Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 394 posts

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

#271

Post by wittycardio »

robertlagrant wrote: post #261
wittycardio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure progress comes from scientists , not from idiots building b2b saas apps.

> Sure progress comes from scientists , not from idiots building b2b saas apps. Progress comes from all sorts of places. Scientific progress come from scientists. That doesn't result in things better in my life without a huge number of other people doing things well and efficiently. Both of which includes anything people will pay for, including b2b saas apps. Try having a pandemic lockdown without Amazon-level fulfil…

No not all work is equal. Progress is a rare thing. Do not equate all forms of work to progress. People will pay good money for women to fart on their faces. That's not valuable work. Neither is building shitty apps.

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

#272

Post by nonameiguess »

mattjaynes wrote: post #258

Wow. There seems to be 2 main responses to this. 1) Sadness and depression or 2) Excitement and possibility I really expected this thread to be more of #2 since historically Hacker News has been full of ambitious founders and founder-like engineers. The great leaps in automation, especially with the recent AI developments is any founder's dream. To be able to go faster with less friction than ever to create something…

We can't and will never have a world with 8 billion distinct businesses that all have zero employees each. So it's nice that you think you might have a shot at a tiny lottery, but personally, I like to see trends that can benefit all of humanity, not just those who choose to start businesses.

Nothing against automation itself, but the idea that it means all of the value of a business can and should accrue to a single person I take issue with. It doesn't matter how evenly spread the probability that a randomly chosen person can become a successful founder is, or what my personal probability is. The total number of such people is necessarily capped at a very small number, and there is nothing to celebrate about at the idea of a future where only a very small number of people can ever enjoy the wealth created by automation.

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

#273

Post by overrun11 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #186
zajio1am wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For value creation, you need both workers and capital (provided by founders and investors). The value is created by both together, not each independently. The compensation for created value is based on market rate for both work and capital.

> The compensation for created value is based on market rate for both work and capital. This equivalence doesn't make much sense unless there's a widespread phenomenon of businesses "firing" owners in favor of other capital-providers who will accept lower returns.

Isn't this basically what a recapitalization is?

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

#274

Post by xcambar »

ceronman wrote: post #16

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…

> If employees don't produce any value, easy, fire them all

Very Musk-y of you

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

#275

Post by mattjaynes »

nonameiguess wrote: post #272
mattjaynes wrote: post #258

Wow. There seems to be 2 main responses to this. 1) Sadness and depression or 2) Excitement and possibility I really expected this thread to be more of #2 since historically Hacker News has been full of ambitious founders and founder-like engineers. The great leaps in automation, especially with the recent AI developments is any founder's dream. To be able to go faster with less friction than ever to create something…

We can't and will never have a world with 8 billion distinct businesses that all have zero employees each. So it's nice that you think you might have a shot at a tiny lottery, but personally, I like to see trends that can benefit all of humanity, not just those who choose to start businesses. Nothing against automation itself, but the idea that it means all of the value of a business can and should accrue to a single…

Or maybe stop worrying about theoretical macro trends and go build something valuable right now?

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

#276

Post by civilized »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #266
civilized wrote: post #244

And automation is enabled by a massive web of technologies made possible by government-funded research. So it seems that, by Paul's argument, it is justified to have very high taxes on the incomes created by these founders with these technologies. The people, via their government, invested in modernizing and automating the economy, and they deserve to now reap the rewards and redistribute them broadly to the people,…

Did the government sell these technologies? If not then how do the people make money from it? Sounds like the government gave it away for free: how can they now charge for it? Especially since tbe government mainly researches ideas rather than products. Should we pay Gutenburg's estate every time we print something? Perhaps Feynman gets a cut from nuclear power plants? Last I checked patents expire after 20 years. If…

I am talking about how an equality-promoting system can be justified because I see that as desirable. In doing so I am showing that Paul Graham's view is not the only valid view about what people "deserve".

Anyone who sees it as desirable to give enormous amounts of money to Feynman or Gutenberg's descendants is free to advocate for that as being what they deserve.

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

#277

Post by pr337h4m »

ceronman wrote: post #16

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…

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

Satoshi Nakamoto is (most probably) a solo billionaire

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

#278

Post by jordanbeiber »

mikrl wrote: post #191
ryandrake wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why founders get the most equity and the most upside if it succeeds. They took on the most risk and it wouldn't otherwise exist. Is this always true though? I've worked with a grand total of one company where, if the company went bust, it would mean the end of the founders' life savings. Every other startup/company I've seen, the founder was already very well off. Yes, they put a big chunk of capital and/or…

I agree with you 100% and am not afraid of vocalizing similar things to a hyper capitalist audience. However, I don’t see the way out unless the social safety net is strengthened (not gonna happen) or we just ban rich people from starting companies (lol, lmao even) Edit: maybe there shouldn’t be a way out. Maybe the solution is just to educate and make transparent that rich founders have better odds and less to lose…

I’ve been toying with an idea where blockchain actually is interesting: imagine all currency is on the ledger - all of it. And every coin had an (rather short) expiry!

You need to create value continously or fall back to UBI.

Just something to play around with. :)

Post reply on HN