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pg weighed in a while ago on this in his essay "Why To Not Not Start A Startup" (March 2007, http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html
by dkyc 12y ago
pg weighed in a while ago on this in his essay "Why To Not Not Start A Startup" (March 2007, http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html). See point 8:
"A lot of people look at the ever-increasing number of startups and think "this can't continue." Implicit in their thinking is a fallacy: that there is some limit on the number of startups there could be. But this is false. No one claims there's any limit on the number of people who can work for salary at 1000-person companies. Why should there be any limit on the number who can work for equity at 5-person companies? [3]
Nearly everyone who works is satisfying some kind of need. Breaking up companies into smaller units doesn't make those needs go away."
[more in the essay]
- stretchwithme 12y agoAs more and more human labor is automated, its inevitable that companies will get smaller. Determining what people need and how to fill those needs will never go away. But these organizations will get flatter, as more of their inputs can be purchased in the marketplace instead of needing to be manufactured precisely as the needed for a final product. Companies that are built on platforms, such as the Internet, these inevitably get simpler and partially more alike as their platform gets richer and easier to use. More will be using AWS, for example, instead of hiring people to build and manage a data center. And then there's Apple, which has demonstrated that there are still complex products that can be better integrated when you control more of the supply chain. It can switch both hardware and software to a new processor without coordinating with dozens of companies.