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I also fundamentally disagree with this post. My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. I am reading a book about the Shipping container, and

I also fundamentally disagree with this post. My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. I am reading a book about the Shipping container, and it massively reduced the number of jobs for longshoremen and merchant marines. I can also say that working at a big company that is people's mentality. They want to manage a lot of people. That's their goal. Not to create value. And imho the results are often poor. I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. imho the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job. NOT to create tons of jobs.

yannis 12y ago
The RFS never said one million low end jobs and specifically stated they are not looking for companies that would employ one million people. Maybe creating 1,000,000 enterpreneurs?
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  It sounds like they are interested in 2 sided markets, like Uber, or airbnb. I get that part, but the "jobs" part is lost on me. Wouldn't uber be cooler if it used self driving cars!!!
  - paletoy 12y ago
    YC isn't in a position to invest in deep automation, and are good at building markets. And once you build a 2 sided freelancer market , you are very likely to control it when it's automated.
  - prawn 12y ago
    Uber will obviously switch to self-driving cars once that's viable, shaving the on-going cost of drivers.
eugenejen 12y ago
I think you are confused with his proposal. YC is looking for any company that can create demand that requires 1 millions workers to fulfill it. It is not to create a huge company. It has nothing to do with eliminating jobs. It has nothing to do with provide basic living standard. For example, if a new technology that allow us to regrow part of organs easily, but it requires living persons to carry the organs within their bodies until organs mature to be transplanted. Those people may have a job as 'organ incubator'.
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  My goal would is (as an investor in Organovo) to regrow organs and it's agnostic to whether it creates, eliminates or displaces workers.
  - eugenejen 12y ago
    Of course you should not. But in the end, you need other people who are willing to trade something for your investment. Your investment would be valued 0 if no one wants or needs it. And valuation is how much they are willing to pay for it. So in the end. I think creating jobs is just a mask for 'creating demand for new things for people have no new creating wealth'. Since total aggregation of time of lives of oligarchs and their families are much limited than total populations. So it is better to create demand for consumer market. But of course, if one day, oligarchs have technology to enable them to live forever, they will have unlimited time to live and my argument won't sustain under that condition.
    - 001sky 12y ago
      This is a bizarre tangent. An oligarch could just enslave people through brute force or more subtle means of mental and psyhcological manipulation into working feverishly in a self-defeating system of exploitation. Is that "creating demand" for labour? Or for the products? Is demand for slave labour a good kind of demand?
      - eugenejen 12y ago
webXL 12y ago
While I tend to agree, there's some truth to the saying "Idle hands are the devil's playground". How do non-creative people lead fulfilling lives without being rewarded for their labor? I suppose there's lots of volunteer work to do, but if we could eliminate jobs, we might as well eliminate volunteer work.
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  There is plenty of stuff to do. hobbies, sports, traveling, socializing. people often do "work" as a hobby. cooking, working in the yard, hunting, fishing. It's thought that hunter/gatherer societies only worked 15-20 hours per week. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
  - webXL 12y ago
    We may have different definitions of "fulfilling". I view it as adding value to society. All the things you described are either creative endeavors or just improving one's own life. If non-creatives just played sports, traveled and socialized, then we have no problem. What I worry about are people who have nothing to motivate them to do those things and then resent the rest of society, or use their creativity to harm society. When you have bills to pay, that tends to preoccupy the mind.
rndmize 12y ago
Just because your goal is to eliminate jobs doesn't mean another entrepreneur can't aim to do the opposite. I think a lot of the types of companies that would be useful in this direction don't so much "create jobs" as they allow people to get paid to do something they enjoy/want to do. Patreon and Beacon are the two that come to mind for me.
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  Is creating jobs any entrepreneur's goal? Increase customers, yes. Create a two sided market, yes. In the case of a 2 sided market the "workers" are your customers. Uber eliminates the jobs for manual dispatcher at cab companies.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    This is interesting because it might motivate some out-of-the-box thinking. If you can't think of a good way to make a ton of money while creating a million jobs, then sure, eliminate some more like everyone else is trying to do. Y Combinator might well even fund you, under their RFS for robotics or the one for levers or infrastructure or AI.
  - gone35 12y ago
    Is creating jobs any entrepreneur's goal? Absolutely: their own job, for starters! More broadly though: some of the most oft-cited reasons by people starting small businesses (tech included) is quite explicitly to be able to do stuff they like and be paid for it; or be able to surround themselves with like-minded people working on goals of common interest to them. Other times, family members, friends or colleagues/guild members come together to provide themselves with a steady source of income --that's how most law firms and medical practices get started, after all.
gregpilling 12y ago
The shipping container certainly created one million jobs globally. I have read "The Box" also, and the job creation was in the factories around the world. The job loss was mostly the longshoremen and the break-bulk process that was wasteful in comparison. Creating 1 million jobs might mean disrupting 100,000 others. Or maybe it will just mean removing waste in large scale processes that we currently do as a society. My friend Mo is doing this http://www.gizmag.com/infinite-pipeline/23762/ http://www.gizmag.com/infinite-pipeline/23762/ which could help bring water to places that it wasn't economical to do previously. This would change the life of those people who need to fetch water every day. Spending half your day getting water is a huge waste of human potential.
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  The point about the shipping container creating jobs in factories is an interesting one. The effect on jobs is complicated. Even Uber eliminates the jobs for dispatcher at cab companies. I prefer clear goals. I want to create value and I am agnostic to the effect it has on jobs. +1 for Mo
superuser2 12y ago
>I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. The world is going to have a hard time pursuing "creative endeavors" while homeless and starving - which, if you hadn't checked, is what happens when you don't have a job and people around you support conservative economic policy. It is not possible to hold this position without being legitimately fairytale-villain evil or a socialist.
- prawn 12y ago
  They said "the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job." e.g., if someone has off-grid battery tech and solar (or whatever else), they can knock off their electricity and gas bills. If they can automate the recycling of sewage into clean water, fertiliser and leftovers, and they had water storage, they could ditch their water bill. If they had underground (think shipping containers) and automated food production, they could cover some of their food bills and still have ground level land free for entertainment. Of my general costs, I'm not immediately sure how we would ultimately replace council costs (roads, etc) and internet connectivity.
  - cousin_it 12y ago
    How would they get to own all these wonderful things, and the land to put them on, if they don't have jobs?
anigbrowl 12y ago
My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. Surely your goal as an antrepreneur shoul dbe to provide a million people with a desirable new product/service/ The word 'entrepreneur' means 'between-taker', ie someone that carries things back and forth between suppliers and consumers, like historical traders. Identifying economic inefficiency and finding something to remedy it is one way of identifying your target consumer, but far from the only one. In your example of the shipping container, you neglect to consider that they're only useful insofar as there is sufficient trading activity taking place to fill the containers up. Labor shortages aren't often a big limiting factor on trade. I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. So do I, but creativity and productivity are wholly different things, especially when it comes to paying the bills.
- ttcbj 12y ago
  Yes, I think another way to think of the 'between-taker' idea is that an entrepreneur find ways to use existing resources in a new way that creates more value than those resources could previously create. Sometimes those resources are physical (machines, buildings, etc), but they can also be human beings. I think it is reasonable for YC to have an investment theory that is something like 'productivity enhancements are making many talented human resources available more cheaply, a business that finds a way to use them could do well.' But, I think the Uber example is a little unclear. It seems likely to me that driving is going to be automated away in 10-20 years. And, since so many adults drive (even those with other jobs), there is a massive incentive to find a way to automate that activity and make it safer. I think there is a bit of a paradox - as the number of people employed in a task increases, the incentive to automate that task increases as well. I am not too optimistic that creating large numbers of long-term sustainable jobs is easy, but I think the attempt to find uses for undervalued resources makes as much sense for humans as it does for any other resource.

yannis 12y ago

The RFS never said one million low end jobs and specifically stated they are not looking for companies that would employ one million people. Maybe creating 1,000,000 enterpreneurs?

andrewtbham 12y ago
It sounds like they are interested in 2 sided markets, like Uber, or airbnb. I get that part, but the "jobs" part is lost on me. Wouldn't uber be cooler if it used self driving cars!!!
- paletoy 12y ago
  YC isn't in a position to invest in deep automation, and are good at building markets. And once you build a 2 sided freelancer market , you are very likely to control it when it's automated.
- prawn 12y ago
  Uber will obviously switch to self-driving cars once that's viable, shaving the on-going cost of drivers.

eugenejen 12y ago

I think you are confused with his proposal. YC is looking for any company that can create demand that requires 1 millions workers to fulfill it. It is not to create a huge company. It has nothing to do with eliminating jobs. It has nothing to do with provide basic living standard. For example, if a new technology that allow us to regrow part of organs easily, but it requires living persons to carry the organs within their bodies until organs mature to be transplanted. Those people may have a job as 'organ incubator'.

andrewtbham 12y ago
My goal would is (as an investor in Organovo) to regrow organs and it's agnostic to whether it creates, eliminates or displaces workers.
- eugenejen 12y ago
  Of course you should not. But in the end, you need other people who are willing to trade something for your investment. Your investment would be valued 0 if no one wants or needs it. And valuation is how much they are willing to pay for it. So in the end. I think creating jobs is just a mask for 'creating demand for new things for people have no new creating wealth'. Since total aggregation of time of lives of oligarchs and their families are much limited than total populations. So it is better to create demand for consumer market. But of course, if one day, oligarchs have technology to enable them to live forever, they will have unlimited time to live and my argument won't sustain under that condition.
  - 001sky 12y ago
    This is a bizarre tangent. An oligarch could just enslave people through brute force or more subtle means of mental and psyhcological manipulation into working feverishly in a self-defeating system of exploitation. Is that "creating demand" for labour? Or for the products? Is demand for slave labour a good kind of demand?
    - eugenejen 12y ago

webXL 12y ago

While I tend to agree, there's some truth to the saying "Idle hands are the devil's playground". How do non-creative people lead fulfilling lives without being rewarded for their labor? I suppose there's lots of volunteer work to do, but if we could eliminate jobs, we might as well eliminate volunteer work.

andrewtbham 12y ago
There is plenty of stuff to do. hobbies, sports, traveling, socializing. people often do "work" as a hobby. cooking, working in the yard, hunting, fishing. It's thought that hunter/gatherer societies only worked 15-20 hours per week. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
- webXL 12y ago
  We may have different definitions of "fulfilling". I view it as adding value to society. All the things you described are either creative endeavors or just improving one's own life. If non-creatives just played sports, traveled and socialized, then we have no problem. What I worry about are people who have nothing to motivate them to do those things and then resent the rest of society, or use their creativity to harm society. When you have bills to pay, that tends to preoccupy the mind.

rndmize 12y ago

Just because your goal is to eliminate jobs doesn't mean another entrepreneur can't aim to do the opposite. I think a lot of the types of companies that would be useful in this direction don't so much "create jobs" as they allow people to get paid to do something they enjoy/want to do. Patreon and Beacon are the two that come to mind for me.

andrewtbham 12y ago
Is creating jobs any entrepreneur's goal? Increase customers, yes. Create a two sided market, yes. In the case of a 2 sided market the "workers" are your customers. Uber eliminates the jobs for manual dispatcher at cab companies.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  This is interesting because it might motivate some out-of-the-box thinking. If you can't think of a good way to make a ton of money while creating a million jobs, then sure, eliminate some more like everyone else is trying to do. Y Combinator might well even fund you, under their RFS for robotics or the one for levers or infrastructure or AI.
- gone35 12y ago
  Is creating jobs any entrepreneur's goal? Absolutely: their own job, for starters! More broadly though: some of the most oft-cited reasons by people starting small businesses (tech included) is quite explicitly to be able to do stuff they like and be paid for it; or be able to surround themselves with like-minded people working on goals of common interest to them. Other times, family members, friends or colleagues/guild members come together to provide themselves with a steady source of income --that's how most law firms and medical practices get started, after all.

gregpilling 12y ago

The shipping container certainly created one million jobs globally. I have read "The Box" also, and the job creation was in the factories around the world. The job loss was mostly the longshoremen and the break-bulk process that was wasteful in comparison. Creating 1 million jobs might mean disrupting 100,000 others. Or maybe it will just mean removing waste in large scale processes that we currently do as a society. My friend Mo is doing this http://www.gizmag.com/infinite-pipeline/23762/ http://www.gizmag.com/infinite-pipeline/23762/ which could help bring water to places that it wasn't economical to do previously. This would change the life of those people who need to fetch water every day. Spending half your day getting water is a huge waste of human potential.

andrewtbham 12y ago
The point about the shipping container creating jobs in factories is an interesting one. The effect on jobs is complicated. Even Uber eliminates the jobs for dispatcher at cab companies. I prefer clear goals. I want to create value and I am agnostic to the effect it has on jobs. +1 for Mo

superuser2 12y ago

>I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. The world is going to have a hard time pursuing "creative endeavors" while homeless and starving - which, if you hadn't checked, is what happens when you don't have a job and people around you support conservative economic policy. It is not possible to hold this position without being legitimately fairytale-villain evil or a socialist.

prawn 12y ago
They said "the goal should be to find a way for people to meet their basic needs without needing a job." e.g., if someone has off-grid battery tech and solar (or whatever else), they can knock off their electricity and gas bills. If they can automate the recycling of sewage into clean water, fertiliser and leftovers, and they had water storage, they could ditch their water bill. If they had underground (think shipping containers) and automated food production, they could cover some of their food bills and still have ground level land free for entertainment. Of my general costs, I'm not immediately sure how we would ultimately replace council costs (roads, etc) and internet connectivity.
- cousin_it 12y ago
  How would they get to own all these wonderful things, and the land to put them on, if they don't have jobs?

anigbrowl 12y ago

My goal as an entrepreneur is to eliminate a million jobs. Surely your goal as an antrepreneur shoul dbe to provide a million people with a desirable new product/service/ The word 'entrepreneur' means 'between-taker', ie someone that carries things back and forth between suppliers and consumers, like historical traders. Identifying economic inefficiency and finding something to remedy it is one way of identifying your target consumer, but far from the only one. In your example of the shipping container, you neglect to consider that they're only useful insofar as there is sufficient trading activity taking place to fill the containers up. Labor shortages aren't often a big limiting factor on trade. I think it would be great for society if there were less jobs and people were able to pursue more creative endeavors than menial jobs. So do I, but creativity and productivity are wholly different things, especially when it comes to paying the bills.

ttcbj 12y ago
Yes, I think another way to think of the 'between-taker' idea is that an entrepreneur find ways to use existing resources in a new way that creates more value than those resources could previously create. Sometimes those resources are physical (machines, buildings, etc), but they can also be human beings. I think it is reasonable for YC to have an investment theory that is something like 'productivity enhancements are making many talented human resources available more cheaply, a business that finds a way to use them could do well.' But, I think the Uber example is a little unclear. It seems likely to me that driving is going to be automated away in 10-20 years. And, since so many adults drive (even those with other jobs), there is a massive incentive to find a way to automate that activity and make it safer. I think there is a bit of a paradox - as the number of people employed in a task increases, the incentive to automate that task increases as well. I am not too optimistic that creating large numbers of long-term sustainable jobs is easy, but I think the attempt to find uses for undervalued resources makes as much sense for humans as it does for any other resource.