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After the end of the startup era

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Re: After the end of the startup era

#141

Post by rpedela »

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.

Preaching abstinence has never worked. It didn't work for sex and it is not going to work for meat-eating. The right question/attitude is how can we have an abundance of meat while protecting the environment? One possible solution is lab-grown meat and if that doesn't work then we need to invent some other solution that produces abundance with minimal cost to the environment.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#142

Post by objclxt »

cubano wrote: post #89
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.

Why would we do that when are bodies are specifically evolved for eating both vegetables and meat? I, for one at least, consider along the millions of years that evolution tried a version of homo sapiens that couldn't eat meat, and it was selected against...why would we now attempt to overturn the apparent wisdom of that selection?

> Why would we do that when are bodies are specifically evolved for eating both vegetables and meat?

Our bodies specifically evolved for reproduction, but that doesn't stop us from using contraception when we have sex. Evolution also designed us to have wisdom teeth, but that doesn't stop people removing them.

Your argument assumes that natural selection has some kind of innate "wisdom", and that's just not true. Natural selection doesn't produce perfection or have any kind of intelligence behind it, it simply produces "good enough" (or, as we're on HN, the minimum viable product).

Re: After the end of the startup era

#143

Post by gdfhhgddhjj »

sosborn wrote: post #127
thinkloop wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer figuring out how to incorporate the externalities instead of banning/quitting things. Meat at twice the price would probably solve the problem.

> Meat at twice the price would probably solve the problem. While true, it basically sends the message of "If you have enough money you are free to do what you please to the detriment of the planet."

Well, this is true today at least. What are you surprised at?

Re: After the end of the startup era

#144

Post by tertius »

samstave wrote: post #139
sosborn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meat at twice the price would probably solve the problem. While true, it basically sends the message of "If you have enough money you are free to do what you please to the detriment of the planet."

Uh, that's the exact business model of Whole Foods, now amazon. Basically "only the rich shall eat healthy" And to be totally honest, I want to tackle this issue through a startup called "standard pantry" which is the idea that one should have access to a standard pantry of goods and recipes (in place of a standard min income) and they should be able to sustain only and healthily feed themselves.

Replace

> only the rich shall eat healthy

With

> only the rich shall eat fancy

It's easy to eat healthy if you're not rich. Buy non-processed ingredients and cook them yourself.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#145

Post by tertius »

taysic wrote: post #120
EGreg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah good luck achieving that using pure capitalism. Unless you liberate all the farm animals by buying them out. You need regulations to prevent factory farming!

We can start by removing subsidies. Amount US taxpayers spend yearly to subsidize meat and dairy : $38 billion To subsidize fruits and vegetables : $17 million US retail price of a pound of chicken in 1935 (adjusted for inflation) : $5.07 In 2011 : $1.34 Pounds of chicken eaten annually per American in 1935 : 9 In 2011 : 56 Revenue collected by US fishing industry per pound of fish caught : $0.59 Portion of this figu…

Comparing current day consumption to a single year in the past reeks of bias.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#147

Post by mindhunters »

hluska wrote: post #54

I try to be patient with Techcrunch, but seriously, phrases like this make me see red: > The market capitalization of Bitcoin vastly exceeds that of any Bitcoin-based startup. The same is true for Ethereum. The market cap of the US dollar exceeds that of any financial institution. What's the fucking point?

Not looking at this part, the whole article makes sense. Nowadays, we all see that it's difficult for small startups to promote themselves. The privilege on major platforms is given to those who pay more(ex: Google). Even if one company gains enough traction and begins to become successful, another larger corporation buys it (in best case) or makes everything to not let it get larger market share. Thus, "big guys" now are a barrier on our way to progress.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#148

Post by samstave »

dyarosla wrote: post #117
callalex wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Using phrases like 'all built with', 'all have to start out as free', and so on, is fairly inaccurate. There are plenty of apps that run native, cost money upfront, and are still viable, profitable businesses.

The "unicorn" in this statement is simple "build something people want" (to pay for)

You need to add value to others no matter what you do, that's the definition of "building"

Value is what is extracted from work.

"Buildings" are the expression of physical labor put into something OF value.

It's literally defined in our lexicon.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#149

Post by erikb »

leggomylibro wrote: post #103
komali2 wrote: post #48

>IoT devices [are] hard to prototype, generally low-margin, expensive to bring to market, and very expensive to scale. Just ask Fitbit. Or Jawbone. Or Juicero. Or HTC. I feel like this is the public's idea of "iot," while I've learned after a year of working for an iot stack provider that the real "internet of things" explosion is found in places nobody looks except the procurement guys - the stadium lights, the refr…

Yeah, it seems like you could replace 'IoT' with 'physical product.' Sounds like the author has been living in the land of hand-waved 9-figure growth estimates for a bit too long.

No you cannot. A brick is also a physical product. But it doesn't communicate. There needs to be software and technology involved, and more than one object needs to talk via a network.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#150

Post by tertius »

username223 wrote: post #128
DamonHD wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic fligh…

> having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year) I.e. one (or one thousandth, given his carbon footprint) less Zuckerberg? I could get behind that. Heck, I supported NPG back when I thought humanity had a chance.

We'll even out at about 10bil. Then this won't be a problem.
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