Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

After the end of the startup era

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 304 posts

Re: After the end of the startup era

#61

Post by trhway »

Eridrus wrote: post #35
karmakaze wrote: post #26

Earlier 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.

Now we start to stick AI on a business. And like with uber/airbnb where an app became the business, we'll see unicorns where the AI will become the business.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#62

Post by coldtea »

rdtsc wrote: post #42

I look at it from another end - I feel there is a sort of an app fatigue. Maybe it is jut me. I used to be excited about Uber-like things, note taking apps, DropBox, coupon sites, review sites. Installed some of them, used them, then kind of stopped. Someone at work would say "you should try this new thing, totally cool" and I'd be inclined to do it, but now would pass it probably. Extrapolating scientifically from t…

A.k.a. reality 101: there's no hockey stick growth that lasts forever.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#63

Post by pfarnsworth »

Meh, articles like this are neither new nor interesting. Journalists have been writing articles like this for decades. At some point, one of the journalists who writes these articles will be right, but I doubt this one will be. It's the same with how the US dollar will get replaced as the reserve currency. Maybe some time in the future, but definitely not now and not in 10 years.

There will always be cycles, but it's so easy to be a naysayer, just write a medium post. People have been calling for the collapse of Silicon Valley since the dotcom crash, and at some point they'll be right, but they've been wrong so far.

Currently, I don't see any companies that are particularly interesting, but I'm confident there's some young kid out there that will create something great that will capture everyone's attention in the next couple of years, and then a new land-grab will occur all over again. It always has happened, and will always continue to happen.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#64

Post by perlpimp »

rpmcmurphy wrote: post #40

The 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 t…

thats the secret of robustness of German economy.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#65

Post by b4lancesh33t »

caust1c wrote: post #44
rpmcmurphy wrote: post #40

The 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 t…

I agree the future is built on small businesses. But to have the most impact on the environment we could all just stop eating so much meat.

Travelling less is much more important. Skip that vacation to Europe or Asia if you really want to have an impact on your footprint. Just one such trip dominates the impact of eating meat.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#66

Post by callalex »

rdtsc wrote: post #42

I look at it from another end - I feel there is a sort of an app fatigue. Maybe it is jut me. I used to be excited about Uber-like things, note taking apps, DropBox, coupon sites, review sites. Installed some of them, used them, then kind of stopped. Someone at work would say "you should try this new thing, totally cool" and I'd be inclined to do it, but now would pass it probably. Extrapolating scientifically from t…

Apps have also gotten much worse than in their heyday. They are all built in whatever the latest cross platform iframe-with-makeup framework which always feels clunky, and they all have to start out as free to get their foot in the door and then make it their life’s purpose to annoy you repeatedly until you cave and give them $.99 every month. The hardware space is now much more diverse so a developer doesn’t have the luxury of making pixel-perfect, detailed experiences because their app has to work on watches and refrigerators as well as phones (and now there’s even a phone screen with a forehead, thanks iPhone X).

Re: After the end of the startup era

#67

Post by andreasgonewild »

bobsil1 wrote: post #37
Eridrus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This boils down to a fundamental divide in life view. Anyone who has done any amount of expanding their consciousness will tell you that there is a ghost in the machine. It's always a mistake to assume that all you can see is all there is to see.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#68

Post by graycat »

Cacti wrote: post #5
karmakaze wrote: post #2

So 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…

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 "…

> 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:

Yup. You describe a gold mine. Well, there's still a lot of gold in there. The amazing hardware developments you describe are not yet fully exploited.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#69

Post by graycat »

trhway wrote: post #61
Eridrus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Now we start to stick AI on a business. And like with uber/airbnb where an app became the business, we'll see unicorns where the AI will become the business.

AI is some applied math. But as applied math goes, AI is only a tiny fraction, nearly absurdly narrow, and not very impressive. There's a lot more good applied math to be brought forward to exploit the recent fantastic hardware.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#70

Post by devmunchies »

b4lancesh33t wrote: post #65
caust1c wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the future is built on small businesses. But to have the most impact on the environment we could all just stop eating so much meat.

Travelling less is much more important. Skip that vacation to Europe or Asia if you really want to have an impact on your footprint. Just one such trip dominates the impact of eating meat.

> Just one such trip dominates the impact of eating meat.

impact of eating meat for how long? one year? I know that going vegan for a year is better than getting an electric car.

Post reply on HN