4 ms·

> You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic. The average life span of a busi

> You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic. The average life span of a business is short. Even for S&P500 companies it's only 15 years[0], if we take in all the startup and small/individual businesses, parent's 3 year bet is aggressive, but not completely unreasonable. [0] https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/consulting/how-businesses-can-stand-the-test-of-time https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/consulting/how-businesses-...

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I went to the referenced article about the 15 years (https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/ https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/), but I'm very skeptical as to what that actually means without more info (I just read the abstract, don't have access to the full article). I'm sure a huge part of that is there is much more M&A than there was 80 years ago. I also don't even understand how the quote in the abstract can make sense, because it states "The average lifespan of a US S&P 500 company has fallen by 80% in the last 80 years", but that article was written in 2018 and the S&P 500 was only created in 1957. There were no "S&P 500 companies" 80 years ago. I'm also guessing the WEF's survey list skews heavily, if not entirely, to large, established employers.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  I think you are right about the M&A influence, just looking at one random company sitting at 434th of the S&P500, it has been around for only 16 years and the abstract mentions 5 other companies that had major influence on its trajectory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions I think this is still on point with what the parent was alluding to: if your company lives and dies by M&As, do you have a clear vision of what the future will be in even a few years ? When two company merges, one of the vision mechanically dies after all.
subarctic 2y ago
Hmm I guess it's a good point that a lot of those 1000 companies are not startups and will be around in 3 years
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  My impression is that bigger companies still come and go at a pace we're not used to. It might be an extreme, but streaming services for instance are their own companies within a group, and outside of the biggest two or three ones they get merged/split way more than we'd expect. I experienced the same in the restaurant field, where middle sized companies would get merged, become a business unit, then get spinned out again as independant entities, to get absorbed some other faceless blob. When enough money is involved these kind of operation are relatively fluid.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I went to the referenced article about the 15 years (https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/ https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/), but I'm very skeptical as to what that actually means without more info (I just read the abstract, don't have access to the full article). I'm sure a huge part of that is there is much more M&A than there was 80 years ago. I also don't even understand how the quote in the abstract can make sense, because it states "The average lifespan of a US S&P 500 company has fallen by 80% in the last 80 years", but that article was written in 2018 and the S&P 500 was only created in 1957. There were no "S&P 500 companies" 80 years ago. I'm also guessing the WEF's survey list skews heavily, if not entirely, to large, established employers.

makeitdouble 2y ago
I think you are right about the M&A influence, just looking at one random company sitting at 434th of the S&P500, it has been around for only 16 years and the abstract mentions 5 other companies that had major influence on its trajectory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions I think this is still on point with what the parent was alluding to: if your company lives and dies by M&As, do you have a clear vision of what the future will be in even a few years ? When two company merges, one of the vision mechanically dies after all.

subarctic 2y ago

Hmm I guess it's a good point that a lot of those 1000 companies are not startups and will be around in 3 years

makeitdouble 2y ago
My impression is that bigger companies still come and go at a pace we're not used to. It might be an extreme, but streaming services for instance are their own companies within a group, and outside of the biggest two or three ones they get merged/split way more than we'd expect. I experienced the same in the restaurant field, where middle sized companies would get merged, become a business unit, then get spinned out again as independant entities, to get absorbed some other faceless blob. When enough money is involved these kind of operation are relatively fluid.