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Spare me. We hear a constant litany of people complaining about being disrupted. You can't also claim no disruption is happening. Examples: giant taxi strikes

by ef4 12y ago

Spare me. We hear a constant litany of people complaining about being disrupted. You can't also claim no disruption is happening. Examples: giant taxi strikes and regulatory fights, the "Google bus" protests in the bay area, cities fighting against AirBnB, a restaurant suing Google for putting them out of business, France passing another law to try to stop Amazon's growth there, proposed laws against drones. Of course there are lots of silly little startups like "Yo", but that's just noise. You only hear about them because they're easy fodder for the media. Everybody in startup land knows that 99% of them amount to nothing. That doesn't mean the other 1% won't change everything.

sgy 12y ago
You're totally right, Google, airbnb, Uber and a lot more are disruptive. The article is not attacking anything nor claiming that no disruption is happening. It's more of an advice for how real innovation and true disruption is made; "beyond helping yourself and your investors, you win by helping society, not creating at the expense of it." It's a call for everyone in the startup land to redirect money and resources toward something substantial.
potatolicious 12y ago
> "Of course there are lots of silly little startups like "Yo", but that's just noise." I disagree. For every Uber you have 100 Yo's. For every Google you have 1000 ad-tech analytics startups that kind of all do the same thing in slightly different ways. We have the opposite view on this: you seem to think that the bulk of what the startup scene does is disruptive, with a few idiotic startups giving the rest a bad name. I believe the balance is in fact the opposite: a few truly disruptive companies and boatloads of "silly little startups like 'Yo'". > "Everybody in startup land knows that 99% of them amount to nothing." So... why are the 99% working on things they know will amount to nothing? I think this is the central thesis of the article. Yeah, there are a tiny number of disruptive companies out there, so what the hell is everyone else doing? It's not as if most of these are startups that aimed high and failed, these are startups where the core idea was never disruptive to begin with. These are startups purpose-built for the exit, not for the impact of its products. That is the precise thesis the author is offering: that there are a tiny number of people in our industry working on real, disruptive change, while others try to squeeze easy money out of the system while aggrandizing themselves as innovators.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  > So... why are the 99% working on things they know will > amount to nothing? I think this is the central thesis of > the article. Yeah, there are a tiny number of disruptive > companies out there, so what the hell is everyone else > doing? That is the question that, at some point, I think the author may have started with, or they may have run through a bunch of tropes and the question sort of emerged. Had they had a decent editor somewhere, that editor would have kicked the whole rambling thing back and said, "This is your thesis question, re structure this pile of nonsense to answer that question." But alas, that did not happen. The reasons why people go to work every day vary, but my experience is that there are some generalizations which can be applied reasonably safely. One is that some folks work just for a paycheck so that they can get on with the rest of their life, and some work toward an end goal, some end effect. I have run into far fewer people who were working to a goal than I have working for a paycheck. Sometimes the goal directed folks are aligned with humanitarian causes (like clean drinking water for Africa) and sometimes the goal is directed purely at acquiring wealth. The interesting question for me, is that ratio 1%? Are only 1% of the people out seeking to make some significant change? If so it would account for 99% working on random things, but if not it would suggest that there are some folks who want to make a change but for some reason have been unable yet to put that into action. I make a hobby of looking for such people, its one of the things that I see in a lot of YC founder pitches, people who want to make a change but haven't yet mastered the recipe for turning that into results. And for me at least it is kind of why founders are founders, here are people willing to give up all of their earnings and take a chance at losing 2 - 5 years of their productive lifetime, to try to make a dent in the world.
- ef4 12y ago
  > We have the opposite view on this: you seem to think that the bulk of what the startup scene does is disruptive, with a few idiotic startups giving the rest a bad name. I believe the balance is in fact the opposite: a few truly disruptive companies and boatloads of "silly little startups like 'Yo'". If you count "bulk" by "number of companies", sure. But that's not really a relevant metric. There's a power law here: the bulk of what actually gets done is mostly done by a tiny slice of companies at the biggest end of the spectrum. > So... why are the 99% working on things they know will amount to nothing? Because we can only tell which 1% is good in retrospect. Almost all the good ideas also sounded idiotic to many people at their earliest stage.

by ef4 12y ago

sgy 12y ago

You're totally right, Google, airbnb, Uber and a lot more are disruptive. The article is not attacking anything nor claiming that no disruption is happening. It's more of an advice for how real innovation and true disruption is made; "beyond helping yourself and your investors, you win by helping society, not creating at the expense of it." It's a call for everyone in the startup land to redirect money and resources toward something substantial.

potatolicious 12y ago

> "Of course there are lots of silly little startups like "Yo", but that's just noise." I disagree. For every Uber you have 100 Yo's. For every Google you have 1000 ad-tech analytics startups that kind of all do the same thing in slightly different ways. We have the opposite view on this: you seem to think that the bulk of what the startup scene does is disruptive, with a few idiotic startups giving the rest a bad name. I believe the balance is in fact the opposite: a few truly disruptive companies and boatloads of "silly little startups like 'Yo'". > "Everybody in startup land knows that 99% of them amount to nothing." So... why are the 99% working on things they know will amount to nothing? I think this is the central thesis of the article. Yeah, there are a tiny number of disruptive companies out there, so what the hell is everyone else doing? It's not as if most of these are startups that aimed high and failed, these are startups where the core idea was never disruptive to begin with. These are startups purpose-built for the exit, not for the impact of its products. That is the precise thesis the author is offering: that there are a tiny number of people in our industry working on real, disruptive change, while others try to squeeze easy money out of the system while aggrandizing themselves as innovators.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
> So... why are the 99% working on things they know will > amount to nothing? I think this is the central thesis of > the article. Yeah, there are a tiny number of disruptive > companies out there, so what the hell is everyone else > doing? That is the question that, at some point, I think the author may have started with, or they may have run through a bunch of tropes and the question sort of emerged. Had they had a decent editor somewhere, that editor would have kicked the whole rambling thing back and said, "This is your thesis question, re structure this pile of nonsense to answer that question." But alas, that did not happen. The reasons why people go to work every day vary, but my experience is that there are some generalizations which can be applied reasonably safely. One is that some folks work just for a paycheck so that they can get on with the rest of their life, and some work toward an end goal, some end effect. I have run into far fewer people who were working to a goal than I have working for a paycheck. Sometimes the goal directed folks are aligned with humanitarian causes (like clean drinking water for Africa) and sometimes the goal is directed purely at acquiring wealth. The interesting question for me, is that ratio 1%? Are only 1% of the people out seeking to make some significant change? If so it would account for 99% working on random things, but if not it would suggest that there are some folks who want to make a change but for some reason have been unable yet to put that into action. I make a hobby of looking for such people, its one of the things that I see in a lot of YC founder pitches, people who want to make a change but haven't yet mastered the recipe for turning that into results. And for me at least it is kind of why founders are founders, here are people willing to give up all of their earnings and take a chance at losing 2 - 5 years of their productive lifetime, to try to make a dent in the world.
ef4 12y ago
> We have the opposite view on this: you seem to think that the bulk of what the startup scene does is disruptive, with a few idiotic startups giving the rest a bad name. I believe the balance is in fact the opposite: a few truly disruptive companies and boatloads of "silly little startups like 'Yo'". If you count "bulk" by "number of companies", sure. But that's not really a relevant metric. There's a power law here: the bulk of what actually gets done is mostly done by a tiny slice of companies at the biggest end of the spectrum. > So... why are the 99% working on things they know will amount to nothing? Because we can only tell which 1% is good in retrospect. Almost all the good ideas also sounded idiotic to many people at their earliest stage.