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You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. Some here seem to think Entrepreneurship has changed into a ku

You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. Some here seem to think Entrepreneurship has changed into a kumbaya group hug where we just attend conferences together , check code into GitHub, might make a bit of money if we ask nicely, or sell "ads", and hope for an early exit because of our sheer brilliance, leaving the dirty work to our future parent. The most valuable companies on the other hand look for sustainable competitive advantage, or as Peter Thiel would say, monopoly. That definitionally implies "all others must fail" at competing with you. That doesn't mean you don't have partners, it means in the area you excel at (hopefully a big area), you are the only game in town. With Oracle it never was quite the only game in town, but it never lost being the clear revenue leader in RDBMS (and middleware after BEA). If you are in an area where you can't do that or it's hard to do that, you're not going to build a super valuable company - maybe a super valuable online community or open source project. But not a really valuable company generating tremendous wealth beyond asset speculators. Perhaps that's what's changed about entrepreneurship, and why you see Larry derided by some here. It isn't just about building companies anymore, it's about funding communities that might become companies with enough tinkering and luck.

idlewords 12y ago
I'm an entrepreneur and I think Larry Ellison is a turd. Am I blowing your mind? People start and run companies for a variety of motives. Obliterating the competition is one of them, but it seems to correlate with being a pretty awful person to be around, so not everyone chooses to play by those rules. Ultimately you get to choose-and are responsible for-the rules you play by. If there's one big lesson of entrepreneurship, it's "take responsibility", and that includes figuring out what kind of person you want to become.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    "If you want to grow big". There's plenty of room at the bottom.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      Do you think that anyone who runs a large software company is a turd?
      - idlewords 12y ago
        What an odd question. I imagine some of them are very nice people, but I would have no way to know.
        jiggy2011 12y ago
        It's not an odd question, it follows logically from what you have written. If Ellison is a "turd" for doing what basically every big tech firm has done (gaining a monopoly in a particular market) then they must all be turds too.
  - oracleverer 12y ago
    I usually don't comment but this just hits the nerves so hard I couldn't resist; Larry Ellison is as not an entrepreneur, he is a public figurehead chosen to be the face of a company started by a small team of programmers with ties to the intelligence community who then mysteriously got a huge government contract with no company history to speak of despite competitive bids by established, larger companies with experience and concrete histories. Like how, oh, I don't know, another company these days is being shoved in our Face(book)s as a model of success for no other reason than its strategic value to the intell community. Or how Steve Wynn was marketed as a genius developer but it turned out he was just a front for the mob who needed stay in and compete with corporations but couldn't raise funds on wall street due to criminal records. Or how Bill Gates was a "genius" because he insisted on licensing Winblows instead of selling it even though history went on to show that he actually tried to sell it to IBM numerous times but IBM's then CEO, who was a friend of his family and lived a few blocks away in the same neighborhood actually came with the idea to the table and insisted that IBM license the software instead of buying it, which basically set Microsoft with a huge source of un-earned cash just as it was starting up and helped create the mythos of the "genius" entrepreneur. The only thing this is proof of is inexperience, gullibility and lack of insight into the real workings of the world. You want to see a good example of an entrepreneur? Look at Jack Ma. No social background, no spoon in mouth, just a lot of optimism hard work and a sense that success can be mutual and open-looped. Started in China, a country notorious for government/business/family-relation corruption but chose not to seek help from the obvious places and instead earned business the hard way - going door to door and manufacturers and asking them to sign up, one boring conversation at a time. You couldn't make a hollywood movie out of that because its so boring. But it's reality. Any startup story that can have a hollywood movie around it is usually just a public business sockpuppet around a group of allied interests with money to throw around at the next "genius" they want to prop up to create a magical story/script for the next IPO.
- josefresco 12y ago
  "Obliterating the competition is one of them" is not a goal or motive, but a tactic used to achieve a goal. I think it's a stretch to assert that Ellison started in business solely to "obliterate" his competitors.
- parasubvert 12y ago
  Generally I think of entrepreneurs as wanting to create a growth business with sustainable competitive advantage, which in turn creates great wealth for customers, employees, and investors. The alternative is starting a lifestyle business. This is fine, but not a source of great wealth beyond your family. It's more aptly described by "small business owner" or "self-employed". Either angle can shape the person you become, but I'm not sure it's so easy to correlate "awful" with "growth company founder". Certainly Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are in this category, and they've been brutal to their competition. Are they turds too?
  - idlewords 12y ago
    This is a "no true Scotsman" argument about the nature of entepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are people who start businesses, which is a much wider category than what you seem to have in mind.
    - parasubvert 12y ago
      No, it's a fairly clear cut split, and I am far from the first person to make this distinction.
javajosh 12y ago
> You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. There is room for a variety of entrepreneurial styles. In economics as in a natural ecosystem, there is room for an astounding variety of survival strategies. The Disney movie "The Lion King" just isn't referenced enough on HN. Your comment is roughly equivalent to saying "You can tell who is a successful species on the savannah by those who talk shit about Mufasa." The truth is that apex predators like lions are very cool, but, by biomass and evolutionary longevity not nearly the most successful animals in any ecosystem. And, uniquely to humans, there is a meta-game, wherein what we say about the world influences the world. This effect is so strong that we can indeed redefine what success means with our words. Success in nature is, unambiguously, survival. Live long enough to reproduce, die happy. But we humans can and often do alter this definition. And we do it in economics as well. The traditional definition of capitalist success is (to paraphrase) "die a billionaire". That's a valid definition, and I wouldn't take it away from anyone, but realize there are other valid choices who's existence doesn't affect the validity of Larry's credo. I would argue that the problem with that definition is the fact that success has to be personally attributable value. Money is, in the end, just a kind of primordial "like". Larry has amassed billions of "likes". But how much more value could he have created had he not worried so much about localizing the rewards? I'm glad you want to be an apex predator, but I don't think you'll get very far by insisting that the world only needs (or would only benefit from having) apex predators.
- benjohnson 12y ago
  Very well said. My version of being an entrepreneur includes having enough time to be with my family and raise awesome children who will have the ability to be entrepreneurs as well.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "Live long enough to reproduce, die happy." I'm not sure it's relevant to your central thesis here, but this conflates the experience of the individual with the workings of evolution. Living long enough to reproduce (more precisely, having a high inclusive fitness, which typically includes reproducing but strictly doesn't have to) is roughly equivalent to nature saying "more like that" which can be counted as "a win" - but the dying animals are still probably dying in pain.
erikpukinskis 12y ago
Not all entrepreneurs are trying to build super valuable companies anymore. I am trying to build a super valuable developer ecosystem to be a part of. Watsi is trying to build a super valuable nonprofit health insurance network. There's also reason to believe that being central in such a structure, one you do not own or control, is actually a good strategy for building a super valuable company. And using different strategic framework can be a competetive advantage. It's harder for a competitor to destroy you completely if they don't understand your support system as well as you do. Doubly so if the framework you are using turns out to be ascendant regionally or globally.
unclebunkers 12y ago
I dunno, Notch seemed to do alright for himself. Having made at least a billion as a result of starting his own company. I suspect that qualifies as an entrepreneur. He didn't seem the KKND type, but I could be wrong.
- parasubvert 12y ago
  Notch isn't an entrepreneur, he's said so himself. He has no interest in creating or running companies. He's the success story of a brilliant founder that hands off his work to a parent (Microsoft) to do the dirty work.
  - unclebunkers 12y ago
    You're simply presenting a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Notch created his own company, ran it, and made a billion in selling it. If that's not an entrepreneur, most of HN is going to need to change their business cards.
    - idlewords 12y ago
      The "no true scotsman" fallacy is not a true fallacy.
      - unclebunkers 12y ago
        Cute.
    - parasubvert 12y ago
      If you think Notch's approach is the model to be emulated for other game entrepreneurs, good luck to you.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    > He's the success story of a brilliant founder that hands off his work to a parent (Microsoft) to do the dirty work. All Minecraft versions combined have sold over 50 million copies, and the product is on the decline (since people only buy it once). So what "dirty work" did he hand it off for Microsoft to do?
notacoward 12y ago
So anyone who believes in basic business ethics doesn't get to be an entrepreneur in your book? Like many others here, I don't have a problem with Oracle making money or even dominating its market. I have a problem with how they've done those things, and all of the potential innovation they've stifled in the process. Look at some of the lawsuits they've been involved in, or some of the promising projects they've killed by acquisition. I have personally seen Oracle try to steal my employer's ideas (while I was at Dolphin) and code (while I was at Clam). I was in one of their machine rooms when I caught them making an illegal copy of our source tree, and I most definitely did not get the impression that it was a rogue developer acting on their own initiative. In another life, I've seen how they treat partners, contributing almost nothing to a "joint effort" on a port (impeding it by only providing machine-obfuscated source) even though they were clearly going to benefit most from its completion. That kind of crap has nothing to do with being hungry, or competitive, or even aggressive. It has to do with being immoral. That's why even real entrepreneurs "talk shit" about Larry and Oracle.

idlewords 12y ago

I'm an entrepreneur and I think Larry Ellison is a turd. Am I blowing your mind? People start and run companies for a variety of motives. Obliterating the competition is one of them, but it seems to correlate with being a pretty awful person to be around, so not everyone chooses to play by those rules. Ultimately you get to choose-and are responsible for-the rules you play by. If there's one big lesson of entrepreneurship, it's "take responsibility", and that includes figuring out what kind of person you want to become.

jiggy2011 12y ago
If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
- idlewords 12y ago
  "If you want to grow big". There's plenty of room at the bottom.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Do you think that anyone who runs a large software company is a turd?
    - idlewords 12y ago
      What an odd question. I imagine some of them are very nice people, but I would have no way to know.
      - jiggy2011 12y ago
        It's not an odd question, it follows logically from what you have written. If Ellison is a "turd" for doing what basically every big tech firm has done (gaining a monopoly in a particular market) then they must all be turds too.
- oracleverer 12y ago
  I usually don't comment but this just hits the nerves so hard I couldn't resist; Larry Ellison is as not an entrepreneur, he is a public figurehead chosen to be the face of a company started by a small team of programmers with ties to the intelligence community who then mysteriously got a huge government contract with no company history to speak of despite competitive bids by established, larger companies with experience and concrete histories. Like how, oh, I don't know, another company these days is being shoved in our Face(book)s as a model of success for no other reason than its strategic value to the intell community. Or how Steve Wynn was marketed as a genius developer but it turned out he was just a front for the mob who needed stay in and compete with corporations but couldn't raise funds on wall street due to criminal records. Or how Bill Gates was a "genius" because he insisted on licensing Winblows instead of selling it even though history went on to show that he actually tried to sell it to IBM numerous times but IBM's then CEO, who was a friend of his family and lived a few blocks away in the same neighborhood actually came with the idea to the table and insisted that IBM license the software instead of buying it, which basically set Microsoft with a huge source of un-earned cash just as it was starting up and helped create the mythos of the "genius" entrepreneur. The only thing this is proof of is inexperience, gullibility and lack of insight into the real workings of the world. You want to see a good example of an entrepreneur? Look at Jack Ma. No social background, no spoon in mouth, just a lot of optimism hard work and a sense that success can be mutual and open-looped. Started in China, a country notorious for government/business/family-relation corruption but chose not to seek help from the obvious places and instead earned business the hard way - going door to door and manufacturers and asking them to sign up, one boring conversation at a time. You couldn't make a hollywood movie out of that because its so boring. But it's reality. Any startup story that can have a hollywood movie around it is usually just a public business sockpuppet around a group of allied interests with money to throw around at the next "genius" they want to prop up to create a magical story/script for the next IPO.
josefresco 12y ago
"Obliterating the competition is one of them" is not a goal or motive, but a tactic used to achieve a goal. I think it's a stretch to assert that Ellison started in business solely to "obliterate" his competitors.
parasubvert 12y ago
Generally I think of entrepreneurs as wanting to create a growth business with sustainable competitive advantage, which in turn creates great wealth for customers, employees, and investors. The alternative is starting a lifestyle business. This is fine, but not a source of great wealth beyond your family. It's more aptly described by "small business owner" or "self-employed". Either angle can shape the person you become, but I'm not sure it's so easy to correlate "awful" with "growth company founder". Certainly Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are in this category, and they've been brutal to their competition. Are they turds too?
- idlewords 12y ago
  This is a "no true Scotsman" argument about the nature of entepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are people who start businesses, which is a much wider category than what you seem to have in mind.
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    No, it's a fairly clear cut split, and I am far from the first person to make this distinction.

javajosh 12y ago

> You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. There is room for a variety of entrepreneurial styles. In economics as in a natural ecosystem, there is room for an astounding variety of survival strategies. The Disney movie "The Lion King" just isn't referenced enough on HN. Your comment is roughly equivalent to saying "You can tell who is a successful species on the savannah by those who talk shit about Mufasa." The truth is that apex predators like lions are very cool, but, by biomass and evolutionary longevity not nearly the most successful animals in any ecosystem. And, uniquely to humans, there is a meta-game, wherein what we say about the world influences the world. This effect is so strong that we can indeed redefine what success means with our words. Success in nature is, unambiguously, survival. Live long enough to reproduce, die happy. But we humans can and often do alter this definition. And we do it in economics as well. The traditional definition of capitalist success is (to paraphrase) "die a billionaire". That's a valid definition, and I wouldn't take it away from anyone, but realize there are other valid choices who's existence doesn't affect the validity of Larry's credo. I would argue that the problem with that definition is the fact that success has to be personally attributable value. Money is, in the end, just a kind of primordial "like". Larry has amassed billions of "likes". But how much more value could he have created had he not worried so much about localizing the rewards? I'm glad you want to be an apex predator, but I don't think you'll get very far by insisting that the world only needs (or would only benefit from having) apex predators.

benjohnson 12y ago
Very well said. My version of being an entrepreneur includes having enough time to be with my family and raise awesome children who will have the ability to be entrepreneurs as well.
dllthomas 12y ago
"Live long enough to reproduce, die happy." I'm not sure it's relevant to your central thesis here, but this conflates the experience of the individual with the workings of evolution. Living long enough to reproduce (more precisely, having a high inclusive fitness, which typically includes reproducing but strictly doesn't have to) is roughly equivalent to nature saying "more like that" which can be counted as "a win" - but the dying animals are still probably dying in pain.

erikpukinskis 12y ago

Not all entrepreneurs are trying to build super valuable companies anymore. I am trying to build a super valuable developer ecosystem to be a part of. Watsi is trying to build a super valuable nonprofit health insurance network. There's also reason to believe that being central in such a structure, one you do not own or control, is actually a good strategy for building a super valuable company. And using different strategic framework can be a competetive advantage. It's harder for a competitor to destroy you completely if they don't understand your support system as well as you do. Doubly so if the framework you are using turns out to be ascendant regionally or globally.

unclebunkers 12y ago

I dunno, Notch seemed to do alright for himself. Having made at least a billion as a result of starting his own company. I suspect that qualifies as an entrepreneur. He didn't seem the KKND type, but I could be wrong.

parasubvert 12y ago
Notch isn't an entrepreneur, he's said so himself. He has no interest in creating or running companies. He's the success story of a brilliant founder that hands off his work to a parent (Microsoft) to do the dirty work.
- unclebunkers 12y ago
  You're simply presenting a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Notch created his own company, ran it, and made a billion in selling it. If that's not an entrepreneur, most of HN is going to need to change their business cards.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    The "no true scotsman" fallacy is not a true fallacy.
    - unclebunkers 12y ago
      Cute.
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    If you think Notch's approach is the model to be emulated for other game entrepreneurs, good luck to you.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > He's the success story of a brilliant founder that hands off his work to a parent (Microsoft) to do the dirty work. All Minecraft versions combined have sold over 50 million copies, and the product is on the decline (since people only buy it once). So what "dirty work" did he hand it off for Microsoft to do?

notacoward 12y ago

So anyone who believes in basic business ethics doesn't get to be an entrepreneur in your book? Like many others here, I don't have a problem with Oracle making money or even dominating its market. I have a problem with how they've done those things, and all of the potential innovation they've stifled in the process. Look at some of the lawsuits they've been involved in, or some of the promising projects they've killed by acquisition. I have personally seen Oracle try to steal my employer's ideas (while I was at Dolphin) and code (while I was at Clam). I was in one of their machine rooms when I caught them making an illegal copy of our source tree, and I most definitely did not get the impression that it was a rogue developer acting on their own initiative. In another life, I've seen how they treat partners, contributing almost nothing to a "joint effort" on a port (impeding it by only providing machine-obfuscated source) even though they were clearly going to benefit most from its completion. That kind of crap has nothing to do with being hungry, or competitive, or even aggressive. It has to do with being immoral. That's why even real entrepreneurs "talk shit" about Larry and Oracle.