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Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

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Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#11

Post by wittycardio »

heisenbit wrote: post #6

If founding work is so simple then founders should be interchangeable? Where is the moat that ensures what two handful of people cobbled together is not replicated? Isn't it that the real moat and the real propelling force becomes more and more the capital leveraged?

Most Founders are interchangeable. The entire business of YC is paying for a ton of people to found a ton of companies and hoping one hits. Luck is a huge factor. The issue is the 1 guy that does hit has an outsize impact on society. Sometimes it's positive but often it's not.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#12

Post by bluelightning2k »

FredPret wrote: post #3

I’m creating a startup. I’m the first and only employee, and likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. What would have taken an army of clerks in the past is now a (lot) of code. Whole departments are replaced by API’s that cost less than $100/month. It’s really incredible.

Could you give some examples? Congratulations on your success implementing this stuff

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#13

Post by czbond »

notlukesky wrote: post #2

It is important to point out that this is only possible for the consumer app economy or a self-service type of software app or digital marketplace (like craigslist). Everything else requires more headcount (could be outsourced to 3rd parties or consultants). And in the whole economy this is a sliver of companies. This is a great business of course but there are not many of them given the scale of the whole economy. B…

I wholly disagree. SaaS are similar to automations for end customers.

The CapEx spend of tens/hundreds of engineers that built the SaaS is offset by 1 company to remove the needed engineers from each company.

Companies used to: build their own authentication layers, databases, infrastructure, code repositories,etc, etc.

What starts in consumer always moves to Enterprise. So will AI and automations.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#14

Post by yetanotherforg »

wittycardio wrote: post #9
yetanotherforg wrote: post #5

Based on his argument: Fewer people are doing a lot more thanks to being good at automation. It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, not the engineers doing the automation. The past three years, the YC crowd has really tried hard to justify wealth disparities, gentrification and generally treating employees like garbage, as part of their Objectivist agenda. Paul, employees do the automation, n…

Pretty clear that these are people who want to fuck you over. Silicon Valley elites have accumulated enough power to come mask off. Entitled dirtbags who profited off government funded science and technology who've never created an ounce of value in their lives.

Thank you. Nobody ever seems to mention how much founders get to stand on the heads of engineers and scientists who were paid with tax dollars. Kind of how the libertarian musk fans ignore how much aid his companies have gotten from the t taxpayers.

In the heads of somebody who believed The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged were bibles, there are 1 or 2 people doing 99% of all work in the companies.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#15

Post by bluelightning2k »

This isn't new. There's been 4 industrial revolutions.

But the most obvious example is electricity. People's output in certain roles immediately compounded and the long tail of this never really stopped (it was a precursor to the internet and AI ofc)

Where fields had to be toiled there was space for little else. But now people can scale their impact in interesting new ways

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#16

Post by ceronman »

He is implying that founders can create a lot of value without employees, and that the claim that employees also create value is false.

If that's true, then what about a social experiment: If you are a solo founder, you get all your profits for yourself. But if you have employees, you have to share your profits with your employees. If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything. But if they do, share your profits fairly.

I'm curious to see how many solo billionaires will appear. My estimated guess: zero.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#17

Post by yobbo »

notlukesky wrote: post #2

It is important to point out that this is only possible for the consumer app economy or a self-service type of software app or digital marketplace (like craigslist). Everything else requires more headcount (could be outsourced to 3rd parties or consultants). And in the whole economy this is a sliver of companies. This is a great business of course but there are not many of them given the scale of the whole economy. B…

Not really. Any business can now use tools that make jobs redundant. It is having its effect everywhere. Anyone whose job is to copy information between mails, spreadsheets, and some webapp will eventually be replaced.

There are more "psychological gotchas" among non-software people about what "real jobs" are and what it means to create value, but time catches up with everyone.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#18

Post by robertlagrant »

yetanotherforg wrote: post #5

Based on his argument: Fewer people are doing a lot more thanks to being good at automation. It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, not the engineers doing the automation. The past three years, the YC crowd has really tried hard to justify wealth disparities, gentrification and generally treating employees like garbage, as part of their Objectivist agenda. Paul, employees do the automation, n…

> It's the automation that's making it possible to be successful, not the engineers doing the automation.

That's like saying anyone who thinks hammers are a good idea is really saying a hammer makes a builder successful, not the builder. It's just a tool, and he's saying tools mean one person can do more. You don't need to straw man a philosophy on to it to then have something to argue against.

> employees do the automation, not the founders

Founders normally are employees. For the phase or type of company pg is talking about, they may be the only employees.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#19

Post by wittycardio »

yetanotherforg wrote: post #14
wittycardio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty clear that these are people who want to fuck you over. Silicon Valley elites have accumulated enough power to come mask off. Entitled dirtbags who profited off government funded science and technology who've never created an ounce of value in their lives.

Thank you. Nobody ever seems to mention how much founders get to stand on the heads of engineers and scientists who were paid with tax dollars. Kind of how the libertarian musk fans ignore how much aid his companies have gotten from the t taxpayers. In the heads of somebody who believed The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged were bibles, there are 1 or 2 people doing 99% of all work in the companies.

Most progress has come from universities, defense and government funding. These losers build an app and proclaim themselves gurus on the future. It's insane that people fall for it.

Re: Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

#20

Post by robertlagrant »

yetanotherforg wrote: post #10
CalRobert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow? Lots of technical founders create their own automations.

His whole point is: There is a lot of great free open source software being exploited by small technical teams to run faster. This means the people doing the integration deserve less $$ because they can do the same amount with less. Founders deserve all the money, everybody else should be happy to be employed. 1920s robber baron bs. Ignore the ethics that every single startup would be impossible without standing on t…

Where does he mention open source? And using open source software is not standing on anyone's head.
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