31–40 of 105 posts
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Sure, Dropbox and Stripe aren't dismantling apartheid or eradicating polio, but these products do solve real problems and make life a little bit more bearable for millions of people.
We should give credit where credit's due and acknowledge this impact.
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In the delta between those that have it the best and those that have it the worst.
That's a hugely flawed north star. We've had inequality as long as we have had surplus. The more surplus, the more inequality. But I'd rather live today than in hunter gatherer times, even though they were materially more equal. "Why not modern life with less inequality?" Well because growing the pie and splitting the pie are competing drivers. If Elon musk weren't already obscenely wealthy, he wouldn't have been abl…
If NASA had the budget of the 1960s today we would be way ahead of what Space X is doing now.
And yeah, even without that I’d trade Space X for more global equality in a second.
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Wait... how was the username "ford" never used on HN until now?
HN is a pretty small community. There are ample dictionary word usernames left. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generalmotors https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=usually https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fucking https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sucks https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=although https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=their https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hummers https://news.ycombinat…
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Sincere question: what would one use to measure success in such a world?
In the delta between those that have it the best and those that have it the worst.
There are downsides to inequality, but a metric that counts "everyone is miserable" as a success is an awful metric.
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HN is a pretty small community. There are ample dictionary word usernames left. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generalmotors https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=usually https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fucking https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sucks https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=although https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=their https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hummers https://news.ycombinat…
I was surprised at ford in particular because it's the name one of the main characters of a book that's very popular in this community.
> Their ideas reflected YC’s implicit view that for every problem in the world, there is a startup solution I dream of a world where we try to solve problems first and monetize them second, and I don't mean growth hacking. > It’s Y Combinator’s world, and we’re all invested in it. There are many people who resent this world. I'd like to live in a world where success isn't measured by money.
> I dream of a world where we try to solve problems first and monetize them second I dream of a world where we don’t create solutions, such as blockchain, and then try to find the problem.
Y Combinator managed to convince startups that would have been founded anyway to give up expensive equity to them. I'm not sure they would have failed without YC. Put another way, if you take a piece of every startup on the planet, can you claim influence if some of those startups eventually succeed?
I’ve applied not less than 7 times to YC. Rejected every time. Some of our customers are multi billion dollar companies. We are profitable, growing and got accepted by their direct competitor. I still believe YC influence is amazing and I have nothing but respect for all the people involved in the program but I like to remind fellows entrepreneurs that any accelerator is just a tool. If you want to build something, n…
And if it does, you wouldn’t have built it anyway
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That's a hugely flawed north star. We've had inequality as long as we have had surplus. The more surplus, the more inequality. But I'd rather live today than in hunter gatherer times, even though they were materially more equal. "Why not modern life with less inequality?" Well because growing the pie and splitting the pie are competing drivers. If Elon musk weren't already obscenely wealthy, he wouldn't have been abl…
Call me a socialist but we had scientific and engineering breakthroughs without hyper capitalism. If NASA had the budget of the 1960s today we would be way ahead of what Space X is doing now. And yeah, even without that I’d trade Space X for more global equality in a second.