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True, but there are wannabees in every field where the people who succeed become rich or famous. There's nothing newsworthy about that sort of background radia
by pg 13y ago
True, but there are wannabees in every field where the people who succeed become rich or famous. There's nothing newsworthy about that sort of background radiation lameness. Or more precisely, it's one of the recipes for an Onion article.
- bchjam 13y agoI thought I had read something you wrote once (5. Most investors are momentum investors. from http://paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html http://paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html) implied that investor demand increases the volume of the more shallow type of copycat.
- pg 13y agoA momentum investor is one who wants to invest in companies that are doing well, not one who wants to invest in imitators of companies that are doing well. Investors are herd animals, but they're not the reason mediocre founders copy existing ideas. Mediocre founders copy existing ideas for the same reason mediocre people in so many other fields do: they're insufficiently imaginative.
- gress 13y agoWith all due respect I think you're underestimating the effect of investors. Insufficiently imaginative people do exist everywhere but they don't get to become founders and hire people to copy existing ideas unless someone funds them.
- gress 13y agoI'm not so sure. A lot depends on how many there are, and how often they get funded, because they will destroy a lot of wealth and provide bad experience for the people they employ along the way. There seems to be more potential for harm than for wannabe pop-stars.