5 ms·

I see a bunch of startup listing services springing up, e.g., Product Hunt and at least three others that have landed in my mailbox in the past couple weeks, wh

I see a bunch of startup listing services springing up, e.g., Product Hunt and at least three others that have landed in my mailbox in the past couple weeks, which send out a daily list of new / newly discovered startups. It's kind of amazing that these services can find 30 or 40 new startups every single day -- a thousand per month, 12,000 per year -- and, even more amazingly, I suspect they're only capturing a small percentage of the real total. From what I could tell after a couple of exhausting weeks reading these emails at least 99% of these startups are almost completely unnecessary. I'm not using "99%" and "completely unnecessary" as rhetorical bludgeons; I mean quite literally that less than 1% of these startups have anything more than the tiniest smidgen of utility or innovation to justify their existence. I stopped reading those "startup news" emails because it was depressing to see so much talent and effort being squandered. I don't know exactly what else all these people could/should be working on, but if they can't find some genuinely useful ideas for startups then they (and the world in general) would be better off to just spend their spare time volunteering or reading books or hiking or having coffee with friends.

sanderjd 12y ago
> they (and the world in general) would be better off to just spend their spare time volunteering or reading books or hiking or having coffee with friends But those aren't the viable alternatives! These aren't typically wealthy people with time on their hands, they're people trying to find a good place for themselves in the economy by working on something that they think people will like. The real alternative is working for a bigger company, in which their marginal contribution may or may not be more useful to themselves and society, depending on the company, and on their role in it. It's possible to do something useful either as a big cog in a small machine or a small cog in a big machine, but there's no guarantee either way. What I'd really like to see would be more "small businesses" and fewer "startups", but the economics of the software industry at the moment don't seem to encourage that.
- greenyoda 12y ago
  "What I'd really like to see would be more 'small businesses' and fewer 'startups', but the economics of the software industry at the moment don't seem to encourage that." My guess is that there are currently many more small software businesses than startups, but we don't hear a lot about them because (1) they're targeting business segments that we're not familiar with (e.g., writing accounting software for law practices, or creating web-based front ends for legacy COBOL systems) and (2) the media doesn't find them compelling enough to report on.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    That definitely has the ring of truth, thanks for giving me some perspective!

sanderjd 12y ago

> they (and the world in general) would be better off to just spend their spare time volunteering or reading books or hiking or having coffee with friends But those aren't the viable alternatives! These aren't typically wealthy people with time on their hands, they're people trying to find a good place for themselves in the economy by working on something that they think people will like. The real alternative is working for a bigger company, in which their marginal contribution may or may not be more useful to themselves and society, depending on the company, and on their role in it. It's possible to do something useful either as a big cog in a small machine or a small cog in a big machine, but there's no guarantee either way. What I'd really like to see would be more "small businesses" and fewer "startups", but the economics of the software industry at the moment don't seem to encourage that.

greenyoda 12y ago
"What I'd really like to see would be more 'small businesses' and fewer 'startups', but the economics of the software industry at the moment don't seem to encourage that." My guess is that there are currently many more small software businesses than startups, but we don't hear a lot about them because (1) they're targeting business segments that we're not familiar with (e.g., writing accounting software for law practices, or creating web-based front ends for legacy COBOL systems) and (2) the media doesn't find them compelling enough to report on.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  That definitely has the ring of truth, thanks for giving me some perspective!