4 ms·

Aside from the overarching thread of the current crop of CEOs struggling to come to terms with the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be and it's

by cjs_ac 1y ago

Aside from the overarching thread of the current crop of CEOs struggling to come to terms with the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be and it's up to others to continue innovating, I found these quotes interesting: > The Internet is no longer the world's great frontier, and the pool of unsatisfied wants that suddenly welled up as the world first came online is not what it once was. There once was no graphical operating system, no decent web browser, no search engine that could find what you were looking for. The basic amenities are now there. Of course there is still much room for innovation, but merely being able to write a computer program and understand what computer networks are good for is no longer the superpower it once was. If you're young enough to pound Red Bulls all night, you're probably not old enough to have the breadth of knowledge required to launch a great software product. > Maybe most of the critical things that can be created by one guy typing furiously are gone, and the opportunities that remain require expertise and wisdom from a bunch of different people. The tech companies that became big after 2008 solved problems with the same spirit as Jeremy Clarkson asking, 'How hard can it be?' and proceeding to build an electric car with a moustache called Geoff[0]. Those companies - Uber, AirBnB, Meta, Twitter, and so on - waded into very complex problem spaces, waved the magic wand of software, and used vast amounts of venture capital to obliterate the traditional solutions to these problems before anyone could realise how unsatisfactory these new solutions were. So now governments are coming up with all sorts of regulations - some of which are completely inappropriate - in an attempt to get these companies to stop being so irresponsible with the fabric of society, so everyone is now even more upset. The days when a person who can build stuff and a person who can sell stuff were all you needed to start a startup are gone. There's a third role that's crucial now: the person who has deep understanding of the problem before product design starts so that the company doesn't build another version of The Angrifier. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-OlOP0BQ_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-OlOP0BQ_U

4ndrewl 1y ago
I mean yeah, but Uber promised us self-driving taxis, but only found profit by delivering takeaways. Meta and Twitter - adverts, and all on the foundation of a zirp economy.
- tough 1y ago
  Most of the big unicorns of the past cycle, uber, airbnb, etc, where mostly plays on -we can do illegal shit- and grow faster than laws close us up
  - groby_b 1y ago
    The problem any realistic assessment will have to struggle with is that they did illegal shit, exploited existing loopholes and created a better experience. Taxis before Uber were a shit show. The worst Uber drive you had would still be aboce median for the pre-Uber taxi experience. Same goes for finding a place to stay before AirBnB if you wanted anything outside a chain hotel. That doesn't justify all they did, but it also points out that the market was stuck in a local minimum. Breaking out of that is a successful achievement. (We can debate if it was worth the costs. We can debate if the costs needed to be as high as they are, or if that was an outflow of using VC money. There are many debates to be had). But "all because illegal" is intellectually irresponsible reductionism.
    - tough 1y ago
      sorry, you make a great point and I didn't mean to diminish their breakthrough's, but not all of us can allow to not even care about laws in the first place,was my main point. Easier done with VC's money tho
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  I'm not impressed with the complexity of Uber as a business, at least not to first order. You could hire out contractors in India to make a ride hailing app for $20k with maybe a 20% chance of success. Before Uber came out I knew people solving much more complex problems like routing a fleet of trucks to refill vending machines. I'd also say making a web site like AirBNB is not difficult at all -- being at ground zero for startups might have gave them a year and a half lead technologically. Uber, AirBNB and such were really remarkable because they could fight city hall and cartels like taxis and hotels (for better and for worse.) Also those businesses have a huge amount of "dealing with bullshit" in the sense of the Uber driver assaulting a passenger, a passenger assaulting the driver, the people who have a party and trash your apartment, etc. If I'd tried to pitch businesses like that anywhere outside the bay area any investors would be like "are you kidding?"
dtnewman 1y ago
> the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be Eh, Mark Zuckerberg is 40. Facebook is planting seeds in some pretty ambitious places (VR/AR + AI). To put that into perspective, Elon Musk is 53 now, but he was ~40 when the Falcon 9 first launched for SpaceX and the Model S was released at Tesla. In June 2012, when the S was released, Tesla was worth about 0.7% of what it is now. Elon Musk was certainly rich, but no where close to the wealthiest folks at the time. Similarly, at 40 years old (21 years ago) Jeff Bezos was worth about 100th of what he is now. Rich, but it wasn't clear that Amazon would ever come close to, say, Walmart, in terms of market cap. Mark Zuckerberg's empire still has plenty of time to grow.
- chiffre01 1y ago
  I put Facebook in the same category as Google. They have all of these flashy projects, but at the end of the day they never get beyond serving advertisements. It's their core competency and always will be.
  - boringg 1y ago
    Most companies are like that. Look at their core competency and how much room that market has to grow. It's definitely the exception for company to go into a completely different vertical and excel there.
  - dtnewman 1y ago
    - Amazon made AWS - Microsoft went from Operating Systems to a cloud company - Even Google has Waymo, which might develop into a large company by itself - Apple was founded in 1976. They really weren't the powerhouse that they are until the iPhone came out. - Netflix went from mailing DVDs to streaming Of course most pivots don't work and there's selection bias here. BUT, it's not unheard of for business models to change. And it certainly helps that Zuck is the original founder and has controlling shares.

by cjs_ac 1y ago

4ndrewl 1y ago

I mean yeah, but Uber promised us self-driving taxis, but only found profit by delivering takeaways. Meta and Twitter - adverts, and all on the foundation of a zirp economy.

tough 1y ago
Most of the big unicorns of the past cycle, uber, airbnb, etc, where mostly plays on -we can do illegal shit- and grow faster than laws close us up
- groby_b 1y ago
  The problem any realistic assessment will have to struggle with is that they did illegal shit, exploited existing loopholes and created a better experience. Taxis before Uber were a shit show. The worst Uber drive you had would still be aboce median for the pre-Uber taxi experience. Same goes for finding a place to stay before AirBnB if you wanted anything outside a chain hotel. That doesn't justify all they did, but it also points out that the market was stuck in a local minimum. Breaking out of that is a successful achievement. (We can debate if it was worth the costs. We can debate if the costs needed to be as high as they are, or if that was an outflow of using VC money. There are many debates to be had). But "all because illegal" is intellectually irresponsible reductionism.
  - tough 1y ago
    sorry, you make a great point and I didn't mean to diminish their breakthrough's, but not all of us can allow to not even care about laws in the first place,was my main point. Easier done with VC's money tho
PaulHoule 1y ago
I'm not impressed with the complexity of Uber as a business, at least not to first order. You could hire out contractors in India to make a ride hailing app for $20k with maybe a 20% chance of success. Before Uber came out I knew people solving much more complex problems like routing a fleet of trucks to refill vending machines. I'd also say making a web site like AirBNB is not difficult at all -- being at ground zero for startups might have gave them a year and a half lead technologically. Uber, AirBNB and such were really remarkable because they could fight city hall and cartels like taxis and hotels (for better and for worse.) Also those businesses have a huge amount of "dealing with bullshit" in the sense of the Uber driver assaulting a passenger, a passenger assaulting the driver, the people who have a party and trash your apartment, etc. If I'd tried to pitch businesses like that anywhere outside the bay area any investors would be like "are you kidding?"

dtnewman 1y ago

> the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be Eh, Mark Zuckerberg is 40. Facebook is planting seeds in some pretty ambitious places (VR/AR + AI). To put that into perspective, Elon Musk is 53 now, but he was ~40 when the Falcon 9 first launched for SpaceX and the Model S was released at Tesla. In June 2012, when the S was released, Tesla was worth about 0.7% of what it is now. Elon Musk was certainly rich, but no where close to the wealthiest folks at the time. Similarly, at 40 years old (21 years ago) Jeff Bezos was worth about 100th of what he is now. Rich, but it wasn't clear that Amazon would ever come close to, say, Walmart, in terms of market cap. Mark Zuckerberg's empire still has plenty of time to grow.

chiffre01 1y ago
I put Facebook in the same category as Google. They have all of these flashy projects, but at the end of the day they never get beyond serving advertisements. It's their core competency and always will be.
- boringg 1y ago
  Most companies are like that. Look at their core competency and how much room that market has to grow. It's definitely the exception for company to go into a completely different vertical and excel there.
- dtnewman 1y ago
  - Amazon made AWS - Microsoft went from Operating Systems to a cloud company - Even Google has Waymo, which might develop into a large company by itself - Apple was founded in 1976. They really weren't the powerhouse that they are until the iPhone came out. - Netflix went from mailing DVDs to streaming Of course most pivots don't work and there's selection bias here. BUT, it's not unheard of for business models to change. And it certainly helps that Zuck is the original founder and has controlling shares.