5 ms·

Well the biggest difference is that the economy was "bad" then but central governments/banks were accommodating. It's "bad" now because central banks are activ

by tempsy 4y ago

Well the biggest difference is that the economy was "bad" then but central governments/banks were accommodating. It's "bad" now because central banks are actively making capital more expensive, which makes it harder to raise money for a speculative bet.

tootie 4y ago
I mean isn't even "bad" right now at all by most measures. Employment is still very strong, growth is slowed, but not stopped. Only inflation is elevated. The two things that incentivize starting a business in a recession are low rates (more VC money available) and high unemployment (cheaper, freer labor) and we have neither of those. Even after dumping 100K or so engineers on the market, that is barely enough to soak up all the undersupply of the past 5 years.
fexecve 4y ago
Then you just need to find an angel investor. The capital has to go somewhere. The wealthy aren't just going to leave their money in publicly-traded stocks, they want some risk in their portfolio.
teeray 4y ago
If there is true intrinsic value in the company’s offering, I wonder if there’s opportunity for fully bootstrapped startups to thrive. Maybe the growth isn’t explosive, but it might be more sustainable.
- tempsy 4y ago
  I mean it will be harder to raise capital extensive seed rounds but i'm sure small seed rounds will still be fine. As in I would be really shocked to see a new Uber for X or grocery delivery startup raise tens of millions right now, but yes small teams building something that isn't very capital intensive will likely still be able to raise money.
Apocryphon 4y ago
There's a theory that I've seen on HN: in the event of a civilization-destroying apocalypse, future civilizations will find it incredibly harder to industrialize, because our current society has used up all of the cheap energy supplies and easy to extract mineral resources. I wonder if that is applicable here as a metaphor.
- generalizations 4y ago
  I've seen that theory here too. A counterargument is that we've also brought a lot of valuable resources to the surface. Industrialization may simply be 'differently hard'.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    To apply that back to the metaphor, it's also said that one salutary side effect of the dotcom bubble is all of the infrastructure built during it, such as high-speed fiber, which were fundamental for the Web 2.0 wave. So perhaps that is the "surfacing" of resources that a later tech boom- our boom- profited from.
- 015a 4y ago
  I've pondered this from the perspective of the Fermi Paradox; that Earth had a really fortuitous series of events where the planet went down one line of flora/fauna evolution that, despite millions of years of evolution didn't to our knowledge amount to intelligent life; experienced a global apocalypse which allowed that (plus later/earlier) flora/fauna to decay and become an easily available source of energy; then had a second line of evolution which did, for whatever reason, result in intelligent life; which now has access to all that energy from the last iteration. To me, that's a really convincing explanation for the Fermi Paradox. There may be other intelligent species out there, but evolution on earth seems to have a history of producing killing machines (and crabs. its always crabs). So, the gate to get to intelligent life isn't probable; and then you hit the gate of "does that intelligent life have enough local resources to escape the gravity well of its own planet", a gate which for earth practically required a prior chain of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and an opportune asteroid impact to clear that chain out and make way for a new one to roll the dice again. The mitigating factor for the second gate is: There could be other resources which could provide the power to escape a gravity well independent of biological decay (e.g. uranium, hydrogen). But at least in human history: think of what it took for us to fully understand how to harness oil, let alone uranium or hydrogen, create a rocket, and get to space safely; we did that with the tremendous benefit of plentiful hydrocarbon resources (global shipping, computers, mining rigs, plastic, etc). At minimum; a species without this advantage would take a lot longer to get to our level; but we did it in just a couple hundred years. Universal timescales help, but they also work against; as the earth has showcased, planets get bombarded by civilization-ending asteroids often. So, either an element of luck, or: a species has to have these structural advantages, and apply them for the purposes of asteroid defense before the next one hits; or its all over and the clock resets. Point being if I were a betting man: there are probably between 1 to 4 civilizations in our galaxy (including us) which have reached a similar or greater level of technology; but a great number more that are functionally trapped in a steampunk age, unable to escape their own planets. My other more fringe theory for the Fermi Paradox, which to be fair is practically the entire plot of The Last of Us, is: that the Apex Predator on every planet that is capable of evolving carbon-based life is Fungus. Eventually, Fungus always wins; and takes intelligent civilization with it.
paulpauper 4y ago
Inflation is ironic in that it means people get poorer. Deflation of assets but inflation of prices.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
The two examples given early in the article, Apple and Microsoft were basically both started by a couple of guys in their garage. Not a whole lot of capital was needed initially. Sure, in later stages of both companies capital was needed, but the initial development stage were mostly self funded (some loans from parents likely involved at some point). Capital was way more expensive in the 70s when both of these companies were founded than it is now.
- sogen 4y ago
  Note: Bill Gates’ mom was a high rank executive at HP or something similar, forgot the details.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    The Gates' definitely had money. His dad was a lawyer and founded a law firm. Definitely helped.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      According to Wikipedia, he joined an existing law firm, and his name was added to the firm's name. [1] That firm later merged with other firms, and continues to bear its name even decades after his retirement. I imagine he/they made a good deal of money on their client Microsoft, especially during their antitrust trial! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Gates_%26_Ellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Gates_%26_Ellis
  - gowld 4y ago
    It's a beautiful story of nepotism and rent-seeking. Bill got the job from a powerful friend of his mother, bought someone else's work outright, customized it, and licensed it to IBM on incredibly Gates-friendly terms (pay per-unit, non-exclusive license). https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-helped-her-son-start-microsoft.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe... > Mary was a respected businesswoman with many responsibilities, including her membership on the board of nonprofit organization United Way of King County. There, she met the late John Opel, then-chairman of IBM, who also was a member of the United Way board. > IBM's talks with Digital Research started to flounder, and when assessing options, Opel remembered Microsoft as the company "run by Bill Gates, Mary Gates' son," according to The Seattle Times. > When Microsoft won the job, it didn't actually have an operating system of its own. So in 1981, the company bought QDOS, an operating system created by hardware company Seattle Computer Products, and with it developed MS-DOS, the Microsoft Disk Operating System. Microsoft licensed its MS-DOS to IBM to use as the operating system for its personal computer. (In addition to Microsoft, IBM also contracted Digital Research and SofTech Microsystems to use their operating systems for IBM's personal computer.)

by tempsy 4y ago

tootie 4y ago

I mean isn't even "bad" right now at all by most measures. Employment is still very strong, growth is slowed, but not stopped. Only inflation is elevated. The two things that incentivize starting a business in a recession are low rates (more VC money available) and high unemployment (cheaper, freer labor) and we have neither of those. Even after dumping 100K or so engineers on the market, that is barely enough to soak up all the undersupply of the past 5 years.

fexecve 4y ago

Then you just need to find an angel investor. The capital has to go somewhere. The wealthy aren't just going to leave their money in publicly-traded stocks, they want some risk in their portfolio.

teeray 4y ago

If there is true intrinsic value in the company’s offering, I wonder if there’s opportunity for fully bootstrapped startups to thrive. Maybe the growth isn’t explosive, but it might be more sustainable.

tempsy 4y ago
I mean it will be harder to raise capital extensive seed rounds but i'm sure small seed rounds will still be fine. As in I would be really shocked to see a new Uber for X or grocery delivery startup raise tens of millions right now, but yes small teams building something that isn't very capital intensive will likely still be able to raise money.

Apocryphon 4y ago

There's a theory that I've seen on HN: in the event of a civilization-destroying apocalypse, future civilizations will find it incredibly harder to industrialize, because our current society has used up all of the cheap energy supplies and easy to extract mineral resources. I wonder if that is applicable here as a metaphor.

generalizations 4y ago
I've seen that theory here too. A counterargument is that we've also brought a lot of valuable resources to the surface. Industrialization may simply be 'differently hard'.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  To apply that back to the metaphor, it's also said that one salutary side effect of the dotcom bubble is all of the infrastructure built during it, such as high-speed fiber, which were fundamental for the Web 2.0 wave. So perhaps that is the "surfacing" of resources that a later tech boom- our boom- profited from.
015a 4y ago
I've pondered this from the perspective of the Fermi Paradox; that Earth had a really fortuitous series of events where the planet went down one line of flora/fauna evolution that, despite millions of years of evolution didn't to our knowledge amount to intelligent life; experienced a global apocalypse which allowed that (plus later/earlier) flora/fauna to decay and become an easily available source of energy; then had a second line of evolution which did, for whatever reason, result in intelligent life; which now has access to all that energy from the last iteration. To me, that's a really convincing explanation for the Fermi Paradox. There may be other intelligent species out there, but evolution on earth seems to have a history of producing killing machines (and crabs. its always crabs). So, the gate to get to intelligent life isn't probable; and then you hit the gate of "does that intelligent life have enough local resources to escape the gravity well of its own planet", a gate which for earth practically required a prior chain of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and an opportune asteroid impact to clear that chain out and make way for a new one to roll the dice again. The mitigating factor for the second gate is: There could be other resources which could provide the power to escape a gravity well independent of biological decay (e.g. uranium, hydrogen). But at least in human history: think of what it took for us to fully understand how to harness oil, let alone uranium or hydrogen, create a rocket, and get to space safely; we did that with the tremendous benefit of plentiful hydrocarbon resources (global shipping, computers, mining rigs, plastic, etc). At minimum; a species without this advantage would take a lot longer to get to our level; but we did it in just a couple hundred years. Universal timescales help, but they also work against; as the earth has showcased, planets get bombarded by civilization-ending asteroids often. So, either an element of luck, or: a species has to have these structural advantages, and apply them for the purposes of asteroid defense before the next one hits; or its all over and the clock resets. Point being if I were a betting man: there are probably between 1 to 4 civilizations in our galaxy (including us) which have reached a similar or greater level of technology; but a great number more that are functionally trapped in a steampunk age, unable to escape their own planets. My other more fringe theory for the Fermi Paradox, which to be fair is practically the entire plot of The Last of Us, is: that the Apex Predator on every planet that is capable of evolving carbon-based life is Fungus. Eventually, Fungus always wins; and takes intelligent civilization with it.

paulpauper 4y ago

Inflation is ironic in that it means people get poorer. Deflation of assets but inflation of prices.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

The two examples given early in the article, Apple and Microsoft were basically both started by a couple of guys in their garage. Not a whole lot of capital was needed initially. Sure, in later stages of both companies capital was needed, but the initial development stage were mostly self funded (some loans from parents likely involved at some point). Capital was way more expensive in the 70s when both of these companies were founded than it is now.

sogen 4y ago
Note: Bill Gates’ mom was a high rank executive at HP or something similar, forgot the details.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  The Gates' definitely had money. His dad was a lawyer and founded a law firm. Definitely helped.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    According to Wikipedia, he joined an existing law firm, and his name was added to the firm's name. [1] That firm later merged with other firms, and continues to bear its name even decades after his retirement. I imagine he/they made a good deal of money on their client Microsoft, especially during their antitrust trial! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Gates_%26_Ellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Gates_%26_Ellis
- gowld 4y ago
  It's a beautiful story of nepotism and rent-seeking. Bill got the job from a powerful friend of his mother, bought someone else's work outright, customized it, and licensed it to IBM on incredibly Gates-friendly terms (pay per-unit, non-exclusive license). https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-helped-her-son-start-microsoft.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe... > Mary was a respected businesswoman with many responsibilities, including her membership on the board of nonprofit organization United Way of King County. There, she met the late John Opel, then-chairman of IBM, who also was a member of the United Way board. > IBM's talks with Digital Research started to flounder, and when assessing options, Opel remembered Microsoft as the company "run by Bill Gates, Mary Gates' son," according to The Seattle Times. > When Microsoft won the job, it didn't actually have an operating system of its own. So in 1981, the company bought QDOS, an operating system created by hardware company Seattle Computer Products, and with it developed MS-DOS, the Microsoft Disk Operating System. Microsoft licensed its MS-DOS to IBM to use as the operating system for its personal computer. (In addition to Microsoft, IBM also contracted Digital Research and SofTech Microsystems to use their operating systems for IBM's personal computer.)