4 ms·

Speaking as a practicing fruit fly geneticist, the metaphor of a "fruit fly experiment" is lost on me... anyone care to enlighten me?

by rflrob 13y ago

wmf 13y ago
Fruit flies grow very quickly and don't live very long.
- briantakita 13y ago
  The corollary is Fruit fly populations mutate at a fast rate.
- pmarca 13y ago
  And there are a lot of them.
pmarca 13y ago
I would think that a practicing fruit fly geneticist would get excited when fruit flies come up, not snarky :-).
- amirmc 13y ago
  I didn't read that as snarky. I also don't understand the fruit fly analogy and I can understand why a fruit fly geneticist (who knows a few orders of magnitude more than me) isn't sure which aspect of fruit flies is the relevant one.
  - pmarca 13y ago
    I'll go read several textbooks on fruit fly genetics and get right back on this.
    - amirmc 13y ago
      Now that's what I call a pivot :) More seriously, I was just trying to point out a source of confusion. In any case, I'd love to hear more about the enterprise space as it's something I'm interested in but have little visibility into. Elsewhere you mention 1200 execs (annually) tell you what they think of new ideas. Can you share any of the insights or problems? I bet there are lots of nascent startups/ideas that may not realise they have an enterprise offering because they're not fully aware of the problems companies have. I'm working on turing some systems research work into a spinout and only recently have I begun to understand how valuable it could be to the enterprise [1]. This is partly because a lot of the tech stuff I see online is around consumer companies (my fault, I know - but I'm working on it). [1] http://nymote.org http://nymote.org
      - pmarca 13y ago
        Here are a bunch of general observations: * Enterprises have a continuous ongoing need for new technology. Some they build in-house but like anyone else they are mostly busy running their current business and so they tend to buy important new technology from technology companies. I bring this up because it was in doubt a while ago -- and enterprises really slowed down buying new technology between ~2000 and ~2008 -- but I think it's a constant truth. * Just like consumers, in enterprises there are early adopters, mainstream adopters, and laggards. The good news is that there are almost always early adopters for any interesting new idea -- we always tell enterprise startups to look for the first 5 customers -- if you can make them happy, then you can reference sell to the next 10, then the next 50, then the next 100, then the next 500, and then you are huge. * Consumerization of the enterprise is real. The bar on usability and ease of adoption is being set by the consumer product industry; employees are increasingly bringing their own devices and services with them to work; there are more and more enterprise products that can be bought and adopted bottoms-up. * However, it is hard to get a lot of MONEY from enterprises through only bottoms-up adoption. To get the money, at some point you have to strap on your big boy shoes and go in top-down and explain to senior executives why your technology is going to give them real competitive advantage or save them a lot of money. (This is the "enterprises don't have credit cards" principle -- you have to go get the money.) * There are real constraints around what technology enterprises can adopt and how they can adopt it. A short and incomplete list: internal bureacracy, sunk costs, existing vendor relationships, regulations, data protection laws (e.g. in Europe), security requirements, need for integration with existing systems. At first these seem very frustrating to deal with. Later you realize that these can become a source of competitive advantage for you once you are in. Figuring out how to navigate that is really key and something the best enterprise entrepreneurs are very good at. This doesn't get into specific insights/problems that they have at any given moment but this is a good general framework to begin an enterprise discussion.

Speaking as a practicing fruit fly geneticist, the metaphor of a "fruit fly experiment" is lost on me... anyone care to enlighten me?

by rflrob 13y ago

Speaking as a practicing fruit fly geneticist, the metaphor of a "fruit fly experiment" is lost on me... anyone care to enlighten me?

wmf 13y ago

Fruit flies grow very quickly and don't live very long.

briantakita 13y ago
The corollary is Fruit fly populations mutate at a fast rate.
pmarca 13y ago
And there are a lot of them.

pmarca 13y ago

I would think that a practicing fruit fly geneticist would get excited when fruit flies come up, not snarky :-).

amirmc 13y ago
I didn't read that as snarky. I also don't understand the fruit fly analogy and I can understand why a fruit fly geneticist (who knows a few orders of magnitude more than me) isn't sure which aspect of fruit flies is the relevant one.
- pmarca 13y ago
  I'll go read several textbooks on fruit fly genetics and get right back on this.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    Now that's what I call a pivot :) More seriously, I was just trying to point out a source of confusion. In any case, I'd love to hear more about the enterprise space as it's something I'm interested in but have little visibility into. Elsewhere you mention 1200 execs (annually) tell you what they think of new ideas. Can you share any of the insights or problems? I bet there are lots of nascent startups/ideas that may not realise they have an enterprise offering because they're not fully aware of the problems companies have. I'm working on turing some systems research work into a spinout and only recently have I begun to understand how valuable it could be to the enterprise [1]. This is partly because a lot of the tech stuff I see online is around consumer companies (my fault, I know - but I'm working on it). [1] http://nymote.org http://nymote.org
    - pmarca 13y ago
      Here are a bunch of general observations: * Enterprises have a continuous ongoing need for new technology. Some they build in-house but like anyone else they are mostly busy running their current business and so they tend to buy important new technology from technology companies. I bring this up because it was in doubt a while ago -- and enterprises really slowed down buying new technology between ~2000 and ~2008 -- but I think it's a constant truth. * Just like consumers, in enterprises there are early adopters, mainstream adopters, and laggards. The good news is that there are almost always early adopters for any interesting new idea -- we always tell enterprise startups to look for the first 5 customers -- if you can make them happy, then you can reference sell to the next 10, then the next 50, then the next 100, then the next 500, and then you are huge. * Consumerization of the enterprise is real. The bar on usability and ease of adoption is being set by the consumer product industry; employees are increasingly bringing their own devices and services with them to work; there are more and more enterprise products that can be bought and adopted bottoms-up. * However, it is hard to get a lot of MONEY from enterprises through only bottoms-up adoption. To get the money, at some point you have to strap on your big boy shoes and go in top-down and explain to senior executives why your technology is going to give them real competitive advantage or save them a lot of money. (This is the "enterprises don't have credit cards" principle -- you have to go get the money.) * There are real constraints around what technology enterprises can adopt and how they can adopt it. A short and incomplete list: internal bureacracy, sunk costs, existing vendor relationships, regulations, data protection laws (e.g. in Europe), security requirements, need for integration with existing systems. At first these seem very frustrating to deal with. Later you realize that these can become a source of competitive advantage for you once you are in. Figuring out how to navigate that is really key and something the best enterprise entrepreneurs are very good at. This doesn't get into specific insights/problems that they have at any given moment but this is a good general framework to begin an enterprise discussion.