Well, back to good old small business it is.
That’s right. The small business SAAS biz in niches.
After the end of the startup era
31–40 of 304 posts
Re: After the end of the startup era
#32The evidence is likely in the data housed by Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and others in their market. Chart the statistical mean valuation of each cohort by year since graduation and see if that mean is changing. If Evans is correct, the mean should be declining for each successive cohort. Alternatively, since the number of funded startups seems to be increasing, you may prefer to look at total valuation over time sin…
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Re: After the end of the startup era
#33The evidence is likely in the data housed by Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and others in their market. Chart the statistical mean valuation of each cohort by year since graduation and see if that mean is changing. If Evans is correct, the mean should be declining for each successive cohort. Alternatively, since the number of funded startups seems to be increasing, you may prefer to look at total valuation over time sin…
Yet another way to analyze the situation is to look how big successful startups grow before they sell to one of the big ones, and how many of them are sold each year.
Big internet giants can reap the benefits of the startup scene by picking up promising startups early on before the valuations growth. Just hint that they might provide free alternative that is just good enough, might drop the valuation of a startup
When the Microsoft was the scary monster in software business in the 80's, all software startups had to have Microsoft strategy. What to do when MS shows interest. Show them a demo before product is ready and they have several ways to shut it down or buy it off and kill it.
Re: After the end of the startup era
#34Clickbait. ML won’t require mass amounts of data forever. One-shot learning will get solved.
> One-shot learning will get solved.
This is nonsense. I would challenge you to show any few-shot learning work that isn't basically some form of transfer learning in disguise.
Few-shot learning is super useful if you're in a position where you don't have much data, but will never compete with huge stacks of data.
Re: After the end of the startup era
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the argument that 1995 through 2015 was a cycle completely different from whatever the next one will be, is not without merit. I mean, it is easy to forget, but many, many things had to come together at one time in order for this to pop off like it did: * high speed internet * widespread consumer demand for high speed internet and services * multi-core, low-power hardware that gave us smartphones and cheapish "…
The recent past does appear very special but I wouldn't discount the near future either. e.g. the tech for AlphaGo was made by a startup. In any case I took the piece at it's title's face value, where startups are nowhere near over. Unicorns shouldn't really factor into that.
> e.g. the tech for AlphaGo was made by a startup.
Making the next AlphaGo is far less accessible than making the next AirBnB. The gold rush where we're basically sticking a web/mobile app on a business and off to the races is ending.
Re: After the end of the startup era
#36The evidence is likely in the data housed by Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and others in their market. Chart the statistical mean valuation of each cohort by year since graduation and see if that mean is changing. If Evans is correct, the mean should be declining for each successive cohort. Alternatively, since the number of funded startups seems to be increasing, you may prefer to look at total valuation over time sin…
This reminds me of when Pando went to Demo Day and saw no interesting companies and a bunch of knock offs https://pando.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator-demo-day-2013-stil... . They completely missed Zenefits, Teespring, and a few others. I’m not convinced that the dominant YC companies looked obviously dominant at their early stages; they only seem dominant in retrospect. As for why the giant companies at YC are still th…
I think this is partly due to the saturation of the consumer space, it's easier to understand the benefits of AirBnB vs Zenefits.
Re: After the end of the startup era
#37Clickbait. ML won’t require mass amounts of data forever. One-shot learning will get solved.
> One-shot learning will get solved. This is nonsense. I would challenge you to show any few-shot learning work that isn't basically some form of transfer learning in disguise. Few-shot learning is super useful if you're in a position where you don't have much data, but will never compete with huge stacks of data.
Of course it's a kind of transfer learning.
>will never compete with huge stacks of data
Children learn with sparse data based on composable models, and are bio machines.
Re: After the end of the startup era
#38So the premise is that the startup era is ending: > ...because we’ve all lived through back-to-back massive worldwide hardware revolutions — the growth of the Internet, and the adoption of smartphones — we erroneously think another one is around the corner, and once again, a few kids in a garage can write a little software to take advantage of it. [...] But there is no such revolution en route... Then it says: > It i…
Notice how there is an incredibly alignment between the problems in VR/AR, Drones, Self Driving Cars, and IoT? They require solving problems in 3D space in the real world either reacting or simulating. hmm...might we solve some of these problems with AI?
I am not a software developer, but these problems are very conceptually similar, and it seems we're all waiting on software/compute capabilities to leverage all of these new hardware technologies simultaneously.
Re: After the end of the startup era
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The recent past does appear very special but I wouldn't discount the near future either. e.g. the tech for AlphaGo was made by a startup. In any case I took the piece at it's title's face value, where startups are nowhere near over. Unicorns shouldn't really factor into that.
> e.g. the tech for AlphaGo was made by a startup. Making the next AlphaGo is far less accessible than making the next AirBnB. The gold rush where we're basically sticking a web/mobile app on a business and off to the races is ending.
Time to sell shovels
Re: After the end of the startup era
#40The world does not need more Mark Zuckerbergs, it needs millions of small and mid-size businesses working on the build out of low carbon energy sources. Converting the world electricity supply to run off renewable sources will require tens of trillions of dollars of investment over a period of decades. It's not a small opportunity, but unlike the app economy, it's not a winner take all market. This is mostly a good thing, although we won't see many overnight billionaires from it.