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After the end of the startup era

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Re: After the end of the startup era

#161
post #81
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.

We could stop flying, driving and buying electronics from Asia. Are you willing to do it?

I prefer we keep doing all those things if we can figure out how to make them harm less.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#162
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…

That might just be because you are getting older and value your time more.

I used to try every new app, every new service. I used to run Linux on my desktop. Doing those things was fun and challenging, but took time.

I have kids now. I value spending time with them over fiddling with the latest app or spending an hour tuning my kernel so I can run my window manager at max resolution. I use a Mac and it just does that for me now, albeit with far less customizability and fun, but that is the tradeoff I'm willing to make.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm saying your sample group has an age bias. :)

Re: After the end of the startup era

#163
post #89
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?

Because it’s killing the planet? We also evolved a brain so we could adapt. Hopefully we’ll use it.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#165
Startups have also seemed to have morphed from ventures started by founders, to vehicles for investors to make long plays for monopoly control of a market, like Uber and Netflix. I am not sure of the laws regarding dumping and artificially low prices, but when startups operate at a loss for years and gobble up the entire market, that looks like what they're doing.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Easy" means that you have been educated to a state that makes you aware of such... That's the problem. We need to educate on a basic standard pantry that allows healthy to be so easy that it doesn't even cross our minds.

Educate? The only thing between me and a home cooked meal is fast food. Cooking is not inaccessible.

If the only problem is nutrition education then that is not a rich person privilege.

A large majority of the public cannot afford Whole foods but are educated enough to understand that home cooked meals from non-processed ingredients are healthier than their counterparts.

If education is all it took we'd all be rich with six pack abs. (Derek Sivers.)

Habit rules all.

Make unhealthy food illegal? Make marketing unhealthy food illegal?

Hmm...

Re: After the end of the startup era

#167
post #44

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.

and why do you think that? a lot of the so call gig economy employees are "small businesses" or at least that's what ubber et all say

Re: After the end of the startup era

#168
From the article:

"We’re already seeing this. Consider Y Combinator, by all accounts the gold standard of startup accelerators, famously harder to get into than Harvard. Then consider its alumni. Five years ago, in 2012, its three poster children were clearly poised to dominate their markets and become huge companies: AirBnB, Dropbox, and Stripe. And so it came to pass."

"Fast forward to today, and Y Combinator’s three poster children are… unchanged. In the last six years YC have funded more than twice as many startups as they did in their first six — but I challenge you to name any of their post-2011 alumni as well-positioned today as their Big Three were in 2012. The only one that might have qualified, for a time, was Instacart. But Amazon broke into that game with Amazon Fresh, and, especially, their purchase of Whole Foods."

Look at the list of Ycombinator companies from the 2012 batch.[1] Where are they now?

[1] http://yclist.com/

Re: After the end of the startup era

#169
The point has been proven: there’re some business models that can be jump start with VC, and generate tons of cash flow. It will never go away.

What’s happening is that the world is learning no to invest hundreds of millions in a ”bro app”. VCs learning = less investment in absurd enterprises = less total number of startups

Re: After the end of the startup era

#170
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What kind of bias? I copy pasted a cluster of lines from that page, but the sources themselves are well documented, mainly from the gov itself.

Anyway here's another source that shows that meat consumption has dramatically increased since the 1920s, though that wasn't my central point:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/vis...

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