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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

#291

Post by beambot »

Sharlin wrote: post #226
oblio wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's with that obsession about "billionaires"? If somebody can make a nice living with their business, isn't that good enough? Personally I think we are perfectly fine without billionaires. https://news.ycombinator.com/ -> https://www.ycombinator.com/ -> > Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. > Twice a year we invest $500,000 per company in a large number of startups. > We work inten…

So is the premise that Y Combinator is only for billionaire-wannabes?

YC is creating venture-backed startups, where the nature of power-law returns necessitates aiming for "grand slams" (i.e. 100x outcomes following SeriesA funding). If successful, this creates billionaires. So in a sense (though I wouldn't conflate cause & effect): Yes, YCombinator is looking for people who want to create companies that could reasonably result in the founders becoming billionaires.

Worth noting: Not all companies can or should target this trajectory -- which just means VC might not be the right funding source.

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

#293

Post by stemlord »

PinguTS wrote: post #80

This is this thinking of "Automation reduces workforce". The next argument then is always "We need Basic Income" because of this. But this is ignoring the fact that automation never replaced workforce as such. It moved the focus of the workforce. At the end more automation even required more workforce. The thing is, you cannot engineer the process to be automated. You need to keep maintaining the automation. This inc…

>automation never replaced workforce as such. It moved the focus of the workforce

Seems true but also doesn't automation diminish the diversity of work available?

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

#294

Post by overrun11 »

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…

Aren't we just back to rehashing vapid Marxist arguments? In your experiment a brilliant computer scientist working on a breakthrough invention will be forced to do menial tasks like data entry and accounting him/herself rather than split the profits evenly with a laborer. This is not going to work, a society where geniuses spend most of their days using Quickbooks, cleaning the bathroom etc, will be outcompeted by ones where they can specialize.

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

#295

Post by danenania »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #145
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…

His assertion is made worse by automation. Every skill the founder can automate they should. That’s efficiency. Every skill they can’t, that’s a crucial skill the founder depends on. The more crucial the skill, the more leverage the employee should have over the founder and the more incentive the founder has in sharing equity. This becomes magnified if the founder doesn’t have the skill to produce and operate the aut…

"This becomes magnified if the founder doesn’t have the skill to produce and operate the automation their business depends on"

While that's true, I think it also pushes the profile of the ideal founder much more to the technical side than where it is now.

Creating and maintaining automations is inherently difficult-to-impossible to fully automate, and will likely always require some level of engineering skill.

Conversely, many of the most important skills a "business founder" brings to the table are also the most ripe for automation. Marketing, sales, administrative tasks, investor pitches, support, accounting: all have the potential to be automated to a large degree by AI.

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

#296

Post by CallMeJim »

overrun11 wrote: post #268
rojobuffalo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is an imbalance of risk taken or value added among founders and early employees. I think that's debatable, but assume it's true. It's never reasonably accounted for in the equity distribution. It would be one thing for a founder to have 3x the equity of an early hire, but it is commonly more like 60x or 300x. Instead of a dozen people being able to cash out and support their families for the rest of their…

I agree 100%. Also, I don't see a substantial difference in risk between a founder and an early employee at all. Founders typically have little invested in the startup other than their own time but they compensate for that by paying themselves a salary with investor money.

It sounds like you're saying that early employees and founders have a similar level of rush, but vastly different levels of reward.

Why would anyone ever be an early employee when they can be a founder instead?

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

#297

Post by madsbuch »

Who pays for the infrastructure?

I can drive 10 times faster with good roads because a public sector maintain and build road infrastructure. If that enables me to earn 100 times more am I then entitles to the entire profits? Or should I pay some of it forward to the infrastructure.

I like the idea that innovation advantages should spill over to the rest of the society with the speed of inflation. Given an inflation of ~2% it should take me roughly 50 years to not gain any profits from my innovation (given no competition).

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

#298

Post by nickpp »

wittycardio wrote: post #271
robertlagrant wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Scientist's work is not necessarily valuable either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize

Who would you like to appoint as an arbiter for what "valuable work is"? If certain people enjoy and pay women to fart in their faces - would you like to ban that? How about other "useless" activities that humans enjoy like video games or massages or fashion or fancy restaurants - would you like to ban those as well?

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

#299

Post by NhanH »

overrun11 wrote: post #294
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…

Aren't we just back to rehashing vapid Marxist arguments? In your experiment a brilliant computer scientist working on a breakthrough invention will be forced to do menial tasks like data entry and accounting him/herself rather than split the profits evenly with a laborer. This is not going to work, a society where geniuses spend most of their days using Quickbooks, cleaning the bathroom etc, will be outcompeted by o…

> This is not going to work, a society where geniuses spend most of their days using Quickbooks, cleaning the bathroom etc, will be outcompeted by ones where they can specialize.

Which is exactly why Marx makes his “vapid” argument: cleaners and other menial jobs contribute as much to society as any geniuses (evidently, as societies without those menial jobs got outcompeted). And the way society currently evaluate those values seems to be incorrect.

The issue with Marxist is that the solution he proposed is troublesome, not that the problem doesn’t exist. And until the next genius figures out a different solution, we should at least try to limit the problem as much as possible

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

#300

Post by 98codes »

Well that's fun -- I'm apparently recently blocked by PaulG, having never interacted with him directly, or anywhere near him in any recent memory. Is he running something to proactively block anyone that's been talking about Mastodon?

Wild-ass guess, but I can't imagine any other reason.

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