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> In the end, you cannot survive if all you create is intellectual property. Why not? Anyone can do. Doing the right stuff is what matters. If you're unwilli

> In the end, you cannot survive if all you create is intellectual property. Why not? Anyone can do. Doing the right stuff is what matters. If you're unwilling to do (Europe, generally), and you can't even come up with good things that need done anymore, that seems like a problem. I don't think Europe is there. I would argue it's a bigger problem to be focused too much on doing, and not focused enough on direction. You can probably make a convincing argument that direction is random, and no one is good at setting it, but people at least believe other people can do this - and IP / ideas are currently where the money is. Like, is Apple's IP actually valuable? Who cares. It makes a ton of money. Anyone can put together their phones.

scrollaway 4y ago
> Why not? You're replying to a snippet of a fairly significant and long talk. If it sparked your interest, I invite you to read or watch the full thing. He answers the "why" later down, but "not surviving" is not really the important part at all. It's about how we globally lose out on innovation, ingenuity and new ideas, by not fostering the right environment for creativity when we outsource everything. Really, Bert Hubert is fantastic, and this article/talk should be a required reading for all startup founders and entrepreneurs in general.
Test0129 4y ago
The complication isn't in the "anyone can do it" it's the more meaty subject of intellectual property and in general globalism. If you get your people in your country/continent to build your stuff you have effectively a revolving door of people whose skills are available to you, laws are amicable and familiar, and their taxes go to improving the land you built on. If you outsource things you may get it cheaper (labor arbitrage) while maintaining high profit margins on your IP. The problem comes when that country goes through an industrial revolution, or discusses worker rights, or gets into a shouting match with your country. Now, you may be forced to get labor in your country at which point you'll start from the bottom. Worse yet, you've given those other countries your IP. IP laws are not international. Once your country becomes enemies of theirs they will certainly begin building your stuff to the exact same quality specifications you had them build it to. We see this quite frequently with China. It is no coincidence a new product releases in the west, and after a short time, the exact same product with the same pieces under a different name is found on Alibaba. Long term, this is not a survivable situation. IP is effectively worthless if you don't control the labor that can build it. We do this typically through patents and trademarks. Once you lose control over that you lose control over your IP. No amount of trying to take another country to court will save you.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > IP laws are not international. Once your country becomes enemies of theirs they will certainly begin building your stuff to the exact same quality specifications you had them build it to. A lot of IP value is actually the brand. Anyone can steal Pixar's technology and make a 3d film. People aren't going to watch it. Anyone can steal Apple's designs (although I doubt they can realistically get the entire supply chain). No one's paying top dollar for a knock-off iPhone.
mikewarot 4y ago
>Anyone can put together their phones. Really? The supply chain for a phone is huge. All of the subassemblies have to meet in time and space with production facilities up to the task. Making software is easy. Each additional copy has almost zero net cost to produce. Actual production has complexity you can't imagine.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > Making software is easy. Each additional copy has almost zero net cost to produce. When people talk about "making software" - they are not talking about making copies of code. They are talking about writing code, which obviously costs money.
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    The reason I bought it up was to point out the assumption that programmers have ingrained in us, that production is trivial. Setting up a production line is just as tricky as anything you've seen while debugging. We programmers are incredibly privileged.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      As someone who has walked those production lines, and helped coordinate things around them, I agree. But I don't think it's quite as difficult as you'd like to portray. It's difficult in a place like the United States, because it costs money that can be more efficiently spent elsewhere (for now!). But it's not that difficult. Yes, it's more difficult (from a technological and human coordination standpoint) than a relative few people sitting down and spending months writing a new software package. But I don't think there's this orders-of-magnitude gulf here, and we should also account for the mental/intellectual costs. It is much more mentally taxing to build a non-trivial software package than it is to set up a hardware supply chain and manufacturing facility. That's not to say that the latter is easy, but it's not particularly intellectually challenging, at least not in a comparable way.
      - 4y ago

scrollaway 4y ago

> Why not? You're replying to a snippet of a fairly significant and long talk. If it sparked your interest, I invite you to read or watch the full thing. He answers the "why" later down, but "not surviving" is not really the important part at all. It's about how we globally lose out on innovation, ingenuity and new ideas, by not fostering the right environment for creativity when we outsource everything. Really, Bert Hubert is fantastic, and this article/talk should be a required reading for all startup founders and entrepreneurs in general.

Test0129 4y ago

The complication isn't in the "anyone can do it" it's the more meaty subject of intellectual property and in general globalism. If you get your people in your country/continent to build your stuff you have effectively a revolving door of people whose skills are available to you, laws are amicable and familiar, and their taxes go to improving the land you built on. If you outsource things you may get it cheaper (labor arbitrage) while maintaining high profit margins on your IP. The problem comes when that country goes through an industrial revolution, or discusses worker rights, or gets into a shouting match with your country. Now, you may be forced to get labor in your country at which point you'll start from the bottom. Worse yet, you've given those other countries your IP. IP laws are not international. Once your country becomes enemies of theirs they will certainly begin building your stuff to the exact same quality specifications you had them build it to. We see this quite frequently with China. It is no coincidence a new product releases in the west, and after a short time, the exact same product with the same pieces under a different name is found on Alibaba. Long term, this is not a survivable situation. IP is effectively worthless if you don't control the labor that can build it. We do this typically through patents and trademarks. Once you lose control over that you lose control over your IP. No amount of trying to take another country to court will save you.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> IP laws are not international. Once your country becomes enemies of theirs they will certainly begin building your stuff to the exact same quality specifications you had them build it to. A lot of IP value is actually the brand. Anyone can steal Pixar's technology and make a 3d film. People aren't going to watch it. Anyone can steal Apple's designs (although I doubt they can realistically get the entire supply chain). No one's paying top dollar for a knock-off iPhone.

mikewarot 4y ago

>Anyone can put together their phones. Really? The supply chain for a phone is huge. All of the subassemblies have to meet in time and space with production facilities up to the task. Making software is easy. Each additional copy has almost zero net cost to produce. Actual production has complexity you can't imagine.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> Making software is easy. Each additional copy has almost zero net cost to produce. When people talk about "making software" - they are not talking about making copies of code. They are talking about writing code, which obviously costs money.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  The reason I bought it up was to point out the assumption that programmers have ingrained in us, that production is trivial. Setting up a production line is just as tricky as anything you've seen while debugging. We programmers are incredibly privileged.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    As someone who has walked those production lines, and helped coordinate things around them, I agree. But I don't think it's quite as difficult as you'd like to portray. It's difficult in a place like the United States, because it costs money that can be more efficiently spent elsewhere (for now!). But it's not that difficult. Yes, it's more difficult (from a technological and human coordination standpoint) than a relative few people sitting down and spending months writing a new software package. But I don't think there's this orders-of-magnitude gulf here, and we should also account for the mental/intellectual costs. It is much more mentally taxing to build a non-trivial software package than it is to set up a hardware supply chain and manufacturing facility. That's not to say that the latter is easy, but it's not particularly intellectually challenging, at least not in a comparable way.
    - 4y ago