8 ms·

The best founders are futurists

106 points by arram 13y ago

radiusq 13y ago
The author makes up several quotes prepended with "might have said" to justify a large part of this argument. What a load of crap
pdenya 13y ago
> I think the minimum viable product has made us so effective at thinking short term that we spend less time thinking long term. There is such a thing as a product or idea to be presented "before it's time". I wonder if there's an opposite of an MVP like a "Maximum Viable Product" - The most advanced product the market is likely to support at the moment.
- pazimzadeh 13y ago
  Or not that the market is likely to support at the moment, but that is simply possible to build with today's materials and processes. Like the Apple Newton, perhaps.
- wittysense 13y ago
  I really like this point. I think there is, generally, a flaw in the thinking that because programmers are good at focus, they are good at prediction. "Ahead of its time" may be outside of the natural means, on top of being quite possibly outside of the "epistemic network" of those thinkers assigned to the problem. MVP eludes most, and as we become more democratic in our development practices, this scientific concept of MVP will so too become diluted. The future will likely simply be outlined by material needs. Let's say that ?
lukeprog 13y ago
If you want to become a better futurist, there's nothing like lots of practice for improving your calibration. The best way I can think of to get lots of practice at technology forecasting is to sign up for George Mason University's DAGGRE program, which will let you participate in a multi-year prediction tournament focused on science and technology forecasting. Details here: http://is.gd/qHnaOY http://is.gd/qHnaOY
acgourley 13y ago
I hope he's right, I certainly think about my company that way. But it's still a bold statement with no evidence given. Yes those founders might have said those things. Did they?
- breadbox 13y ago
  My gut says that yes, they did. However, they may have also said that the world is shaped like a burrito. Certain jobs encourage the spouting of all kinds of sweeping statements. The ones that turn out to be true will be remembered, the others forgotten.
digz 13y ago
This is a tautological claim. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the biggest successes were those significantly changed the world... No way!? That's why they're successes! Lots, and lots of examples of people who similarly dreamed of changing the world with BIG ideas that completely failed. The bigger idea, the lower your probability of success, but with a larger potential return (both personal wealth and impact). I've never seen any data to support that your risk adjusted return on big ideas is better than for smaller ideas. Massive vividness bias here.
- boot 13y ago
  Let's sum up this article. In order to be successful monetarily, you need to make something people want. This guy is a savant.
  - Paul_D_Santana 13y ago
    Great. More middlebrow dismissal. [1] Instead of just dismissing an article for the obvious points, try to identify at least one idea that could be considered novel or worthwhile. In this article, the suggestion of "X will inevitably be part of the future, so I will build it" is a novel idea, at least to me, and especially with the list of real-life examples he gave. That is completely different than building what people want. For example, a different color phone case for a new smartphone is something that many people want, but not a "future" idea as the article suggests. Robot butlers like in The Jetsons [2] will inevitably be part of the future, so there's an idea. Learn to think positively and see the potential of all things, including "obvious" articles. I'd certainly recommend The Magic of Thinking Big [3], namely the example about prisons. [1] pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jetsons_characters#Rosey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jetsons_characters#... [3] http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V1BMPI http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V1BMPI
    - boot 13y ago
      I honestly think this article provides very little insight into anything. You don't have to agree. Money in it's theoretical form is supposed to be value. To be a good founder you have to create value. Since this is a site dedicated to technology that inherently means we're dealing with ideas about what is coming next - not private equity firms who buy up paper product manufactures to corner the market. So, to me, this article states only the obvious and has no value besides maybe a masturbatory experience. That's just me.
wittysense 13y ago
Telepathic and empathic abilities will emerge evolutionarily in the hominids through the mixed organization of their organisms and the long-term effects of information on the brain. " If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite variety in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.
programminggeek 13y ago
There is what the future could be, what tomorrow will be, and what today is. Sometimes building a product is about building the future, but not every product is about that. If you don't have the resources to see it through to the future where what you envision is the default, you will fail. Think about Netflix. Streaming video on the internet is a 20 year old idea right? They had to start with delivering dvd's in the mail, which is kind of an analog version of streaming in some ways right? Similar idea, but also fundamentally different delivery mechanism. Even if their goal was streaming movies directly to houses, that's not what they built first. If you can see the problems of today, a way to fix it tomorrow, and maybe what that evolves into in 5, 10, 20 years... awesome. But if you just see a good idea that will take 5, 10, 20 years to be viable... run away unless you have billions of dollars you want to light on fire(like Microsoft on tablets, web tv, home automation, etc...)
michaelochurch 13y ago
In 5 years, if progress continues (and, in all things human, it might not): 1. The top software companies will be running open allocation. It won't get into the mainstream by then, and maybe not ever, because it's not practical for all industries. (You can't run OA easily in finance for regulatory reasons.) However, you'll have to pay hedge-fund money to recruit talented people into a closed-allocation company. 2. Location will be much less relevant than it is now. Right now, "Number 6 startup scene" means none at all. That's changing. 3. Google will either have been thoroughly destroyed (on a cultural front) by stack ranking, or have reinvented itself utterly in a form more like its pre-apocalyptic state. Anyone who can turn these into startups, share your thoughts.
- yid 13y ago
  Can you please stop turning every thread into a diatribe against Google or pitching open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems? 1. Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want". 3. From what I can tell, you were at Google for less than a year. Your anecdotes about Google are neither representative, accurate, nor interesting anymore. Every time you go on a rant about Google, you alienate people who, through first or secondhand information, know that what you're saying is not representative of the organization. Please -- moderate yourself, or you'll probably end up hellbanned.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want". First, open allocation doesn't mean "work on whatever you want". It means that people work for the company directly rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an intermediary who will usually use that power for extortionist purposes and force the other person to serve his career goals (rather than the good of the company, or the employee). Employee and company actually have a common interest that is typically thrown under the bus in a closed-allocation environment. Second, this sure as hell isn't just about me. Open allocation has second-order cultural effects that are positive for everyone. You don't get a good environment if one or a few people get to work on whatever they want but the rest are stuck in narrow niches. So I actually wouldn't be attracted to a job where I got to work on whatever I wanted but everyone else lived under closed allocation. Under closed allocation you get a culture of internal social climbing. It's no longer about doing things. It's about getting permission. You have a society founded on getting jobs rather than doing work, then. Also, the quality of projects that exists under closed allocation is inferior because people can't vote with their feet. open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems ... You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. Open allocation is not a panacea. Far from it. Organizational problems happen because that's how people are. However, open allocation is almost always strictly superior to the alternative, which is closed allocation. Open allocation is the more natural state. Closed allocation is the bulky add-on that needs to be justified, and only when there are necessary information barriers whose integrity is more important than maximal productivity (this is true in secure government jobs, and in some parts of finance) is there any justification for it. Please -- moderate yourself, or you'll probably end up hellbanned. Is that a threat?
kailuowang 13y ago
Being able to envision the future is only a small part of being able to see the big picture, being able to see the big picture is an even smaller part of being a successful founder. But yes, I think it is a prerequisite to be a great founder.
jenius 13y ago
What kind of founder doesn't think this? "In the future everyone will be using this ____ that I'm making" - whether it's a virtual pet app or a new distribution of ubuntu. The problem is that just thinking this is the case is so far from meaning that it has any chance of coming true that the thought hardly helps anything. I don't disagree with the thought, I just don't think it really carries any particular meaning.
dannygarcia 13y ago
It’s less about being a “futurist” and more about the willingness and ability to build something you envision.
mindcrime 13y ago
OK, that's an interesting piece. I'll take a stab at a "If you live in the future ..." statement that goes along with what we're doing at Fogbeam. If you live in the future, computers will be more intelligent and will make it far easier and faster to find exactly the information you are looking for, will make useful predictions to guide your decision making, and will enable new management structures for organizations.
- SatvikBeri 13y ago
  If you live in the future, computers will read your mind and bring that information to you without you having to ask. Google Now is one very early start to this.
JVIDEL 13y ago
I would say 70% of my ideas are futuristic, which is why I'm working on the other 30% That 70% depends on technologies that plain don't exist yet, or are highly experimental at best since some depended on funding that isn't there anymore so the underlying tech needed to move to the next stage is still nowhere to be seen. Case in point: without CAD we wouldn't have stealth planes. The theory existed on paper and attempts at stealth go all the way back to WWII, but it wasn't workable until we had the computer power to crunch the numbers.
31reasons 13y ago
If you live in the future, there is no poverty If you live in the future, there are no diseases If you live in the future, you can live for 200+ years If you live in the future, we stopped using fossil fuels If you live in the future, computers don't track us If you live in the future, facebook doesn't exist so lets get back to work..
- jonmrodriguez 13y ago
  If you live in the future, rockets are fully reusable. If you live in the future, Launch Loops are in operation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop If you live in the future, there are permanent residents on Mars and the Moon.
saosebastiao 13y ago
I would classify myself as a futurist, but we have a flaw...one that tends to lead to our demise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara
airkumar 13y ago
This is what MBAs call the "vision" part of "mission, vision, and values."
meerab 13y ago
This reminds me of a saying in field hockey. 'Don't run towards the ball, run towards where the ball will be'
- lanstein 13y ago
  Believe that's originally from Wayne Gretzky: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waynegretz131510.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waynegretz131510....
  - LukeWalsh 13y ago
    Actually, his father said it. It is often misattributed; most notably by Steve Jobs all throughout his life who never admitted he was wrong. http://www.fastcompany.com/40565/cdu-gretzky-puck-stops-here http://www.fastcompany.com/40565/cdu-gretzky-puck-stops-here
codex 13y ago
I find that this article is representative of much of the content of HN these days: provocative assertions made by relative nobodies with little supporting evidence save anecdote, but made with the full voice of authority. Found a middling startup or two, and you're suddenly an expert. Call me old fashioned, but I like to get my blanket generalizations only from those significantly richer, more powerful, happier, or more successful than I am.
- nqureshi 13y ago
  "Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the "comments" link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page." - PG
  - benologist 13y ago
    The quality of the comments is probably related to the quality of the content. Startup truisms and anecdotes-as-advertisements rarely stimulate interesting conversation.
    - nextstep 13y ago
      I agree with what you're saying, but apparently most of HN enjoys this sort of content :(
- ritchiea 13y ago
  The irony is that HN upvotes light commentary with blanket generalizations to the front page and also upvotes cruel dismissive comments criticizing that sort of light commentary to the top comment.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    If you live in the future pg-bot will be able to downvote trivialy negative comments
daegloe 13y ago
Predicting the future is great and all. But in my experience, the best founders are the ones who execute in the present.
krapp 13y ago
We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. Ha ha. I'm part of the problem. But yeah, I think it's probably a good idea to have a vision of the future and strive to work towards building that, if you're lucky enough to be in a position to do anything about it, and hopefully your vision of a glorious posthuman utopia isn't my vision of a dehumanizing nightmare.
zachrose 13y ago
I imagine F.T. Marinetti dressed in business casual, standing at a whiteboard and talking with his team.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
If you live in the future, there will be a thread on HN of "if you live in the future" quotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801697 Enjoy !
r0s 13y ago
Just to derail a bit... I've always disagreed with Jobs over the filesystem thing. There's just a minimum level of knowledge a computer user needs to use the damn thing, and file systems are really fundamental to that. I've never seen an abstraction that worked well enough to replace the file system as we know it, so abstractions stay welded to particular apps. Then you have a bunch of domain specific abstractions replacing a common system that was never broken. I've worked some service jobs, at a FedEx computer center and a University computer lab. I've seen several poor souls who couldn't for the life of them use a pointing device OR keyboard. Far more common is people who can't grasp the idea of usernames and passwords; and I mean really can't understand the difference. "Why does it have to be so hard?" is the question. Not for hard concepts, but for every concept. People offer to pay me to write their email and school papers, so they don't have to fight with Word and the whole save/load idea (not to mention glacial slow typing). Maybe this person could be served by some ultra-simple software, negating the need for new skills. I really feel this is a disservice to them. In the case of a student, this all but guarantees they are dead in the water career wise, even if they somehow eek through school. I think people should just learn about files, they are fundamental to computer use. In the far future, when we have Star Trek style voice driven computers, most people will utterly fail to use them. "Computer, email? No I mean the one I sent. Why can't you just find it?!? There was a picture". Anyone who thinks natural language is clear and intuitive should be sentenced to two years labor in a public computer lab or call center.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  Thanks for the laugh, I love your rendition of a person trying to use a voice interface. I totally agree. Personally, I'm hoping for something a little finer-grained as a filesystem replacement, bound up with undo and live remote collaboration, with everything embeddable in everything else... an experience generally centered around data, with apps as a wrapper. It's been discussed for years, but I can't recall how it's usually refered to.
- philsnow 13y ago
  > Far more common is people who can't grasp the idea of usernames and passwords; and I mean really can't understand the difference. Consider that these people may have never used a computer system where their "user name" is addressable in any way. To them, the user name and password are just two pieces of information that they need to give the computer.
jasey 13y ago
...Among its visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.... - From the Steve Jobs biography
touristtam 13y ago
I don't think that taking jobs as a reference for thinking ahead of time is specially good; In this particular video, he is presenting, to the general public, the 'file system' as a general software application that can be replaced by another one. This is totally and entirely misleading: without file system I doubt he can maintain any unified and persistent local data storage on a computer. I understand that, ultimately, he is talking about the file explorer software application, but getting layman to confuse the two is almost a sin, as those users are potentially novice expert in the making (plus the fact that he is repeatedly say 'app', 'app', 'app', as if this would make the software application of the mac environment more of a software than on other platform ....). If you really want to put a video of future thinking in the computing world, ... well welcome to 1968: http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html
confluence 13y ago
The best founders are lucky. Right place. Right time. Right society. A clusterfuck of luck if you will. That's the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from such small data sets that include within them insane variance, complex systems, extreme path dependence, and extremely disparate successful strategies (sometimes VC shoot to the moon works, sometimes bootstrapping, sometimes established spin outs, sometimes tech, sometimes marketing, sometimes government contracting). There is no best founders are X. Just unique situations accidently exploited by founders who happily find themselves embedded directly within them. Founders are by far the least important factor in the causal chain that ends up with their eventual success, or failure.

106 points by arram 13y ago

The author makes up several quotes prepended with "might have said" to justify a large part of this argument. What a load of crap

pdenya 13y ago

> I think the minimum viable product has made us so effective at thinking short term that we spend less time thinking long term. There is such a thing as a product or idea to be presented "before it's time". I wonder if there's an opposite of an MVP like a "Maximum Viable Product" - The most advanced product the market is likely to support at the moment.

pazimzadeh 13y ago
Or not that the market is likely to support at the moment, but that is simply possible to build with today's materials and processes. Like the Apple Newton, perhaps.
wittysense 13y ago
I really like this point. I think there is, generally, a flaw in the thinking that because programmers are good at focus, they are good at prediction. "Ahead of its time" may be outside of the natural means, on top of being quite possibly outside of the "epistemic network" of those thinkers assigned to the problem. MVP eludes most, and as we become more democratic in our development practices, this scientific concept of MVP will so too become diluted. The future will likely simply be outlined by material needs. Let's say that ?

lukeprog 13y ago

If you want to become a better futurist, there's nothing like lots of practice for improving your calibration. The best way I can think of to get lots of practice at technology forecasting is to sign up for George Mason University's DAGGRE program, which will let you participate in a multi-year prediction tournament focused on science and technology forecasting. Details here: http://is.gd/qHnaOY http://is.gd/qHnaOY

acgourley 13y ago

I hope he's right, I certainly think about my company that way. But it's still a bold statement with no evidence given. Yes those founders might have said those things. Did they?

breadbox 13y ago
My gut says that yes, they did. However, they may have also said that the world is shaped like a burrito. Certain jobs encourage the spouting of all kinds of sweeping statements. The ones that turn out to be true will be remembered, the others forgotten.

digz 13y ago

This is a tautological claim. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the biggest successes were those significantly changed the world... No way!? That's why they're successes! Lots, and lots of examples of people who similarly dreamed of changing the world with BIG ideas that completely failed. The bigger idea, the lower your probability of success, but with a larger potential return (both personal wealth and impact). I've never seen any data to support that your risk adjusted return on big ideas is better than for smaller ideas. Massive vividness bias here.

boot 13y ago
Let's sum up this article. In order to be successful monetarily, you need to make something people want. This guy is a savant.
- Paul_D_Santana 13y ago
  Great. More middlebrow dismissal. [1] Instead of just dismissing an article for the obvious points, try to identify at least one idea that could be considered novel or worthwhile. In this article, the suggestion of "X will inevitably be part of the future, so I will build it" is a novel idea, at least to me, and especially with the list of real-life examples he gave. That is completely different than building what people want. For example, a different color phone case for a new smartphone is something that many people want, but not a "future" idea as the article suggests. Robot butlers like in The Jetsons [2] will inevitably be part of the future, so there's an idea. Learn to think positively and see the potential of all things, including "obvious" articles. I'd certainly recommend The Magic of Thinking Big [3], namely the example about prisons. [1] pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jetsons_characters#Rosey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jetsons_characters#... [3] http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V1BMPI http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V1BMPI
  - boot 13y ago
    I honestly think this article provides very little insight into anything. You don't have to agree. Money in it's theoretical form is supposed to be value. To be a good founder you have to create value. Since this is a site dedicated to technology that inherently means we're dealing with ideas about what is coming next - not private equity firms who buy up paper product manufactures to corner the market. So, to me, this article states only the obvious and has no value besides maybe a masturbatory experience. That's just me.

wittysense 13y ago

Telepathic and empathic abilities will emerge evolutionarily in the hominids through the mixed organization of their organisms and the long-term effects of information on the brain. " If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite variety in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.

programminggeek 13y ago

There is what the future could be, what tomorrow will be, and what today is. Sometimes building a product is about building the future, but not every product is about that. If you don't have the resources to see it through to the future where what you envision is the default, you will fail. Think about Netflix. Streaming video on the internet is a 20 year old idea right? They had to start with delivering dvd's in the mail, which is kind of an analog version of streaming in some ways right? Similar idea, but also fundamentally different delivery mechanism. Even if their goal was streaming movies directly to houses, that's not what they built first. If you can see the problems of today, a way to fix it tomorrow, and maybe what that evolves into in 5, 10, 20 years... awesome. But if you just see a good idea that will take 5, 10, 20 years to be viable... run away unless you have billions of dollars you want to light on fire(like Microsoft on tablets, web tv, home automation, etc...)

michaelochurch 13y ago

In 5 years, if progress continues (and, in all things human, it might not): 1. The top software companies will be running open allocation. It won't get into the mainstream by then, and maybe not ever, because it's not practical for all industries. (You can't run OA easily in finance for regulatory reasons.) However, you'll have to pay hedge-fund money to recruit talented people into a closed-allocation company. 2. Location will be much less relevant than it is now. Right now, "Number 6 startup scene" means none at all. That's changing. 3. Google will either have been thoroughly destroyed (on a cultural front) by stack ranking, or have reinvented itself utterly in a form more like its pre-apocalyptic state. Anyone who can turn these into startups, share your thoughts.

yid 13y ago
Can you please stop turning every thread into a diatribe against Google or pitching open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems? 1. Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want". 3. From what I can tell, you were at Google for less than a year. Your anecdotes about Google are neither representative, accurate, nor interesting anymore. Every time you go on a rant about Google, you alienate people who, through first or secondhand information, know that what you're saying is not representative of the organization. Please -- moderate yourself, or you'll probably end up hellbanned.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want". First, open allocation doesn't mean "work on whatever you want". It means that people work for the company directly rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an intermediary who will usually use that power for extortionist purposes and force the other person to serve his career goals (rather than the good of the company, or the employee). Employee and company actually have a common interest that is typically thrown under the bus in a closed-allocation environment. Second, this sure as hell isn't just about me. Open allocation has second-order cultural effects that are positive for everyone. You don't get a good environment if one or a few people get to work on whatever they want but the rest are stuck in narrow niches. So I actually wouldn't be attracted to a job where I got to work on whatever I wanted but everyone else lived under closed allocation. Under closed allocation you get a culture of internal social climbing. It's no longer about doing things. It's about getting permission. You have a society founded on getting jobs rather than doing work, then. Also, the quality of projects that exists under closed allocation is inferior because people can't vote with their feet. open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems ... You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. Open allocation is not a panacea. Far from it. Organizational problems happen because that's how people are. However, open allocation is almost always strictly superior to the alternative, which is closed allocation. Open allocation is the more natural state. Closed allocation is the bulky add-on that needs to be justified, and only when there are necessary information barriers whose integrity is more important than maximal productivity (this is true in secure government jobs, and in some parts of finance) is there any justification for it. Please -- moderate yourself, or you'll probably end up hellbanned. Is that a threat?

kailuowang 13y ago

Being able to envision the future is only a small part of being able to see the big picture, being able to see the big picture is an even smaller part of being a successful founder. But yes, I think it is a prerequisite to be a great founder.

jenius 13y ago

What kind of founder doesn't think this? "In the future everyone will be using this ____ that I'm making" - whether it's a virtual pet app or a new distribution of ubuntu. The problem is that just thinking this is the case is so far from meaning that it has any chance of coming true that the thought hardly helps anything. I don't disagree with the thought, I just don't think it really carries any particular meaning.

dannygarcia 13y ago

It’s less about being a “futurist” and more about the willingness and ability to build something you envision.

mindcrime 13y ago

OK, that's an interesting piece. I'll take a stab at a "If you live in the future ..." statement that goes along with what we're doing at Fogbeam. If you live in the future, computers will be more intelligent and will make it far easier and faster to find exactly the information you are looking for, will make useful predictions to guide your decision making, and will enable new management structures for organizations.

SatvikBeri 13y ago
If you live in the future, computers will read your mind and bring that information to you without you having to ask. Google Now is one very early start to this.

JVIDEL 13y ago

I would say 70% of my ideas are futuristic, which is why I'm working on the other 30% That 70% depends on technologies that plain don't exist yet, or are highly experimental at best since some depended on funding that isn't there anymore so the underlying tech needed to move to the next stage is still nowhere to be seen. Case in point: without CAD we wouldn't have stealth planes. The theory existed on paper and attempts at stealth go all the way back to WWII, but it wasn't workable until we had the computer power to crunch the numbers.

31reasons 13y ago

If you live in the future, there is no poverty If you live in the future, there are no diseases If you live in the future, you can live for 200+ years If you live in the future, we stopped using fossil fuels If you live in the future, computers don't track us If you live in the future, facebook doesn't exist so lets get back to work..

jonmrodriguez 13y ago
If you live in the future, rockets are fully reusable. If you live in the future, Launch Loops are in operation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop If you live in the future, there are permanent residents on Mars and the Moon.

saosebastiao 13y ago

I would classify myself as a futurist, but we have a flaw...one that tends to lead to our demise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara

airkumar 13y ago

This is what MBAs call the "vision" part of "mission, vision, and values."

meerab 13y ago

This reminds me of a saying in field hockey. 'Don't run towards the ball, run towards where the ball will be'

lanstein 13y ago
Believe that's originally from Wayne Gretzky: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waynegretz131510.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waynegretz131510....
- LukeWalsh 13y ago
  Actually, his father said it. It is often misattributed; most notably by Steve Jobs all throughout his life who never admitted he was wrong. http://www.fastcompany.com/40565/cdu-gretzky-puck-stops-here http://www.fastcompany.com/40565/cdu-gretzky-puck-stops-here

codex 13y ago

I find that this article is representative of much of the content of HN these days: provocative assertions made by relative nobodies with little supporting evidence save anecdote, but made with the full voice of authority. Found a middling startup or two, and you're suddenly an expert. Call me old fashioned, but I like to get my blanket generalizations only from those significantly richer, more powerful, happier, or more successful than I am.

nqureshi 13y ago
"Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the "comments" link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page." - PG
- benologist 13y ago
  The quality of the comments is probably related to the quality of the content. Startup truisms and anecdotes-as-advertisements rarely stimulate interesting conversation.
  - nextstep 13y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but apparently most of HN enjoys this sort of content :(
ritchiea 13y ago
The irony is that HN upvotes light commentary with blanket generalizations to the front page and also upvotes cruel dismissive comments criticizing that sort of light commentary to the top comment.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  If you live in the future pg-bot will be able to downvote trivialy negative comments

daegloe 13y ago

Predicting the future is great and all. But in my experience, the best founders are the ones who execute in the present.

krapp 13y ago

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. Ha ha. I'm part of the problem. But yeah, I think it's probably a good idea to have a vision of the future and strive to work towards building that, if you're lucky enough to be in a position to do anything about it, and hopefully your vision of a glorious posthuman utopia isn't my vision of a dehumanizing nightmare.

zachrose 13y ago

I imagine F.T. Marinetti dressed in business casual, standing at a whiteboard and talking with his team.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

If you live in the future, there will be a thread on HN of "if you live in the future" quotes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801697 Enjoy !

r0s 13y ago

Just to derail a bit... I've always disagreed with Jobs over the filesystem thing. There's just a minimum level of knowledge a computer user needs to use the damn thing, and file systems are really fundamental to that. I've never seen an abstraction that worked well enough to replace the file system as we know it, so abstractions stay welded to particular apps. Then you have a bunch of domain specific abstractions replacing a common system that was never broken. I've worked some service jobs, at a FedEx computer center and a University computer lab. I've seen several poor souls who couldn't for the life of them use a pointing device OR keyboard. Far more common is people who can't grasp the idea of usernames and passwords; and I mean really can't understand the difference. "Why does it have to be so hard?" is the question. Not for hard concepts, but for every concept. People offer to pay me to write their email and school papers, so they don't have to fight with Word and the whole save/load idea (not to mention glacial slow typing). Maybe this person could be served by some ultra-simple software, negating the need for new skills. I really feel this is a disservice to them. In the case of a student, this all but guarantees they are dead in the water career wise, even if they somehow eek through school. I think people should just learn about files, they are fundamental to computer use. In the far future, when we have Star Trek style voice driven computers, most people will utterly fail to use them. "Computer, email? No I mean the one I sent. Why can't you just find it?!? There was a picture". Anyone who thinks natural language is clear and intuitive should be sentenced to two years labor in a public computer lab or call center.

andrewflnr 13y ago
Thanks for the laugh, I love your rendition of a person trying to use a voice interface. I totally agree. Personally, I'm hoping for something a little finer-grained as a filesystem replacement, bound up with undo and live remote collaboration, with everything embeddable in everything else... an experience generally centered around data, with apps as a wrapper. It's been discussed for years, but I can't recall how it's usually refered to.
philsnow 13y ago
> Far more common is people who can't grasp the idea of usernames and passwords; and I mean really can't understand the difference. Consider that these people may have never used a computer system where their "user name" is addressable in any way. To them, the user name and password are just two pieces of information that they need to give the computer.

jasey 13y ago

...Among its visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.... - From the Steve Jobs biography

touristtam 13y ago

I don't think that taking jobs as a reference for thinking ahead of time is specially good; In this particular video, he is presenting, to the general public, the 'file system' as a general software application that can be replaced by another one. This is totally and entirely misleading: without file system I doubt he can maintain any unified and persistent local data storage on a computer. I understand that, ultimately, he is talking about the file explorer software application, but getting layman to confuse the two is almost a sin, as those users are potentially novice expert in the making (plus the fact that he is repeatedly say 'app', 'app', 'app', as if this would make the software application of the mac environment more of a software than on other platform ....). If you really want to put a video of future thinking in the computing world, ... well welcome to 1968: http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html

confluence 13y ago

The best founders are lucky. Right place. Right time. Right society. A clusterfuck of luck if you will. That's the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from such small data sets that include within them insane variance, complex systems, extreme path dependence, and extremely disparate successful strategies (sometimes VC shoot to the moon works, sometimes bootstrapping, sometimes established spin outs, sometimes tech, sometimes marketing, sometimes government contracting). There is no best founders are X. Just unique situations accidently exploited by founders who happily find themselves embedded directly within them. Founders are by far the least important factor in the causal chain that ends up with their eventual success, or failure.