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Who cares what this guy thinks? He doesn't count either the iPhone or iPad among the most important innovations of the last 5 years, but two of his 4 choices ar

by Bud 14y ago

Who cares what this guy thinks? He doesn't count either the iPhone or iPad among the most important innovations of the last 5 years, but two of his 4 choices are about cars, and another is Google Goggles. He also surmises that Silicon Valley is dead because of a few observations about Facebook, while ignoring that Apple has become the largest company in the history of the known universe.

recursive 14y ago
He's absolutely correct. Automated cars will have a much bigger effect than iPads. So much time is wasted driving.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  This is just blatantly wrong. Yes automated cars will be a huge deal, but discounting the iPad is just prejudice pretending to be insight. The mobile OS experience and the tablet PC are very much the next phase of evolution of the computer. Right now the iPad is trailblazing the way as a very high markup luxury good but even so it's proving to be enormously disruptive. When the second shoe drops on the tablet PC revolution the entire industry and indeed the entire world will be shaken up. In a few decades the market for computing devices and software will be vastly larger than it is today. People in Sudan will have dirt cheap solar powered tablet PCs. The degree of disruption on the horizon due to these devices cannot be overstated. Edit: how are tablet PCs disruptive? In several ways: First, they have fewer components than any other form-factor complete computer and are cheaper to produce. Cheaper computers means more people that can buy computers which exponentially increases the number of people who buy computers when you consider the developing world. This is a feedback loop, technologically it's likely to be possible to make a profit on tablet pcs in the near future in a price range of tens of dollars per device. Second, they are more user friendly for average users and their form factor offers advantages for normal users (portability, etc.) This makes them desirable as replacements for laptops and desktops for many people, as witnessed by the massive number of tablet pcs that have already been bought. Third, they are excellent gaming platforms and will almost certainly compete on equal if not superior footing with other handheld gaming devices (which have sold hundreds of millions of devices already, not including software sales) and even traditional consoles and pcs. That industry is already larger than the film industry and growing rapidly, the growing market share of tablet gaming is nothing to scoff at. Fourth, tablets don't require the same level of infrastructure as other computers. They have long battery life and low power usage, they don't necessarily need a hardline internet connection or a constant source of electricity. Someone in 2030 living in a 3rd world country could pay 1/100th their annual income for a tablet pc which has an e-ink display and can recharge via solar power. They could use it as an ebook reader most of the time and use it for other purposes such as communication and whatnot when they visit a city or someplace with free wifi or they could communicate point to point with folks with similar devices (using them as phones or relays, for example). That technology will change what it means to live in the 3rd world. Fifth, the way that apps work on tablets is a natural match for line of business apps and corporate IT deployment and management. Future generations of tablets will make huge inroads in office computing, which is a huge business. Yes, today they are sometimes toys, but there is a lot of money in toys, and such devices are far less toys than the original PCs were.
  - eliasmacpherson 14y ago
    Try and overstate it as an exercise for yourself.
  - asto 14y ago
    What will it disrupt exactly? Example? As far as I can tell, it is merely a device that affords convenience.
    - InclinedPlane 14y ago
      How is a device that afford convenience not disruptive? I can walk from Seattle to Portland if I desired, the only advantage a car offers is convenience. Yet through that dramatic increase in convenience the car has proven to be one of the most disruptive inventions in history. Similarly, one can communicate, do graphic design, mix audio, produce movies, write letters and novels without a computer but the convenience afforded by computers and the internet has fundamentally transformed all of those activities.
      - kd0amg 14y ago
        There's a difference between "makes this already-very-feasible thing a bit more convenient" and "makes this thing feasible."
        InclinedPlane 14y ago
        Right, so cell phones are irrelevant then because when they were introduced it was already already-very-feasible to call people, indeed it happened millions of times a day all across the country, telephone calls were routine. But even though cell phones made a feasible thing even more convenient and easier they were still a very transformative and very lucrative technology.
        saraid216 14y ago
        No, cell phones made it possible to call someone while they weren't at home or at the office. That's extremely important, and the main reason for cellphone adoption. It wasn't for pleasure calls. It was for reliable, anywhere communication.
- akg 14y ago
  If time is wasted driving, is building more efficient cars really the solution? I would venture that technology that makes the world a lot smaller and puts information at your fingertips, e.g., tablets, phones, social networks, etc. will be a much bigger disrupter in the way we live our current lives. Maybe in the future we won't have to drive as much since we can just get things done without having to waste time in cars.
  - ericd 14y ago
    Many people spend 10% of their waking lives in cars, and more of it earning money to afford their cars. Automatic driving with the associated ease of fractional car ownership is potentially huge. Keep in mind that not everyone works at a desk job that can almost as easily be done remotely. Social networks really, really aren't nearly as impactful in the the productive sense. They've mostly made it easier to chat with more people, and browse through more photos - things that are intensely interesting to people, but not really useful.
    - akg 14y ago
      I am not sure how things like this will change our lives to be honest, I think it is too early to say which will have a bigger impact. To your latter point, I can understand that most people use social networks to merely chat and browse drunken photos of friends, but that is like saying that all the invention of the telephone did was make it easier to share mindless banter with your friends. There are fringe benefits that arise from these kinds of technologies that could be really impactful. Twitter's use during the Arab Spring comes to mind as the most recent example of this. I admit that Facebook doesn't provide any great "technological"/scientific achievement, but it does have a strong network effect supporting it; and that is something that can be impactful in a very productive sense.
  - btian 14y ago
    Information is one thing, but for many things you just can't do remotely. You can't transport iPhones from the airport to your home remotely, can't send kids to school remotely, can't go to a nice restaurant remotely.
  - 14y ago
- pyoung 14y ago
  The only reason I would buy an automated car is so that I will have more time to play with my iPad :)
- nextstep 14y ago
  And curing cancer will have an even greater impact. But as of today, cancer still kills millions and I am unable to buy an autonomous vehicle. However, I'm writing a comment on HN on my iPad. I think that autonomous vehicles will be revolutionary, but it's going to be 5-10 years before such claims are anything more than bold prognostications.
- Someone 14y ago
  I sort-of agree with you, but I wonder whether the effects of automated driving will be positive. Firstly, I doubt most current drivers will be extra productive in the time they gain once they have an automated car. Secondly, I worry whether those who currently drive cars professionally will get any job at all once we have automated cars.
- TechNewb 14y ago
  How about living in, or building, cities that have good enough public infastructure that cars aren't needed. That would have an even larger effect.
  - hgh 14y ago
    I wonder how much is cause and how much is effect. One of the reasons that we have the suburbs is everyone owning cheap cars and getting cheap petrol. Not to discount good urban design and public infrastructure, but if there are autonomous cars, I suspect there will be corresponding influence on urban planning. Likely for the better.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ippisl 14y ago
  I think you should include the iphone and ipad together because they're pretty similar. Cheap smartphones/tablets will totally transform the third world. One good example is education:a billion+ people in the third world have awful or nonexistent education.Just imagine them having access to the best teaching in the world via khan academy, coursera etc. How will this change the world ? What else could cheap smartphones/tablets do for the third world ? help tranform healthcare ? let them organize into big groups to achieve things? let marketers of usefull stuff cheaply reach them ? The thing is that wasting commute time is a small problem relative to the problems the third world suffer from.And smartphones might have a big role to play in solving those.
asto 14y ago
I believe he's talking about the current crop of startups and research that's getting funded right now.
steauengeglase 14y ago
He is lamenting the number of talented high school kids playing baseball, not who won the World Series.
koeselitz 14y ago
The iPhone and iPad were absolutely not a "project" (the word he uses in the article) of the past five years. They're part of a project that started more than ten years ago. I certainly don't think they're old technology - they're still ahead of the tablet and arguably the smart phone market, I think - but I don't really classify them as small projects that have a lot of potential that were just invented in the past five years. Heck, you could easily argue that the iPad is the fruition of a vision, and a project, that Steve Jobs started decades ago. And if you want to get technical, the iPhone was in active development before five years ago.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
No doubt his comment about "Dancing on the grave of Silicon Valley" will join counterparts like "640K ought to be enough for anyone" and "Who wants to print faster than they can read?" It is a bit short sighted, and while I disagree with the premise I'm certainly fine with Blank having an opinion that the 'glory days' of Silicon Valley are behind it. But when I read that article I thought to myself, "Wow, here is someone that doesn't 'get' the valley at all." Because he didn't seem to remember that the valley "died" in 1984, if you recall that is when semi-conductor companies started going out of business and silicon was dead, it was all going off shore. Except that systems companies like Sun were being born, and Cisco, and a host of other infrastructure plays that were going to lead into the a huge up welling of innovation (and sadly patents). Then the dot com bubble burst and Silicon Valley 'died' again, no more would anyone build innovative tech companies in 'the valley' after all it was a wasteland, a burned out cinder that had burned brightly for half a dozen years, only to leave behind an infertile plain of concrete layups and landfills with t-shirts from companies nobody would ever remember. And now we've got Google, a re-born Apple, Ebay Etc. Facebook's IPO heralds the "end" of Silicon Valley? Really? So when ever someone tells me that the valley is dead, and can't explain why this time it is actually going to die when the last several times it didn't die, I know that they don't understand why it lives, and thus can't reliably prognosticate about its death. Its always interesting to read though. And when folks things it's dead, well smart people go out looking for the saplings.
DanBC 14y ago
iPhone and iPad are not innovations, they're just very very good iteration of existing tech.
redthrowaway 14y ago
>Who cares what this guy thinks? "This guy" is Steve Blank[1]. He's kind of a big deal in SV and the startup scene in general. Whether or not you agree with his assessment of Valley culture, his personal cachet is such that it behooves you to take notice. []1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank
- iamwil 14y ago
  Be careful not to give him credibility just because he's an expert. While we should take notice because he has a track record of knowing what he's talking about, we should evaluate his claims on its own, regardless of who makes the claim. Is it true that VCs no longer invests in the hard sciences? I don't think so. There's VCs that invest in cleantech and biotech. Is it true that VCs like quick returns and will increase investments in social media? Probably. In addition, they can only invest in what entrepreneurs are building.
  - redthrowaway 14y ago
    >Be careful not to give him credibility just because he's an expert. Absolutely. While his argument should be evaluated on it's own merit, the fact that it's Steve Blank means it's likely worth evaluating.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    Steve has a track record as an entrepreneur, investor, and mentor. He has spent a lot of time in this space. His argument may be wrong, but he really does have the credentials to make it worth thinking about.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Bud 14y ago
  Thank you for explaining who this guy is; I honestly did not know. I agree that if a person has a record like that, it's reasonable to give them a listen. But I still disagree with this particular opinion of his. :)
nhebb 14y ago
There's a couple of problems with that argument. Apple is a great Silicon Valley success story, but they don't make products in Silicon Valley. They design them there, but they are manufactured elsewhere. In its heyday, Silicon Valley used to make things. Tangible things. Manufacturing companies not only provide direct labor employment opportunities, but they also create 2-3 jobs in the local economy for every direct labor position. The hardware companies of yesteryear made products that had a compounding value in the economy. Test and measurement equipment, processors, workstations, etc., were put to use making other products that had value, hence the compounding effect. I'm sure Apple products have a compounding value effect, but a company like Facebook probably doesn't, at least to the degree the old SV companies and their products did.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
>while ignoring that Apple has become the largest company in the history of the known universe Sorry that's Microsoft, not Apple (even if during the dot com boom). From Wiki: Record Market Capitalization On December 30, 1999 Microsoft reached an intraday high share price of $119.94[3]. With 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares (as of November 30, 1999),[4] it had a market capitalization of $618.9 billion. This was the highest market capitalization ever reached by a publicly traded company[5]. Adjusting for inflation to 2012, Microsoft's market capitalization would be $846 billion[ Apple only reached $600B.
mkramlich 14y ago
He's Steve Blank. He probably has way more accomplishments, credentials, followers and respect than you do. You really should look before you leap before making comments like that. Also, he's clearly speaking at a strategic, coarse-grained level. Elon Musk: I think we can put a man on Mars within 10 years. Bud: Who cares what this guy thinks? (...) see what I mean?
dataisfun 14y ago
agreeing with what others have said. Blank has basically redefined the study of entrepreneurship (in addition to starting and exiting quite a number of companies).
drumdance 14y ago
Apple does not need VC money.
derwiki 14y ago
Largest _publicly_ traded company; I believe there is at least one privately held oil company worth more.
derwiki 14y ago
Largest _publicly_ traded company; I believe there is at least one privately held oil company worth more.

by Bud 14y ago

recursive 14y ago

He's absolutely correct. Automated cars will have a much bigger effect than iPads. So much time is wasted driving.

InclinedPlane 14y ago
This is just blatantly wrong. Yes automated cars will be a huge deal, but discounting the iPad is just prejudice pretending to be insight. The mobile OS experience and the tablet PC are very much the next phase of evolution of the computer. Right now the iPad is trailblazing the way as a very high markup luxury good but even so it's proving to be enormously disruptive. When the second shoe drops on the tablet PC revolution the entire industry and indeed the entire world will be shaken up. In a few decades the market for computing devices and software will be vastly larger than it is today. People in Sudan will have dirt cheap solar powered tablet PCs. The degree of disruption on the horizon due to these devices cannot be overstated. Edit: how are tablet PCs disruptive? In several ways: First, they have fewer components than any other form-factor complete computer and are cheaper to produce. Cheaper computers means more people that can buy computers which exponentially increases the number of people who buy computers when you consider the developing world. This is a feedback loop, technologically it's likely to be possible to make a profit on tablet pcs in the near future in a price range of tens of dollars per device. Second, they are more user friendly for average users and their form factor offers advantages for normal users (portability, etc.) This makes them desirable as replacements for laptops and desktops for many people, as witnessed by the massive number of tablet pcs that have already been bought. Third, they are excellent gaming platforms and will almost certainly compete on equal if not superior footing with other handheld gaming devices (which have sold hundreds of millions of devices already, not including software sales) and even traditional consoles and pcs. That industry is already larger than the film industry and growing rapidly, the growing market share of tablet gaming is nothing to scoff at. Fourth, tablets don't require the same level of infrastructure as other computers. They have long battery life and low power usage, they don't necessarily need a hardline internet connection or a constant source of electricity. Someone in 2030 living in a 3rd world country could pay 1/100th their annual income for a tablet pc which has an e-ink display and can recharge via solar power. They could use it as an ebook reader most of the time and use it for other purposes such as communication and whatnot when they visit a city or someplace with free wifi or they could communicate point to point with folks with similar devices (using them as phones or relays, for example). That technology will change what it means to live in the 3rd world. Fifth, the way that apps work on tablets is a natural match for line of business apps and corporate IT deployment and management. Future generations of tablets will make huge inroads in office computing, which is a huge business. Yes, today they are sometimes toys, but there is a lot of money in toys, and such devices are far less toys than the original PCs were.
- eliasmacpherson 14y ago
  Try and overstate it as an exercise for yourself.
- asto 14y ago
  What will it disrupt exactly? Example? As far as I can tell, it is merely a device that affords convenience.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    How is a device that afford convenience not disruptive? I can walk from Seattle to Portland if I desired, the only advantage a car offers is convenience. Yet through that dramatic increase in convenience the car has proven to be one of the most disruptive inventions in history. Similarly, one can communicate, do graphic design, mix audio, produce movies, write letters and novels without a computer but the convenience afforded by computers and the internet has fundamentally transformed all of those activities.
    - kd0amg 14y ago
      There's a difference between "makes this already-very-feasible thing a bit more convenient" and "makes this thing feasible."
      - InclinedPlane 14y ago
        Right, so cell phones are irrelevant then because when they were introduced it was already already-very-feasible to call people, indeed it happened millions of times a day all across the country, telephone calls were routine. But even though cell phones made a feasible thing even more convenient and easier they were still a very transformative and very lucrative technology.
        saraid216 14y ago
        No, cell phones made it possible to call someone while they weren't at home or at the office. That's extremely important, and the main reason for cellphone adoption. It wasn't for pleasure calls. It was for reliable, anywhere communication.
akg 14y ago
If time is wasted driving, is building more efficient cars really the solution? I would venture that technology that makes the world a lot smaller and puts information at your fingertips, e.g., tablets, phones, social networks, etc. will be a much bigger disrupter in the way we live our current lives. Maybe in the future we won't have to drive as much since we can just get things done without having to waste time in cars.
- ericd 14y ago
  Many people spend 10% of their waking lives in cars, and more of it earning money to afford their cars. Automatic driving with the associated ease of fractional car ownership is potentially huge. Keep in mind that not everyone works at a desk job that can almost as easily be done remotely. Social networks really, really aren't nearly as impactful in the the productive sense. They've mostly made it easier to chat with more people, and browse through more photos - things that are intensely interesting to people, but not really useful.
  - akg 14y ago
    I am not sure how things like this will change our lives to be honest, I think it is too early to say which will have a bigger impact. To your latter point, I can understand that most people use social networks to merely chat and browse drunken photos of friends, but that is like saying that all the invention of the telephone did was make it easier to share mindless banter with your friends. There are fringe benefits that arise from these kinds of technologies that could be really impactful. Twitter's use during the Arab Spring comes to mind as the most recent example of this. I admit that Facebook doesn't provide any great "technological"/scientific achievement, but it does have a strong network effect supporting it; and that is something that can be impactful in a very productive sense.
- btian 14y ago
  Information is one thing, but for many things you just can't do remotely. You can't transport iPhones from the airport to your home remotely, can't send kids to school remotely, can't go to a nice restaurant remotely.
- 14y ago
pyoung 14y ago
The only reason I would buy an automated car is so that I will have more time to play with my iPad :)
nextstep 14y ago
And curing cancer will have an even greater impact. But as of today, cancer still kills millions and I am unable to buy an autonomous vehicle. However, I'm writing a comment on HN on my iPad. I think that autonomous vehicles will be revolutionary, but it's going to be 5-10 years before such claims are anything more than bold prognostications.
Someone 14y ago
I sort-of agree with you, but I wonder whether the effects of automated driving will be positive. Firstly, I doubt most current drivers will be extra productive in the time they gain once they have an automated car. Secondly, I worry whether those who currently drive cars professionally will get any job at all once we have automated cars.
TechNewb 14y ago
How about living in, or building, cities that have good enough public infastructure that cars aren't needed. That would have an even larger effect.
- hgh 14y ago
  I wonder how much is cause and how much is effect. One of the reasons that we have the suburbs is everyone owning cheap cars and getting cheap petrol. Not to discount good urban design and public infrastructure, but if there are autonomous cars, I suspect there will be corresponding influence on urban planning. Likely for the better.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ippisl 14y ago
I think you should include the iphone and ipad together because they're pretty similar. Cheap smartphones/tablets will totally transform the third world. One good example is education:a billion+ people in the third world have awful or nonexistent education.Just imagine them having access to the best teaching in the world via khan academy, coursera etc. How will this change the world ? What else could cheap smartphones/tablets do for the third world ? help tranform healthcare ? let them organize into big groups to achieve things? let marketers of usefull stuff cheaply reach them ? The thing is that wasting commute time is a small problem relative to the problems the third world suffer from.And smartphones might have a big role to play in solving those.

asto 14y ago

I believe he's talking about the current crop of startups and research that's getting funded right now.

steauengeglase 14y ago

He is lamenting the number of talented high school kids playing baseball, not who won the World Series.

koeselitz 14y ago

The iPhone and iPad were absolutely not a "project" (the word he uses in the article) of the past five years. They're part of a project that started more than ten years ago. I certainly don't think they're old technology - they're still ahead of the tablet and arguably the smart phone market, I think - but I don't really classify them as small projects that have a lot of potential that were just invented in the past five years. Heck, you could easily argue that the iPad is the fruition of a vision, and a project, that Steve Jobs started decades ago. And if you want to get technical, the iPhone was in active development before five years ago.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

No doubt his comment about "Dancing on the grave of Silicon Valley" will join counterparts like "640K ought to be enough for anyone" and "Who wants to print faster than they can read?" It is a bit short sighted, and while I disagree with the premise I'm certainly fine with Blank having an opinion that the 'glory days' of Silicon Valley are behind it. But when I read that article I thought to myself, "Wow, here is someone that doesn't 'get' the valley at all." Because he didn't seem to remember that the valley "died" in 1984, if you recall that is when semi-conductor companies started going out of business and silicon was dead, it was all going off shore. Except that systems companies like Sun were being born, and Cisco, and a host of other infrastructure plays that were going to lead into the a huge up welling of innovation (and sadly patents). Then the dot com bubble burst and Silicon Valley 'died' again, no more would anyone build innovative tech companies in 'the valley' after all it was a wasteland, a burned out cinder that had burned brightly for half a dozen years, only to leave behind an infertile plain of concrete layups and landfills with t-shirts from companies nobody would ever remember. And now we've got Google, a re-born Apple, Ebay Etc. Facebook's IPO heralds the "end" of Silicon Valley? Really? So when ever someone tells me that the valley is dead, and can't explain why this time it is actually going to die when the last several times it didn't die, I know that they don't understand why it lives, and thus can't reliably prognosticate about its death. Its always interesting to read though. And when folks things it's dead, well smart people go out looking for the saplings.

DanBC 14y ago

iPhone and iPad are not innovations, they're just very very good iteration of existing tech.

redthrowaway 14y ago

>Who cares what this guy thinks? "This guy" is Steve Blank[1]. He's kind of a big deal in SV and the startup scene in general. Whether or not you agree with his assessment of Valley culture, his personal cachet is such that it behooves you to take notice. []1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank

iamwil 14y ago
Be careful not to give him credibility just because he's an expert. While we should take notice because he has a track record of knowing what he's talking about, we should evaluate his claims on its own, regardless of who makes the claim. Is it true that VCs no longer invests in the hard sciences? I don't think so. There's VCs that invest in cleantech and biotech. Is it true that VCs like quick returns and will increase investments in social media? Probably. In addition, they can only invest in what entrepreneurs are building.
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  >Be careful not to give him credibility just because he's an expert. Absolutely. While his argument should be evaluated on it's own merit, the fact that it's Steve Blank means it's likely worth evaluating.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Steve has a track record as an entrepreneur, investor, and mentor. He has spent a lot of time in this space. His argument may be wrong, but he really does have the credentials to make it worth thinking about.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Bud 14y ago
Thank you for explaining who this guy is; I honestly did not know. I agree that if a person has a record like that, it's reasonable to give them a listen. But I still disagree with this particular opinion of his. :)

nhebb 14y ago

There's a couple of problems with that argument. Apple is a great Silicon Valley success story, but they don't make products in Silicon Valley. They design them there, but they are manufactured elsewhere. In its heyday, Silicon Valley used to make things. Tangible things. Manufacturing companies not only provide direct labor employment opportunities, but they also create 2-3 jobs in the local economy for every direct labor position. The hardware companies of yesteryear made products that had a compounding value in the economy. Test and measurement equipment, processors, workstations, etc., were put to use making other products that had value, hence the compounding effect. I'm sure Apple products have a compounding value effect, but a company like Facebook probably doesn't, at least to the degree the old SV companies and their products did.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

>while ignoring that Apple has become the largest company in the history of the known universe Sorry that's Microsoft, not Apple (even if during the dot com boom). From Wiki: Record Market Capitalization On December 30, 1999 Microsoft reached an intraday high share price of $119.94[3]. With 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares (as of November 30, 1999),[4] it had a market capitalization of $618.9 billion. This was the highest market capitalization ever reached by a publicly traded company[5]. Adjusting for inflation to 2012, Microsoft's market capitalization would be $846 billion[ Apple only reached $600B.

mkramlich 14y ago

He's Steve Blank. He probably has way more accomplishments, credentials, followers and respect than you do. You really should look before you leap before making comments like that. Also, he's clearly speaking at a strategic, coarse-grained level. Elon Musk: I think we can put a man on Mars within 10 years. Bud: Who cares what this guy thinks? (...) see what I mean?

dataisfun 14y ago

agreeing with what others have said. Blank has basically redefined the study of entrepreneurship (in addition to starting and exiting quite a number of companies).

drumdance 14y ago

Apple does not need VC money.

derwiki 14y ago

Largest _publicly_ traded company; I believe there is at least one privately held oil company worth more.

derwiki 14y ago

Largest _publicly_ traded company; I believe there is at least one privately held oil company worth more.