many have mentioned this is just whining from a guy who has a vested interested in a big company spending lots on payroll and acq-hires. The flip-side this creates a better market for younger or less-experienced engineers who are looking to learn and grow. This group of people will never be able to get a job with Facebook, but can certainly join a company who is willing to grow with them.
- lbarrow 15y ago
  Exactly. I'm not in a position to comment on the amount of funding in the early-stage startup world, but this particular comment by Parker reads like another executive whining that engineers are too independent.
  - davidhansen 15y ago
    Not just the independence aspect, but the hubris with which he complains about the most brilliant minds choosing to not work on, well, a social network site. It's 2011; we are traversing inflection points of development in solar energy, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and seeing the early, dramatic fruits of stem cell research, and Parker is bitching that the best of the best aren't keen on improving software that shares drunk photos and your latest opinion of Kim Kardashian's divorce? Wow. Just, wow.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook.... then ....Whoever wins the revolution builds a bureaucracy.” And what will end up happening is the big powers will control the tech industry In others, many talented developers are better off going to work for FB or GGL and help them get quicker to a position of total control.
MatthewB 15y ago
Thinking in the most simplistic form possible - how about engineers just doing what makes them the most happy? Forget about whether we could provide more value at an established company. Maybe building our own products is our passion. That alone will drive more value than doing something we're not passionate about. Just a thought. Whether early stage startups are overvalued is a different topic to be discussed.
- orblivion 15y ago
  Again that drains talent, though, if they're working on it full time.
  - jbjohns 15y ago
    Good. No one has the right to having employees. If you want employees, you pay what it takes to attract them. Parker is trying to manipulate the market here to get prices down to what he wants to be paying.
    - orblivion 15y ago
      Yeah I was going to respond with a point based on economics, but I think you have me here. The point I was responding to was about value for the engineer. If the engineer creates a lot of value from working for themselves, it would just take that many more dollars to pull them away from it. (This has applied to me as well.)
StuffMaster 15y ago
He paints a picture of “Google pretending to be Switzerland, but doing back deals with everyone, and Apple being left alone to build the Deathstar.”Guess where that will leave most startups. Nice analogy. Time to move to Dantooine and work on my X-wing startup.
- 9999 15y ago
  Dude, are you sure you want to do that? I've got this buddy that's got this crazy thing going on on some gas giant. They're way past angel stage, they've got catered meals every day, a band practice room, a fooz ball table, and a carbonite freezing chamber.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  1. X-Wing startup -- great idea 2. Dantooine -- this will put a hard, violent limit on the length of your startup's runway, perhaps choose a different location?
- lordlicorice 15y ago
  Meanwhile I'll be harvesting Kolto and cutting back-room deals to sell to both the Republic and the Sith.
PabloOsinaga 15y ago
I don't see what's wrong with larger companies having a hard time attracting talent. A good read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm As transaction costs go down (in general), it makes less sense for us as a society to have production/value creation organized in larger organizations (firms, companies, etc) - instead in a bunch of independent smaller groups. Companies only exist to minimize transaction costs.
- radagaisus 15y ago
  I learned something new today. thanks.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Companies only exist to minimize transaction costs. I think this is a bit of an overstatement. Another purpose of companies is to provide the benefits of a command economy (e.g., the ability of a great leader to jump from a local to global maxima) with less of the dangers of a command economy (great leader robs/kills you, poor planning screws everyone over). E.g., central planning in the food supply can work reasonably well, but this is hardly guaranteed. Market discipline gives us the benefits of McDonald's 5 year plan, but a McBankruptcy rather than Soviet Union style food shortages if the 5 year plan fails.
  - sinope 15y ago
    You have completely misunderstood the OP. Stop writing and re-read.
  - justincormack 15y ago
    That is a bizarre argument though, you are saying that capitalism works fine so long as companies are run as soviet states? The Soviet Union showed basically no benefits to the command economy... And the great leaders of large businesses look rather more like command economy leaders than products of a free market. I think you need a better argument than that that large corporations are here to stay, not a passing fad due to factors like transaction costs... There have been few great leaders running large corporates, although not none, and many people just enriching themselves for doing little.
jroseattle 15y ago
What Sean left out was -- overfunded for whom? He implied it, but didn't say it: the bigger dogs in the fight (Facebook/Twitter/Google) have to compete for talent like everyone else. The overfunding is mostly a problem for those larger tech companies, not the little guys.
- chwahoo 15y ago
  I suspect he means that investors are overvaluing small startups (relative to their chances of becoming successful). The consequence he worries about is that having too much funding available makes the opportunity too appealing to the best engineers, making it harder for ventures that will succeed to keep/attract talent.
  - jroseattle 15y ago
    His arguments seem a big reach, though. Lots of investment means opportunity recognition, and there are a finite number of engineers, so supply/demand takes it course. He's arguing against capitalism, and not making a very good one at that. While trying to sell this as an industry-wide issue, I suspect his real concerns are more immediate -- for his own ventures.
    - chwahoo 15y ago
      He's not arguing against capitalism. He's saying that the market is currently overvaluing certain kinds of businesses, causing resources to be misallocated. That's it. You may be right that he is either wrong or making his argument for self-serving reasons. Or he might be right.
AdamFernandez 15y ago
So I wonder if Sean Parker actually believes this, or if he is just frustrated by a lack of engineers available for his larger backed companies. Either way he doesn't look great making comments like this.
AznHisoka 15y ago
I love it when someone who no longer has to participate in the rat race is admonishing others to stay in it. So easy for them to say this..
spitfire 15y ago
Each day, I thank god for all these useful idiots in SV. They're madly running a rat race to build the next social widget. Throwing off useful technology I can use to serve the vast wasteland ignored by them. Thank you Sean Parker.
- allantyoung 15y ago
  Care to elaborate? I just found your comment interesting but I'd like to know what you're talking about.
  - robryan 15y ago
    Sounds like he means the open source tools startups are generating can be used to target areas they are ignoring.
    - mdda 15y ago
      In that case "useful idiots" is a bit harsh (and not accurate from my reading of [1]). The creation of this much open source software is a true public good. The people producing it (both at small companies and big ones) may be working away at misguided projects, but it's wonderful that as a byproduct they're producing software useable by everyone. In the future, it may be obvious that the open-source side-effects of this SV generation were more value-creating than the businesses created directly. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
tom13311321 15y ago
So his argument is that we should start building the consolidated Internet bureaucracy now? The problem isn't overfunding small startups, it's going after markets that are all hype and have little to do with innovation. Our smartest engineers should be working on ARPA-funded energy projects not how to create a new feature to keep Facebook relevant.
101000101 15y ago
Sean Parker is ridiculously overfunded.
- doorty 15y ago
  That's the right answer.
ericd 15y ago
This isn't just whining. My theory is that 500 2 person companies have a worse chance at making a real splash than if the 100 best ideas from that group had 10 good people working on them. That's part of what he's saying - it's harder now for good startups to grow when everyone wants to and is incentivized to make their own web startup. The other part he's saying is that people can have a larger marginal impact on the world working at a place like Facebook than they could in their own startup. For the median case, this is true.
- a3camero 15y ago
  Facebook was once one of those startups.
  - AdamFernandez 15y ago
    That is exactly right. I would actually be very surprised if he believed what he was saying considering everything he has seen and been involved with. To say things will consolidate and stop as they are is extremely short sighted for one so experienced in these matters.
  - ericd 15y ago
    The funding environment has changed quite a lot since then. YC didn't even exist when FB started. And FB would clearly be in that 100, given the massive growth it had. For every potential FB, there are lots of borderline useless apps that get funding, and wouldn't have when FB was first funded. Those people could have instead been working on FB. He's not complaining that startups are getting funding, he's saying that the overavailability of funding is acting as a repulsive force, keeping engineers from grouping up. Whether that's a bad thing on the balance, I'm not sure, but it's not an unmitigated good.
  - nandemo 15y ago
    And so was Napster, his first company.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  > My theory is that 500 2 person companies have a worse chance at making a real splash than if the 100 best ideas from that group had 10 good people working on them. I wonder if there is an opportunity for matchmaker investors to scoop up like-minded startups and consolidate early companies to build those 100 10-person winners.
zackb 15y ago
Here's the video. http://www.livestream.com/techonomy/video?clipId=pla_5c88e446-0468-4f33-a7ee-721ff5176f68 http://www.livestream.com/techonomy/video?clipId=pla_5c88e44...
- zackb 15y ago
  About 30 minutes in
biggitybones 15y ago
I was at an event in NYC several months back where a mid-stage VC said the same thing (blanking on his name) but specifically regarding the NYC community. It was an angle I hadn't thought about and initially had the same negative reaction to as someone in the midst of an early stage company. For later round investors it's undoubtedly in their interest to encourage these engineers to join larger firms rather than being on their own. In NYC it's especially competitive given the competition between more mature companies, early stage startups and the money wielding finance industry. The combination could lead to a 'glass ceiling' of sorts for larger companies because of the inability to attract talent; that is, until some of the smaller companies fail and these individual engineers likely end up at a larger spot. It mirrors the consolidation of an industry. It just takes longer than some investors (like Parker) would prefer, which is the inspiration for statements like this.
- mdda 15y ago
  Or the market price of talent goes up : The value being created by engineers is recognized by the financial institutions, so why shouldn't tech companies pay up too? [ And I'm thinking Facebook before people get on my case about financial companies creating value in the real world... ]
pitdesi 15y ago
I think he's right, for the most part. It's also interesting that a lot of these startups end up with "successful" exits where their technology isn't used at all (ie talent acquisition for FB/Goog, etc). I don't know if there should be a correction for that, but I sometimes feel that it leads to people building for the sake of building until they get acquired. Interestingly, we (http://feefighters.com http://feefighters.com) had 2 of our 4 interns leave us in the past week because they got accepted to YC (2 different projects). I guess we should feel good because we're picking smart people who want to work for us, but we'd rather have them with us!
- robryan 15y ago
  Even if the product isn't used on many occasions, the best aspects of it and the teachings from running it often are. I think the aquihires allow experimentation that would be hard to achieve within the acquiring company. The aspect I dislike is when startups say that they are in for the long haul then sell a few months later. Makes it hard to trust a startup that the investment in time you spend to get up and running on their product will be worth it.
jpdoctor 15y ago
I think a point that got missed in the discussion: The reason that this situation is occurring is that money is flowing into the sector at a fair clip. Make hay when the sun shines. It will start raining in the future, and there might not be a lot of warning.
tryitnow 15y ago
Yes, he's right, but let's put this in context. There are probably a lot of talented engineers who are doing startups now who shouldn't be. The problem is how do we know who is going to be a good entrepreneur and who is not? We don't. The only way we know is by doing it, which is what a lot of talent is doing. I think many startup founders are a bit grounded in reality and know that they face real possibilities of failure. Just as long as they keep this in mind and don't become obsessed with caviar dreams, then I see no harm done. Being an entrepreneur is one way for an engineer to develop non-technical skillsets and learn something about himself in the process. Let's not forget that this entrepreneurial activity is forcing the big guys (Google, FB, etc) to be more innovative than they would otherwise be - either to attract talent or to compete with startups.
georgemcbay 15y ago
I don't think he is completely wrong but I think this is just another (higher-end) instance of the age-old tradition of companies saying it is too difficult to find engineers while being unwilling to pay fair value for said engineers. To be clear, I know that Facebook does pay quite well by industry standards (offset somewhat by the bay area cost of living) for top talent, but if this situation is causing them an issue then what they are paying (or offering in general -- money isn't always the only thing) still isn't enough.
- nestlequ1k 15y ago
  There's a certain type of personality (very prevalent in the valley) who won't work for a big company like facebook, twitter, or google for any amount of money. I would imagine these types of people make up the majority of the YC class. Maybe they'll get bought via a talent acquisition but as soon as their golden handcuffs are off, they are out doing their own thing again. The reason they allow themselves to get bought via talent acquisition is to be able to easily raise money in the future. I think Sean Parker is reacting to these types of people. I think the misconception is that the increased funding sources is what is driving these people. I would suggest that they were always there, but 5 years ago they were just living poor and working their ass off to build a startup (usually unsuccessfully). I do believe I'm part of this group. There's no amount of money that would compel me to take a corporate job. Sometimes money isn't what matters.
  - rick888 15y ago
    I'm part of this group too. It's less about money and more about freedom to me. The freedom to work on what I choose and the near complete control I get over my own destiny. No matter how good it is at a company like Facebook or Google, there will always be a point where they make you realize they have control over you. Whether it's working on a project you hate, ridiculous corporate policies, or having to kiss the ass of your manager. I've done it all for the past 15 years at a few different companies and I finally just got sick of it.
  - lansing 15y ago
    You claim that this class of people won't work for a "big company" for "any amount of money," yet in the next breath you admit that they will work for those companies in the context of a "talent acquisition." What is a "talent acquisition" if not an alternate mode of compensation to persuade individuals to "take a corporate job" who previously considered themselves above such positions? Yeah, it sounds more impressive to tell people "we got bought by X" instead of "I took a job with X," but either way they've "gone corporate." You're still dealing with the same endless HR meetings, PHBs, "culture," etc, as all the other "drones." Yes, a good number of such "acquisition hires" leave after earn-out is complete, typically two to four years. This is actually a fairly lengthy of time for any high-value employee to hold any position in the valley these days, startup or not.
sector 15y ago
Startups are akin to an MBA. Running a small but ambitious company forces a serious, motivated founder to think about every business function. I don't see any meaningful downside for the founders who choose to spend some time on this task, and I see a lot of upside. Parker's complaints strike me as absurd. If he really believes they can have more impact at FaceBook, he should find a way to create special purpose vehicles within FB that allow founders to get equity in the work of a small team, rather than just getting .00005% of the sum of FaceBook.
wavephorm 15y ago
Parker suggests that one reason it will end badly is because the Internet industry will ultimately consolidate just like the PC industry did in the 1980s and 1990s. Why? Why does the future have to be like the past? As rich and well connected Sean Parker is, he cannot predict the future. Coincidently given his stature it makes him probably the least qualified to predict what will ultimately happen in the computing industry. There is no reason the computing industry cannot be more flat than it has in the past. I believe it is highly likely the industry will continue to fragment. Android, IOS, Windows7, BBX... there will be more platforms in the future, not less. More diversification, not less. The game has changed forever, as it should.
- brc 15y ago
  People tend to forget the big got big in those days partly because of control over distribution channels. It was incredibly difficult for a small software company to break into large amounts of sales if they didn't have both retail and enterprise reach. I wouldn't be surprised to see a smaller set of niche hardware companies pop up going against that trend, and I certainly see the state of software at the moment fragmenting further, not consolidating more. While Facebook and Google theoretically are dominating the distribution channels again, in reality those channels can be leveraged by smaller players easily. As if every boxed windows copy in 1995 had an empty slot where you could put your own company at low cost.
  - wavephorm 15y ago
    Absolutely. The web and now HTML5 completely obliterate the old school mentality that you need to have conventional sales channels, and ancient business models to suceed. Any of these "big wigs" that think Apple and Google will dominate forever will be proven wrong.
- biggitybones 15y ago
  The issue with fragmentation that ultimately leads to consolidation is the cost incurred by companies and developers to support all of these platforms. I can't tell you how much it pains me as an android user to see an app only available for the iPhone. As a developer, it's magnitudes worse to have to send messages to my users saying "we'll be getting to an [x] platform app soon!" when realistically it just stunts our growth to develop the same thing 3 times. I can't wait for the end of this native app nonsense.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
kalvin_ridejoy 15y ago
Pretty sure it's not a coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg emphasized a related message at Startup School ("don't start a company unless you're really, really passionate about it"). Facebook, like every other tech company in the valley, is having trouble hiring enough engineers, and this is a campaign to make would-be founders think twice.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  I think they're very different messages. Sean Parker's message comes off as more self-serving - saying don't start a company because it's not as good for the world as joining one that can effect change to a greater degree. Zuckerberg's comment was about not starting a company for the sake of it, the same message PG had and a very good one. Start a company because they're the most efficient vehicle to solve a problem you care about. Don't fabricate some problem that doesn't exist because you want to start a company.
tlogan 15y ago
His comment about "go work at Facebook" is just talking his book. However, he is right about that the internet will consolidate as it matures. However, we should not forget as soon as consolidation happens in a certain industry the very next thing what happen is disruption. So yes PC industry is consolidated, but whoever got of the PC train and jump on iPhone/iPad/Android did good.
psychotik 15y ago
At Startup School, the Sequoia guy showed a bunch of slides which had two main points highlighted: - Companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn raised very modest amounts of funding and has multi-billion dollar IPOs - Cost of creating a company (and associated technology) is down over 90% from what it was back when a lot of these companies were started. Given these two, it's amazing to see VCs pouring in millions into startups that have nowhere near the valuation they invest at. Color is the most famous example, but there are tons of other startups raising $2-5M at pretty ridiculous valuations. If you consider that in light what Sean Parker says, regardless of his vested interest in engineering talent going to companies he's backed, it feel like what he's saying makes sense. Companies are ridiculously over funded, and VCs are doing a disservice to their investors as well as to their portfolio companies by giving more money than they need.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  >Cost of creating a company (and associated technology) is down over 90% from what it was back when a lot of these companies were started. The costs in terms of equipment and developer talent may be smaller than they were in the mid-late 90s, but the market is much more crowded now. I don't know that those savings aren't offset by the required marketing and PR efforts necessary to differentiate your company from all of its other "social web 2.0 tweet-a-riffic" competitors.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  Valuations are set by the current value of the company and the projected outcome. Lower costs to launch and iterate actually increase the likelihood of success, as well as mean that net margins can be higher than if you had to invest in significant infrastructure. The fact that you don't need very much money and will be able to try all kinds of things on a shoestring budget is exactly why valuations are so high. Since VCs still want the traditional 20-40% of companies, they give them more money than they need out of their own desire to take a big stake - not because the valuation is out of whack. Said another way, the less a company needs your money, the more you have to pay to get in.
- jbjohns 15y ago
  >Companies are ridiculously over funded, and VCs are doing a disservice to their investors as well as to their portfolio companies by giving more money than they need. No they're not. They're following the market. If they were doing a disservice to their investors, do you think the investors would just sit back and lose millions?
benmathes 15y ago
If you think an engineer or product designer is better incentivized to do their own thing and you want to hire them away to BigCorp, you need to change your compensation offerings.
T_S_ 15y ago
Basically he's saying investors are dumb for making it hard for his now large company to hire engineers. Get out the violins.
freemarketteddy 15y ago
What he is basically trying to say is that your chances of achieving "success" or "making an impact" is better if you work for Mark Zuckerberg than try to become (someone like)Mark Zuckerberg. Wow what a narrow definition of success!For example by working for facebook how can I get every child in third world countries to get a decent education?How can I get every woman in rural india to break free from male dominance? My respect for Parker just took a strong hit!
tomlin 15y ago
Having trouble hiring talented people seems to be a pretty good problem to have. The logic is flawed - from a guy who stuck his middle-finger at various large companies while working at the helm of Napster. I think the new economy (eventually, hopefully) will be many small companies with a handful of people (read: democracy) calling their own shots, more creative freedom and an interconnectivity with other small companies that spits in the face of fear-based competitive angst and eventually creates a real revolution that more of us are proud of rather than this disgusting idea that we all should work for the Umbrella Corporation.
dylangs1030 15y ago
I disagree entirely. Here's why: 1. Social psychology shows us that, smaller, more focused groups perform better and have superior productivity to larger groups, which tend to become disorganized and derailed. (http://sgr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/247.abstract http://sgr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/247.abstract) Startups tend to have fewer employees (this is universal), and, even in hugely successful companies like Google, work is divided into highly productive nuclei of coordinated, amicable teams. This is a trend that repeats in very successful companies, and when startups pick up and start gaining more employees, though they decentralize, the "small team > big force" mentality remains. 2. If you outsource all the miscellaneous things a company needs to do to get a product out, you find that a) each of those outsourced functions is done on a much more quality level than if the company tried to do it all on its own, b) the company doing the outsourcing can focus more on its principal product. This actually spreads the wealth and improved productivity for every company involved. (http://www.industryweek.com/articles/breaking_the_rules__when_business_needs_drive_the_outsourcing_of_specialized_business_processes_24780.aspx http://www.industryweek.com/articles/breaking_the_rules__whe...) I could see why Sean Parker would be a bit concerned, but, really, I think the explosion of new startups is fantastic for the overall quality of products.
- gaius 15y ago
  each of those outsourced functions is done on a much more quality level than if the company tried to do it all on its own Ho ho ho. There is a long, long list of companies who have discovered to their cost, the opposite. And amusingly, it's getting longer.
donaldc 15y ago
His complaint that more engineers won't go to work for larger tech companies instead of either working for smaller startups or starting their own company is rather hypocritical. A cursory read of his wikipedia page shows that he has never joined a large tech company.
kirillzubovsky 15y ago
"The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook..." - says Sean Parker, the guy who owns between 2 and 7% of Facebook. Well yes, of course.
scottdw2 15y ago
This is shit. I heard something similar from Joel Spolsky not that long ago. It's like a George Wallace speech. The old guard, giving speeches targeted at the "do nothing class", urging them to help suppress a revolution.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
It is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion. All good things in life comes from collaboration with others as much as individual contributions, but there is nothing that says that collaboration has to be imposed by a external force, like with a company. The world has ruled before with open collaboration like science, and what we call "open source", "open hardware" today. BTW, if I could do anything to destroy the vision that all the world is going to be controlled by oligopoly juggernauts and bureaucracies, I will, including creating new companies or helping young people to renew the landscape, as facebook or Google did(when companies success in a free market, next they want to destroy it).
shareme 15y ago
more interesting concern.. What happens when all the developers with extremely low debt loads are snapped up by the Big firms to start-ups attempting to acquire tech co-founders and dev talent? It is not that anyone is over funded, its that those with low debt loads and dev talent is in fact a finite amount and when its gone from the market prices adjust upwards..

171 points by llambda 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

I think what happens is the price of an engineer has gone up. Engineer starts a start-up, big company buys start-up at a million per Engineer - Everybody happy.

ghc 15y ago

How exactly does he expect the internet to consolidate like the PC industry? How can the internet consolidate?

byoung2 15y ago
How exactly does he expect the internet to consolidate like the PC industry? How can the internet consolidate? He said the internet industry would consolidate like the PC industry did. We can see that happening already, with the trend of big companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft acquiring smaller companies to fill voids in their product offerings, talent pool, etc. Google is the definite poster child for consolidation, having bought YouTube, DoubleClick, GrandCentral, etc.
mattmanser 15y ago
It's happening already. Salesforce is buying up a bunch of different online b2b tools. Google is trying Google+, integrated Google Voice. Skype and MS. Facebook places. Games are growing on social networks instead of standalone flash game sites. Techcrunch is bought by AOL.
- jbjohns 15y ago
  So what? New ones also spring up and sometimes the new ones are big enough to eat the old ones. From what I can see, the market is in a continuous state of expand->consolidate->repeat.
wisty 15y ago
Simple. Everyone standardizes on the same OS (Linux, or maybe Windows if you want .Net or MSSQL) and the same infrastructure (EC2 or equivalent). Then you run your apps on there. Facebook and Twitter are becoming infrastructure too (or at least, their login systems are), but not necessarily profitable ones. Sure, they'll tell the advertisers that I'm a left-handed avocado farmer in New Orleans, but it will be the content providers who'll know when I'm looking for a book of funny kitten jokes
jbigelow76 15y ago
What I'm wondering is, how do more and smaller startups equate to eventual consolidation? His preference seems to be that engineers would elect to become agents or enablers of consolidation by joining the very companies that have the scale to consolidate a market. His two points don't seem to have any intersection that I can see.
- forzano 15y ago
  "What I'm wondering is, how do more and smaller startups equate to eventual consolidation?" It doesn't, if anything it slows down any eventuality of it. He's saying it does to try and scare talent on the fence and talent that has already gone the startup route by saying its a misguided and futile effot. Ask yourself this, if this big companies werent hurting because of these loses, would they waste time making the comments in the first place? Its cheaper to try scare tactics then to offer them more money.

earl 15y ago

"The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook, and they in turn will have a hard time attracting the best talent because those people can get funded to start their own projects as well." Obviously I just read TC's article and didn't see what Parker said, but what's notably missing from that statement is any discussion about what is best, or highest expected value, for the engineer or designer. It's obviously better for Facebook/Google/Yahoo/et al if great engineers and designers have to work for them because they can't get funding. It's not obvious this leads to better outcomes for the people in question. It kind of feels like Parker is talking his book. edit: formatting

arthurgibson 15y ago
As many have mentioned this is just whining from a guy who has a vested interested in a big company spending lots on payroll and acq-hires. The flip-side this creates a better market for younger or less-experienced engineers who are looking to learn and grow. This group of people will never be able to get a job with Facebook, but can certainly join a company who is willing to grow with them.
lbarrow 15y ago
Exactly. I'm not in a position to comment on the amount of funding in the early-stage startup world, but this particular comment by Parker reads like another executive whining that engineers are too independent.
- davidhansen 15y ago
  Not just the independence aspect, but the hubris with which he complains about the most brilliant minds choosing to not work on, well, a social network site. It's 2011; we are traversing inflection points of development in solar energy, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and seeing the early, dramatic fruits of stem cell research, and Parker is bitching that the best of the best aren't keen on improving software that shares drunk photos and your latest opinion of Kim Kardashian's divorce? Wow. Just, wow.

rokhayakebe 15y ago

talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook.... then ....Whoever wins the revolution builds a bureaucracy.” And what will end up happening is the big powers will control the tech industry In others, many talented developers are better off going to work for FB or GGL and help them get quicker to a position of total control.

MatthewB 15y ago

Thinking in the most simplistic form possible - how about engineers just doing what makes them the most happy? Forget about whether we could provide more value at an established company. Maybe building our own products is our passion. That alone will drive more value than doing something we're not passionate about. Just a thought. Whether early stage startups are overvalued is a different topic to be discussed.

orblivion 15y ago
Again that drains talent, though, if they're working on it full time.
- jbjohns 15y ago
  Good. No one has the right to having employees. If you want employees, you pay what it takes to attract them. Parker is trying to manipulate the market here to get prices down to what he wants to be paying.
  - orblivion 15y ago
    Yeah I was going to respond with a point based on economics, but I think you have me here. The point I was responding to was about value for the engineer. If the engineer creates a lot of value from working for themselves, it would just take that many more dollars to pull them away from it. (This has applied to me as well.)

StuffMaster 15y ago

He paints a picture of “Google pretending to be Switzerland, but doing back deals with everyone, and Apple being left alone to build the Deathstar.”Guess where that will leave most startups. Nice analogy. Time to move to Dantooine and work on my X-wing startup.

9999 15y ago
Dude, are you sure you want to do that? I've got this buddy that's got this crazy thing going on on some gas giant. They're way past angel stage, they've got catered meals every day, a band practice room, a fooz ball table, and a carbonite freezing chamber.
mkramlich 15y ago
1. X-Wing startup -- great idea 2. Dantooine -- this will put a hard, violent limit on the length of your startup's runway, perhaps choose a different location?
lordlicorice 15y ago
Meanwhile I'll be harvesting Kolto and cutting back-room deals to sell to both the Republic and the Sith.

PabloOsinaga 15y ago

I don't see what's wrong with larger companies having a hard time attracting talent. A good read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm As transaction costs go down (in general), it makes less sense for us as a society to have production/value creation organized in larger organizations (firms, companies, etc) - instead in a bunch of independent smaller groups. Companies only exist to minimize transaction costs.

radagaisus 15y ago
I learned something new today. thanks.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Companies only exist to minimize transaction costs. I think this is a bit of an overstatement. Another purpose of companies is to provide the benefits of a command economy (e.g., the ability of a great leader to jump from a local to global maxima) with less of the dangers of a command economy (great leader robs/kills you, poor planning screws everyone over). E.g., central planning in the food supply can work reasonably well, but this is hardly guaranteed. Market discipline gives us the benefits of McDonald's 5 year plan, but a McBankruptcy rather than Soviet Union style food shortages if the 5 year plan fails.
- sinope 15y ago
  You have completely misunderstood the OP. Stop writing and re-read.
- justincormack 15y ago
  That is a bizarre argument though, you are saying that capitalism works fine so long as companies are run as soviet states? The Soviet Union showed basically no benefits to the command economy... And the great leaders of large businesses look rather more like command economy leaders than products of a free market. I think you need a better argument than that that large corporations are here to stay, not a passing fad due to factors like transaction costs... There have been few great leaders running large corporates, although not none, and many people just enriching themselves for doing little.

jroseattle 15y ago

What Sean left out was -- overfunded for whom? He implied it, but didn't say it: the bigger dogs in the fight (Facebook/Twitter/Google) have to compete for talent like everyone else. The overfunding is mostly a problem for those larger tech companies, not the little guys.

chwahoo 15y ago
I suspect he means that investors are overvaluing small startups (relative to their chances of becoming successful). The consequence he worries about is that having too much funding available makes the opportunity too appealing to the best engineers, making it harder for ventures that will succeed to keep/attract talent.
- jroseattle 15y ago
  His arguments seem a big reach, though. Lots of investment means opportunity recognition, and there are a finite number of engineers, so supply/demand takes it course. He's arguing against capitalism, and not making a very good one at that. While trying to sell this as an industry-wide issue, I suspect his real concerns are more immediate -- for his own ventures.
  - chwahoo 15y ago
    He's not arguing against capitalism. He's saying that the market is currently overvaluing certain kinds of businesses, causing resources to be misallocated. That's it. You may be right that he is either wrong or making his argument for self-serving reasons. Or he might be right.

AdamFernandez 15y ago

So I wonder if Sean Parker actually believes this, or if he is just frustrated by a lack of engineers available for his larger backed companies. Either way he doesn't look great making comments like this.

AznHisoka 15y ago

I love it when someone who no longer has to participate in the rat race is admonishing others to stay in it. So easy for them to say this..

spitfire 15y ago

Each day, I thank god for all these useful idiots in SV. They're madly running a rat race to build the next social widget. Throwing off useful technology I can use to serve the vast wasteland ignored by them. Thank you Sean Parker.

allantyoung 15y ago
Care to elaborate? I just found your comment interesting but I'd like to know what you're talking about.
- robryan 15y ago
  Sounds like he means the open source tools startups are generating can be used to target areas they are ignoring.
  - mdda 15y ago
    In that case "useful idiots" is a bit harsh (and not accurate from my reading of [1]). The creation of this much open source software is a true public good. The people producing it (both at small companies and big ones) may be working away at misguided projects, but it's wonderful that as a byproduct they're producing software useable by everyone. In the future, it may be obvious that the open-source side-effects of this SV generation were more value-creating than the businesses created directly. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

tom13311321 15y ago

So his argument is that we should start building the consolidated Internet bureaucracy now? The problem isn't overfunding small startups, it's going after markets that are all hype and have little to do with innovation. Our smartest engineers should be working on ARPA-funded energy projects not how to create a new feature to keep Facebook relevant.

101000101 15y ago

Sean Parker is ridiculously overfunded.

doorty 15y ago
That's the right answer.

ericd 15y ago

This isn't just whining. My theory is that 500 2 person companies have a worse chance at making a real splash than if the 100 best ideas from that group had 10 good people working on them. That's part of what he's saying - it's harder now for good startups to grow when everyone wants to and is incentivized to make their own web startup. The other part he's saying is that people can have a larger marginal impact on the world working at a place like Facebook than they could in their own startup. For the median case, this is true.

a3camero 15y ago
Facebook was once one of those startups.
- AdamFernandez 15y ago
  That is exactly right. I would actually be very surprised if he believed what he was saying considering everything he has seen and been involved with. To say things will consolidate and stop as they are is extremely short sighted for one so experienced in these matters.
- ericd 15y ago
  The funding environment has changed quite a lot since then. YC didn't even exist when FB started. And FB would clearly be in that 100, given the massive growth it had. For every potential FB, there are lots of borderline useless apps that get funding, and wouldn't have when FB was first funded. Those people could have instead been working on FB. He's not complaining that startups are getting funding, he's saying that the overavailability of funding is acting as a repulsive force, keeping engineers from grouping up. Whether that's a bad thing on the balance, I'm not sure, but it's not an unmitigated good.
- nandemo 15y ago
  And so was Napster, his first company.
cpeterso 15y ago
> My theory is that 500 2 person companies have a worse chance at making a real splash than if the 100 best ideas from that group had 10 good people working on them. I wonder if there is an opportunity for matchmaker investors to scoop up like-minded startups and consolidate early companies to build those 100 10-person winners.

zackb 15y ago

Here's the video. http://www.livestream.com/techonomy/video?clipId=pla_5c88e446-0468-4f33-a7ee-721ff5176f68 http://www.livestream.com/techonomy/video?clipId=pla_5c88e44...

zackb 15y ago
About 30 minutes in

biggitybones 15y ago

I was at an event in NYC several months back where a mid-stage VC said the same thing (blanking on his name) but specifically regarding the NYC community. It was an angle I hadn't thought about and initially had the same negative reaction to as someone in the midst of an early stage company. For later round investors it's undoubtedly in their interest to encourage these engineers to join larger firms rather than being on their own. In NYC it's especially competitive given the competition between more mature companies, early stage startups and the money wielding finance industry. The combination could lead to a 'glass ceiling' of sorts for larger companies because of the inability to attract talent; that is, until some of the smaller companies fail and these individual engineers likely end up at a larger spot. It mirrors the consolidation of an industry. It just takes longer than some investors (like Parker) would prefer, which is the inspiration for statements like this.

mdda 15y ago
Or the market price of talent goes up : The value being created by engineers is recognized by the financial institutions, so why shouldn't tech companies pay up too? [ And I'm thinking Facebook before people get on my case about financial companies creating value in the real world... ]

pitdesi 15y ago

I think he's right, for the most part. It's also interesting that a lot of these startups end up with "successful" exits where their technology isn't used at all (ie talent acquisition for FB/Goog, etc). I don't know if there should be a correction for that, but I sometimes feel that it leads to people building for the sake of building until they get acquired. Interestingly, we (http://feefighters.com http://feefighters.com) had 2 of our 4 interns leave us in the past week because they got accepted to YC (2 different projects). I guess we should feel good because we're picking smart people who want to work for us, but we'd rather have them with us!

robryan 15y ago
Even if the product isn't used on many occasions, the best aspects of it and the teachings from running it often are. I think the aquihires allow experimentation that would be hard to achieve within the acquiring company. The aspect I dislike is when startups say that they are in for the long haul then sell a few months later. Makes it hard to trust a startup that the investment in time you spend to get up and running on their product will be worth it.

jpdoctor 15y ago

I think a point that got missed in the discussion: The reason that this situation is occurring is that money is flowing into the sector at a fair clip. Make hay when the sun shines. It will start raining in the future, and there might not be a lot of warning.

tryitnow 15y ago

Yes, he's right, but let's put this in context. There are probably a lot of talented engineers who are doing startups now who shouldn't be. The problem is how do we know who is going to be a good entrepreneur and who is not? We don't. The only way we know is by doing it, which is what a lot of talent is doing. I think many startup founders are a bit grounded in reality and know that they face real possibilities of failure. Just as long as they keep this in mind and don't become obsessed with caviar dreams, then I see no harm done. Being an entrepreneur is one way for an engineer to develop non-technical skillsets and learn something about himself in the process. Let's not forget that this entrepreneurial activity is forcing the big guys (Google, FB, etc) to be more innovative than they would otherwise be - either to attract talent or to compete with startups.

georgemcbay 15y ago

I don't think he is completely wrong but I think this is just another (higher-end) instance of the age-old tradition of companies saying it is too difficult to find engineers while being unwilling to pay fair value for said engineers. To be clear, I know that Facebook does pay quite well by industry standards (offset somewhat by the bay area cost of living) for top talent, but if this situation is causing them an issue then what they are paying (or offering in general -- money isn't always the only thing) still isn't enough.

nestlequ1k 15y ago
There's a certain type of personality (very prevalent in the valley) who won't work for a big company like facebook, twitter, or google for any amount of money. I would imagine these types of people make up the majority of the YC class. Maybe they'll get bought via a talent acquisition but as soon as their golden handcuffs are off, they are out doing their own thing again. The reason they allow themselves to get bought via talent acquisition is to be able to easily raise money in the future. I think Sean Parker is reacting to these types of people. I think the misconception is that the increased funding sources is what is driving these people. I would suggest that they were always there, but 5 years ago they were just living poor and working their ass off to build a startup (usually unsuccessfully). I do believe I'm part of this group. There's no amount of money that would compel me to take a corporate job. Sometimes money isn't what matters.
- rick888 15y ago
  I'm part of this group too. It's less about money and more about freedom to me. The freedom to work on what I choose and the near complete control I get over my own destiny. No matter how good it is at a company like Facebook or Google, there will always be a point where they make you realize they have control over you. Whether it's working on a project you hate, ridiculous corporate policies, or having to kiss the ass of your manager. I've done it all for the past 15 years at a few different companies and I finally just got sick of it.
- lansing 15y ago
  You claim that this class of people won't work for a "big company" for "any amount of money," yet in the next breath you admit that they will work for those companies in the context of a "talent acquisition." What is a "talent acquisition" if not an alternate mode of compensation to persuade individuals to "take a corporate job" who previously considered themselves above such positions? Yeah, it sounds more impressive to tell people "we got bought by X" instead of "I took a job with X," but either way they've "gone corporate." You're still dealing with the same endless HR meetings, PHBs, "culture," etc, as all the other "drones." Yes, a good number of such "acquisition hires" leave after earn-out is complete, typically two to four years. This is actually a fairly lengthy of time for any high-value employee to hold any position in the valley these days, startup or not.

sector 15y ago

Startups are akin to an MBA. Running a small but ambitious company forces a serious, motivated founder to think about every business function. I don't see any meaningful downside for the founders who choose to spend some time on this task, and I see a lot of upside. Parker's complaints strike me as absurd. If he really believes they can have more impact at FaceBook, he should find a way to create special purpose vehicles within FB that allow founders to get equity in the work of a small team, rather than just getting .00005% of the sum of FaceBook.

wavephorm 15y ago

Parker suggests that one reason it will end badly is because the Internet industry will ultimately consolidate just like the PC industry did in the 1980s and 1990s. Why? Why does the future have to be like the past? As rich and well connected Sean Parker is, he cannot predict the future. Coincidently given his stature it makes him probably the least qualified to predict what will ultimately happen in the computing industry. There is no reason the computing industry cannot be more flat than it has in the past. I believe it is highly likely the industry will continue to fragment. Android, IOS, Windows7, BBX... there will be more platforms in the future, not less. More diversification, not less. The game has changed forever, as it should.

brc 15y ago
People tend to forget the big got big in those days partly because of control over distribution channels. It was incredibly difficult for a small software company to break into large amounts of sales if they didn't have both retail and enterprise reach. I wouldn't be surprised to see a smaller set of niche hardware companies pop up going against that trend, and I certainly see the state of software at the moment fragmenting further, not consolidating more. While Facebook and Google theoretically are dominating the distribution channels again, in reality those channels can be leveraged by smaller players easily. As if every boxed windows copy in 1995 had an empty slot where you could put your own company at low cost.
- wavephorm 15y ago
  Absolutely. The web and now HTML5 completely obliterate the old school mentality that you need to have conventional sales channels, and ancient business models to suceed. Any of these "big wigs" that think Apple and Google will dominate forever will be proven wrong.
biggitybones 15y ago
The issue with fragmentation that ultimately leads to consolidation is the cost incurred by companies and developers to support all of these platforms. I can't tell you how much it pains me as an android user to see an app only available for the iPhone. As a developer, it's magnitudes worse to have to send messages to my users saying "we'll be getting to an [x] platform app soon!" when realistically it just stunts our growth to develop the same thing 3 times. I can't wait for the end of this native app nonsense.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

kalvin_ridejoy 15y ago

Pretty sure it's not a coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg emphasized a related message at Startup School ("don't start a company unless you're really, really passionate about it"). Facebook, like every other tech company in the valley, is having trouble hiring enough engineers, and this is a campaign to make would-be founders think twice.

earbitscom 15y ago
I think they're very different messages. Sean Parker's message comes off as more self-serving - saying don't start a company because it's not as good for the world as joining one that can effect change to a greater degree. Zuckerberg's comment was about not starting a company for the sake of it, the same message PG had and a very good one. Start a company because they're the most efficient vehicle to solve a problem you care about. Don't fabricate some problem that doesn't exist because you want to start a company.

tlogan 15y ago

His comment about "go work at Facebook" is just talking his book. However, he is right about that the internet will consolidate as it matures. However, we should not forget as soon as consolidation happens in a certain industry the very next thing what happen is disruption. So yes PC industry is consolidated, but whoever got of the PC train and jump on iPhone/iPad/Android did good.

psychotik 15y ago

At Startup School, the Sequoia guy showed a bunch of slides which had two main points highlighted: - Companies like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn raised very modest amounts of funding and has multi-billion dollar IPOs - Cost of creating a company (and associated technology) is down over 90% from what it was back when a lot of these companies were started. Given these two, it's amazing to see VCs pouring in millions into startups that have nowhere near the valuation they invest at. Color is the most famous example, but there are tons of other startups raising $2-5M at pretty ridiculous valuations. If you consider that in light what Sean Parker says, regardless of his vested interest in engineering talent going to companies he's backed, it feel like what he's saying makes sense. Companies are ridiculously over funded, and VCs are doing a disservice to their investors as well as to their portfolio companies by giving more money than they need.

cookiecaper 15y ago
>Cost of creating a company (and associated technology) is down over 90% from what it was back when a lot of these companies were started. The costs in terms of equipment and developer talent may be smaller than they were in the mid-late 90s, but the market is much more crowded now. I don't know that those savings aren't offset by the required marketing and PR efforts necessary to differentiate your company from all of its other "social web 2.0 tweet-a-riffic" competitors.
earbitscom 15y ago
Valuations are set by the current value of the company and the projected outcome. Lower costs to launch and iterate actually increase the likelihood of success, as well as mean that net margins can be higher than if you had to invest in significant infrastructure. The fact that you don't need very much money and will be able to try all kinds of things on a shoestring budget is exactly why valuations are so high. Since VCs still want the traditional 20-40% of companies, they give them more money than they need out of their own desire to take a big stake - not because the valuation is out of whack. Said another way, the less a company needs your money, the more you have to pay to get in.
jbjohns 15y ago
>Companies are ridiculously over funded, and VCs are doing a disservice to their investors as well as to their portfolio companies by giving more money than they need. No they're not. They're following the market. If they were doing a disservice to their investors, do you think the investors would just sit back and lose millions?

benmathes 15y ago

If you think an engineer or product designer is better incentivized to do their own thing and you want to hire them away to BigCorp, you need to change your compensation offerings.

T_S_ 15y ago

Basically he's saying investors are dumb for making it hard for his now large company to hire engineers. Get out the violins.

freemarketteddy 15y ago

What he is basically trying to say is that your chances of achieving "success" or "making an impact" is better if you work for Mark Zuckerberg than try to become (someone like)Mark Zuckerberg. Wow what a narrow definition of success!For example by working for facebook how can I get every child in third world countries to get a decent education?How can I get every woman in rural india to break free from male dominance? My respect for Parker just took a strong hit!

tomlin 15y ago

Having trouble hiring talented people seems to be a pretty good problem to have. The logic is flawed - from a guy who stuck his middle-finger at various large companies while working at the helm of Napster. I think the new economy (eventually, hopefully) will be many small companies with a handful of people (read: democracy) calling their own shots, more creative freedom and an interconnectivity with other small companies that spits in the face of fear-based competitive angst and eventually creates a real revolution that more of us are proud of rather than this disgusting idea that we all should work for the Umbrella Corporation.

dylangs1030 15y ago

I disagree entirely. Here's why: 1. Social psychology shows us that, smaller, more focused groups perform better and have superior productivity to larger groups, which tend to become disorganized and derailed. (http://sgr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/247.abstract http://sgr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/247.abstract) Startups tend to have fewer employees (this is universal), and, even in hugely successful companies like Google, work is divided into highly productive nuclei of coordinated, amicable teams. This is a trend that repeats in very successful companies, and when startups pick up and start gaining more employees, though they decentralize, the "small team > big force" mentality remains. 2. If you outsource all the miscellaneous things a company needs to do to get a product out, you find that a) each of those outsourced functions is done on a much more quality level than if the company tried to do it all on its own, b) the company doing the outsourcing can focus more on its principal product. This actually spreads the wealth and improved productivity for every company involved. (http://www.industryweek.com/articles/breaking_the_rules__when_business_needs_drive_the_outsourcing_of_specialized_business_processes_24780.aspx http://www.industryweek.com/articles/breaking_the_rules__whe...) I could see why Sean Parker would be a bit concerned, but, really, I think the explosion of new startups is fantastic for the overall quality of products.

gaius 15y ago
each of those outsourced functions is done on a much more quality level than if the company tried to do it all on its own Ho ho ho. There is a long, long list of companies who have discovered to their cost, the opposite. And amusingly, it's getting longer.

donaldc 15y ago

His complaint that more engineers won't go to work for larger tech companies instead of either working for smaller startups or starting their own company is rather hypocritical. A cursory read of his wikipedia page shows that he has never joined a large tech company.

kirillzubovsky 15y ago

"The problem in his view is that many of the talented engineers and product designers who are now starting their own companies could have a bigger impact at places like Facebook..." - says Sean Parker, the guy who owns between 2 and 7% of Facebook. Well yes, of course.

scottdw2 15y ago

This is shit. I heard something similar from Joel Spolsky not that long ago. It's like a George Wallace speech. The old guard, giving speeches targeted at the "do nothing class", urging them to help suppress a revolution.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

It is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion. All good things in life comes from collaboration with others as much as individual contributions, but there is nothing that says that collaboration has to be imposed by a external force, like with a company. The world has ruled before with open collaboration like science, and what we call "open source", "open hardware" today. BTW, if I could do anything to destroy the vision that all the world is going to be controlled by oligopoly juggernauts and bureaucracies, I will, including creating new companies or helping young people to renew the landscape, as facebook or Google did(when companies success in a free market, next they want to destroy it).

shareme 15y ago

more interesting concern.. What happens when all the developers with extremely low debt loads are snapped up by the Big firms to start-ups attempting to acquire tech co-founders and dev talent? It is not that anyone is over funded, its that those with low debt loads and dev talent is in fact a finite amount and when its gone from the market prices adjust upwards..