Some businesses last for decades, some only for a few short years. The reasons are varied. Nothing that really needs to be normalized here. It is what it is, don't overthink it.
Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
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Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#12No we shouldn't. In fact we should denormalize a lot of dysfunctional business models, the transactional, excessively financialised, dehumanised business that has become the norm. A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities. What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an…
Businesses, Families, and Villages are fundamentally different creations. Unless you are going with the "company town" idea of a business. A business has a many to one relationship in regards to effort and goals. A Village has a many to many relationship. And a Family has a one to many relationship (though admittedly, at a certain scale, villages and families becomes very similar, but I think that's because a family naturally grows into a village given enough time). If a business has a one/many to many relationship, then it would be aimless and probably be a terrible business (as such things are determined).
There is a reason society has created these as distinct types of entity, because each has a strength that it serves and they are not interchangeable. So while I agree that ephemeral families and communities are not good, that doesn't impact the value of ephemeral businesses.
For the record, I'm undecided on ephemeral businesses, but I think its a valid conversation to have and might yield interesting insights.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#13Starting a business is really challenging, as anyone who has tried it knows. Trying to make the finances work in something ephemeral is likely even more challenging. In any case, most businesses fail so ephemeral business is sort of the default unless you succeed.
There are individual businessmen who ride different business waves (like getting into frozen yogurt a little over a decade ago). But the skill those people have is in marketing and raising money and that transfers pretty well to different business types. There's also a whole world of business outside of tech that most of HN is not familiar with, and many of those people do extremely well for themselves. They also tend to be less idealistic and more focused on the money, which probably helps with adapting the business over time and figuring out what product/service the market actually values.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#14If you get back down to basics, as business is an equitable arrangement where you offer to solve a problem, in exchange for making a profit in the process. At some point, the problem may no longer exist, or you may not be able to continue to make a profit. That's OK! You can pivot, or move on to another business. What I would love to see represented is some thinking around what should happen as a matter of best pract…
>It would be great if there was a government institution which would compensate such businesses for their tech to open source it.
Wouldn't that just incentivise more negative behaviour from businesses, since investors would know should they go bust, the government will buy all their IP?
It seems potentially more sensible to pass a law that the IP of any business that fails becomes public domain.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#15No we shouldn't. In fact we should denormalize a lot of dysfunctional business models, the transactional, excessively financialised, dehumanised business that has become the norm. A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities. What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an…
> A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village.
you'll be happier when you stop looking for family at work.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#16it's a compelling idea imo, if one considers the many ills wrought by organizations which outlive their usefulness and turn to parasitism but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating a similar concept could be fruitful in material technology as well, where ephemeral doesn't mean "obsolete in 2 years so we can sell you a n…
> but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating What does this mean? Isn't all wealth that can be used to purchase goods or services "pre-existing" and by definition going to the owners of companies if they manage to make a profit? I might be missing something because it seems you just described all businesses so I wouldn'…
One of the names for this is 'control fraud' and its very common. To pick an exotic example, people in the United States create software companies to impress rich fools, borrow their money on promises that it will get really big, and pay themselves and their friends generous wages which they keep even if the company collapses. People who run this scam often spend money very fast (they call it a 'burn rate') to impress investors about how big they will be one day even if it hurts their ability to create a proffitable business within the next five to ten years! Foreigners and their wacky scams!
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#17Starting a business is really challenging, as anyone who has tried it knows. Trying to make the finances work in something ephemeral is likely even more challenging. In any case, most businesses fail so ephemeral business is sort of the default unless you succeed. There are individual businessmen who ride different business waves (like getting into frozen yogurt a little over a decade ago). But the skill those people…
> There's also a whole world of business outside of tech that most of HN is not familiar with
I once read that the most reliably money-making business in America is a car wash. Comes with a built-in monopoly because people will only drive so far to wash their car and reliably generates low 7 figures in sales. Plenty of repeat customers and low churn if you meet a quality bar.
But who wants a 70% chance at being a millionaire, when there's 0.01% chance at being a billionaire on offer? We on HN know what we want. (numbers for thought experiment purposefully chosen to have a similar expected value)
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#18This post (as well as the companion post) read like rationalizations for Clubhouse's failures (of which the author was an early employee).
It's okay to fail - and in that sense, Clubhouse was a success.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#19If you get back down to basics, as business is an equitable arrangement where you offer to solve a problem, in exchange for making a profit in the process. At some point, the problem may no longer exist, or you may not be able to continue to make a profit. That's OK! You can pivot, or move on to another business. What I would love to see represented is some thinking around what should happen as a matter of best pract…
>It would be great if there was a government institution which would compensate such businesses for their tech to open source it. Wouldn't that just incentivise more negative behaviour from businesses, since investors would know should they go bust, the government will buy all their IP? It seems potentially more sensible to pass a law that the IP of any business that fails becomes public domain.
> Wouldn't that just incentivise more negative behaviour from businesses, since investors would know should they go bust, the government will buy all their IP?
All businesses who would use such a scheme would be started by friends of politicians and public servants, with the sole goal of getting this tax payer buy-out for worthless IP.
Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?
#20No we shouldn't. In fact we should denormalize a lot of dysfunctional business models, the transactional, excessively financialised, dehumanised business that has become the norm. A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities. What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an…
There are plenty of ephemeral communities that work. There are conferences, conventions, festivals, and sporting events. Lots of them are run by permanent organizations, but many are run by temporary organizations for each event.
A good example is science fiction Worldcon where there is permanent org that does selection of place for each year and each con is run by local non-profit.
A historical example was trading expeditions where each trip of sailing vessel was financed separately.