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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

#321

Post by overrun11 »

CallMeJim wrote: post #296
overrun11 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All things equal I don't think they should. The reality is probably a combination of early employees not being as skilled as the founders and behaving irrationally/ not understanding the value of their equity.

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

#322

Post by drewcoo »

iso1631 wrote: post #233
Sharlin wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The irony is the only person I personally know who founded a startup (he's the CTO) which is valued at more than $1b never looks at HN. So I guess yes, it's the wannabes.

It might be useful to have a billionaire-wannabe honey pot . . .

I'm sure I'm years behind the curve on that idea, though.

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

#323

Post by overrun11 »

shadowofneptune wrote: post #307
overrun11 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10M would give you a safe withdrawal rate somewhere between 300-400k a year. A fairly common household income for people on HN. It affords a very nice quality of life but you're certainly not living the lifestyle that most people think of as "rich."

That's the average ? There's no way to measure it, but that's around five times the US median household income, at a percentile of 97%. It could not be close to the median for HN just by probability, and it's a rich man's income.

I never said average. I said it's a fairly common household income on HN– which is true.

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

#324

Post by robertlagrant »

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.

I'm not equating all forms of work to progress. That'd be a category error. It's the inverse: you saying only progress comes from scientists is a category error.

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

#325

Post by satvikpendem »

iso1631 wrote: post #233
Sharlin wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The irony is the only person I personally know who founded a startup (he's the CTO) which is valued at more than $1b never looks at HN. So I guess yes, it's the wannabes.

YC isn't just HN though. Was he funded by YC at all?

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

#326

Post by pixl97 »

altacc wrote: post #132
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…

Yes, automation is nothing new and we're all still working. It changes the jobs and then typically the company can use the gain to expand and so needs to hire more.

>and we're all still working

Because governments attempt to maximize 'job creation' via a number of methods including tax benefits to businesses. Businesses don't really give a shit about unemployment unless it is too low, they benefit from low wages when it is high. When unemployment is too high the government risks getting burned to the ground by angry mobs with pitchforks and tends to optimize around preventing that.

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

#327

Post by pixl97 »

thundergolfer wrote: post #187
moolcool wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did, in a now deleted tweet. He verifies the screenshots veracity in the replies. https://twitter.com/IlariKaila/status/1600120645211201536

Yeh I just saw it screenshotted on Twitter. Damn, so dumb. Graham once again getting too high on his own thought-leadership.

"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

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

#328

Post by choeger »

Instagram the software has no intrinsic value. The whole thing could be reproduced in no time. It's the network effect that matters and getting that effect is essentially a hack. Yes, the author's prime example is a hack of society.

That's not automation, it's an example for the fact that software can be copied for zero cost.

Compare that to a company with an intrinsic value, like Tesla. How far could Elon (I know he's not the founder) automate Tesla? Even if all tools for such an automation were available, how would a single person even know how to design and build a car, let alone the required automated factories?

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

#329

Post by lolinder »

shadowfoxx wrote: post #314
lolinder wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't assume bad faith: that their framing is unorthodox doesn't make it misleading. Money is fungible and what we identify as "expenses" versus "profit shared" is arbitrary. Economic value is created by the enterprise, and that value is then split between the owner, the employees, the suppliers, and the customers. We can argue about whether the distribution is fair, but complaining about the specific accounting meth…

I think people are largely arguing over whether or not the share of economic value is proportional to contributions and when they talk about that share they typically refer to profits. I think redefining/reframing what profit means in this conversation is intentionally misunderstanding/redirecting the argument. Workers: "We should see more of the profits the company makes and we are making the case that collectively…

I don't agree that jerrre isn't saying anything of substance. It could have been fleshed out better, but what they say is a reasonable counter to their parent's argument.

ceronman's thought experiment was "if you have employees, you have to share your profits ... If [they] don't produce any value, easy, fire them all, you get everything."

jerrre's response, which I think is fair, is that we're already running this experiment. If businesses did not think employees produce value, they would not pay them wages or salaries, because every dollar paid to an employee is a dollar less of profit for the company. Companies already acknowledge the value that employees create value by the very fact that they pay them anything.

In other words, what's actually at stake isn't whether employees create value but how much, and ceronman's comment doesn't contribute anything to that discussion.

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

#330

Post by necovek »

diob wrote: post #281
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…

It's funny because so many acquisitions are built around getting the employees.

Many are also built around acquiring the market share/user base.
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