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Xerox PARC operated on a budget of $12m/year in today's money. Out of that we got the laser printer, Ethernet, the GUI, much of the innovation behind object-ori

Xerox PARC operated on a budget of $12m/year in today's money. Out of that we got the laser printer, Ethernet, the GUI, much of the innovation behind object-oriented programming, etc. Just one of those innovations (laser printer) paid for the entire lab's operations 200 times over. Today's startups need twice that to ship a fucking terminal emulator: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/05/warp-raises-23m-to-build-a-better-terminal/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/05/warp-raises-23m-to-build-a...

mschuster91 2y ago
> Today's startups need twice that The laser printer was invented in the 70s. Back then, property prices (both rental and purchase) were much much MUCH more reasonable for both companies and their employees, with the latter being a significant contributor to the explosion in wages. Or to rephrase, you needed way less money for any given thing 50 years ago because the associated costs were much lower.
- mminer237 2y ago
  The associated costs being higher is inflation, which he adjusted for, and there's lots of working from home nowadays, which means you need even less property per person than back then.
lijok 2y ago
Gotta pay the k8s bills somehow
crazygringo 2y ago
Back then all that stuff was basically low-hanging fruit. The time was right. If Xerox hadn't come up with them, someone else would have within a couple of years. Also, they were all conceptually pretty simple. Believe it or not, running an app store is massively more complex than any of those things you listed. Dealing with payments across countries, legal entities, fraud, security, hiring processes, employee performance standards, and so forth. A laser printer or a GUI is much simpler in comparison. Also, that terminal emulator you're describing -- first, it's not just an emulator, it's adding a lot of new features. Second, developer salaries have skyrocketed relative to inflation. So even accounting for inflation, $12M goes a lot less far than it did in the 1970's.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... Median salaries in 2023 were $130k. Yes, salaries are higher now but not by an insane amount, but this is a software team. They don't need an office, they don't need custom hardware. They don't need to invent ethernet along the way to make this work. They need to make a terminal emulator that people are willing to spend money on (good luck). Push the salaries up to $200k/year and total cost to $300k to cover other expenses (HR, health insurance, buying their laptops, etc.) and $23 million supports a team of about 77 devs for a year or about 25 for 3 years.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Today's startups need twice that The laser printer was invented in the 70s. Back then, property prices (both rental and purchase) were much much MUCH more reasonable for both companies and their employees, with the latter being a significant contributor to the explosion in wages. Or to rephrase, you needed way less money for any given thing 50 years ago because the associated costs were much lower.

mminer237 2y ago
The associated costs being higher is inflation, which he adjusted for, and there's lots of working from home nowadays, which means you need even less property per person than back then.

lijok 2y ago

Gotta pay the k8s bills somehow

crazygringo 2y ago

Back then all that stuff was basically low-hanging fruit. The time was right. If Xerox hadn't come up with them, someone else would have within a couple of years. Also, they were all conceptually pretty simple. Believe it or not, running an app store is massively more complex than any of those things you listed. Dealing with payments across countries, legal entities, fraud, security, hiring processes, employee performance standards, and so forth. A laser printer or a GUI is much simpler in comparison. Also, that terminal emulator you're describing -- first, it's not just an emulator, it's adding a lot of new features. Second, developer salaries have skyrocketed relative to inflation. So even accounting for inflation, $12M goes a lot less far than it did in the 1970's.

Jtsummers 2y ago
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... Median salaries in 2023 were $130k. Yes, salaries are higher now but not by an insane amount, but this is a software team. They don't need an office, they don't need custom hardware. They don't need to invent ethernet along the way to make this work. They need to make a terminal emulator that people are willing to spend money on (good luck). Push the salaries up to $200k/year and total cost to $300k to cover other expenses (HR, health insurance, buying their laptops, etc.) and $23 million supports a team of about 77 devs for a year or about 25 for 3 years.