I didn't want to start another company, so I didn't do it. But if someone had, they'd probably be quite rich now...
You would be correct:
http://www.news.com/Symantec-snaps-up-antispam-firm/2100-735...
Be Good
31–40 of 209 posts
Re: Be Good
#32This article is nice, and I agree with the part about momentum gained by holding to greater values than simply building a successful company. However, PG doesn't mention the incredibly successful startups that start out with evil/crime and then later go good: ones that start with spammy & unethical means to get initial users and pirated content startups. I think most people strive to do good, but the world itself is…
Can you provide some examples?
There's always the typical examples: myspace with a hardcore spamming operation, facebook with beacon and some minor spamming/data theft in the beginning, youtube - pirated content. Ebaum's world - totally stolen content.
Those are obviously the biggest, most well known. Beneath the surface, a ton of companies are doing similar things, at a lesser level, but it often goes unseen. Many cams and dating sites started out spamming and fake profiles/female profiles. Most startups that require a "network effect" often create a lot of fake users at the start.
Re: Be Good
#33I agree that being benevolent and not focusing on profits in the early days is a good strategy for Internet businesses. Success on the Internet is all about scale. Growing faster than your competitors is key because your product can iterate faster and achieve a dominant position. Giving it away for free and being benevolent helps spur growth and is thus a very important strategy. But I'm not sure that this holds outs…
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."
Re: Be Good
#34While I am sure that there is a lot of truth in that post, I'd say that selling "sins" is much more profitable: sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco - lots of money involved.
These are your definitions of sin. Tobacco companies have been bad in the past for lying to their users. However, you could argue that many of these companies are being good to their users.
Re: Be Good
#35The business literature of previous generations often talked about "service to mankind" as an ingredient of success. This essay sheds some light on what they might have meant by that.
Do you have any links or even just names of source material? I'm curious.
Re: Be Good
#36I have no idea how Digi-Key is interacting with Octopart, but I have been buying parts from them for a long time and have nothing but good things to say about them. I like the company so much that I called to see if they were public so that I could buy stock; they're not. Although Octopart and its investors may be frustrated, it does Digi-Key a disservice to characterize it as "evil", not "good" or a company that isn…
Personally, we don't view them as evil (or ourselves as good, for that matter). We have had good experiences ordering from Digi-Key as well. They have a lot of parts in stock and they ship things right away so we don't have any qualms with their service.
I think that what frustrates Paul is that Digi-Key is actively trying to block innovation in part search because they don't want price competition. Part search today is like travel search in 1995. I used to go straight to American Airlines to buy tickets and that was fine but how much nicer is it to buy tickets online now? I even travel more because it is easier to find things.
The only thing that Octopart is trying to do is make it easier for people to find parts and Digi-Key has said that they don't want that to happen. They have specifically told us that they don't want us to exist because they don't want price comparison. We keep Digi-Key on the site because it makes our users happy. You'll have to ask Digi-Key how getting rid of Octopart helps their users.
Re: Be Good
#37I have no idea how Digi-Key is interacting with Octopart, but I have been buying parts from them for a long time and have nothing but good things to say about them. I like the company so much that I called to see if they were public so that I could buy stock; they're not. Although Octopart and its investors may be frustrated, it does Digi-Key a disservice to characterize it as "evil", not "good" or a company that isn…
Some of the comments about Digi-Key were unfair. Their prices are usually comparable to Mouser. Some items are more expensive, some are cheaper. They don't significantly overcharge for anything. You can confirm this with Octopart. Also, the most interesting thing about Octopart is the line item that says how many parts are in stock, not the pricing.
In addition to listing parts from Digi-Key and Mouser we've also started indexing more consumer oriented sites like Newegg. Where there is overlap between Digi-Key and Newegg, we've found that the distributors are 10%-100% more expensive. For example, here are some search results for power strips (http://octopart.com/category--Accessories--Surge+Protectors/...).
I agree with your point about prices. Most people using Octopart, Digi-Key and Mouser aren't too concerned with pricing. Life would actually be easier for us if we hid Digi-Key's prices but we don't because we want to display all the information we have and because some of our users do find it useful.
Re: Be Good
#38I admit that I haven't really explored this vein of thought, but what are the reasons that "good" startups (in the sense of good used in this essay) don't usually make their apps open-source?
Re: Be Good
#39Regarding Microsoft... it really struck me when I watched Steve Ballmer talk with Guy Kawasaki ( http://visitmix.com/blogs/News/Watch-Steve-Ballmer-and-Guy-K... ) that Steve over and over again touted that it was important for them to get big into online advertising. Not once did he frame a single Microsoft goal in the form of how it was going to help a customer.
Certainly a valid point. And PG's criticisms were deserved as well.
At the same time, I can't help but think some of this is an overreaction. Microsoft beat Apple as well as IBM in the market the first time by letting users pick their hardware vendor. And, even today, they still do that, and that's still Apple's achilles heel in gaining market share -- if someone wants more choice than a half a dozen or so models, they're going to have to buy a system running a different OS.
Yes, Vista sucks. Microsoft has come out with a completely crappy version of it's most important product. But other companies have released crappy products before and have lived on past their mistakes. Intel has released some horrible products before -- i860, Itanium, and the P4 all come to mind -- and pretty much all of them happened because they thought it was more important to keep their profits skyrocketing by controlling the market than it was to give customers what they wanted. But Intel has recovered from all of those debacles and once again makes the best CPUs around -- Core 2 Duo is great.
The fact that people are clinging to XP says that people at least perceive Microsoft operating systems to have value. The real test for Microsoft is whether they can learn from the Vista debacle and focus on making a better product the next time out with Windows 7. Having one failed product cycle isn't likely to sink them, but a second one could.
I run Ubuntu and I don't regret it for a second. It's a great system, and I like it better than Windows (or OS X, for that matter). But I think it's silly to say that Microsoft should just pack up and surrender because they shipped something that sucked.
Re: Be Good
#40Video of the talk here: [http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/98110/Paul_Graham_Partner_Y_Co...]
I enjoyed the essay, but found the video communicated the idea much better somehow.