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

Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

anu.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 123 posts

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#111

Post by JohnFen »

sircastor wrote: post #91
JohnFen wrote: post #69

The normalization of ephemeral businesses would be harmful in at least one respect -- customers wouldn't be able to know who they're doing business with and avoid the ones that they would prefer to avoid.

I’m not confident that is the case anyway. Modern business has a level of complexity that a given customer has to prioritize the levels of avoidance they can tolerate. You might avoid businesses that have a bad reputation of workers rights, sustainable resourcing, customer privacy, humane treatment of animals, responsible security disclosure, etc. but can you avoid all of those things if you wanted?

It's certainly not possible to avoid every business who has practices you disagree with, even if you're fully aware of their practices. But you can to some degree, and that's far better than nothing. It would be a shame to make doing that even more difficult than it is.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#112

Post by phkahler »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #87
phkahler wrote: post #59

Fidget spinners made a lot of money for about 3 months. Most were made in China, where everything is considered efemeral. That is the fundamental difference between them and a lot of US companies. Here everyone wants to set up a business for ROI or MRR, with the ultimate exit being IPO at which point a company is expected to never die, else the last purchasers of the stock are left holding the bag. Could your company…

I don't really know how it works over there, but were many of the Chinese companies producing fidget spinners specifically fidget spinner companies? I imagined they were generic factories that made spinners for other more ephemeral companies. But once the fidget spinner craze was over they could just retool for their next customer.

That's right. Chinese companies see everything as a short term opportunity. The future is uncertain. U.S. companies are usually more future focused and less nimble as a result. It's an interesting difference, but I'm not sure it means anything.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#113

Post by jeffreyrogers »

mobiuscog wrote: post #108
gourdo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting a VC backed startup is hard. Starting a trade business is orders of magnitude easier, especially right now with a shortage. I helped a friend lease a floor sander and they make almost what I do in tech after a couple years (I took a pay cut for reduced work load; not making FAANG cash) Bought their own floor sander. The VC-tech bubble really screwed up the economics for the majority. Will be great if higher…

If we removed VC backing, the world would be a better place. Sure, less businesses, but they'd exist for tangible reasons, rather than just being short-term vehicles to make VCs richer with no longer-term vision to actually solve problems.

The people giving VCs money aren't dumb and VC has been a pretty good asset class over the past two decades, which is when it really exploded in size. It's a self-correcting problem, when VC returns are no longer attractive (might be starting already) the fund sizes will go down and only the lucky and/or skilled firms will remain.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#114

Post by jeffreyrogers »

jonas21 wrote: post #73
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the wealth is in the car wash itself, not the profit you keep. You have to sell when it’s time retire/exit. I am also not claiming that this wealth building process is anything close to fast.

How does one get a car wash in the first place? It seems to me that either: a. You start a new car wash which, given that the market for car washes is already saturated, probably has a much lower success rate than 70%. You also need to be able to afford the startup costs, which are substantial. b. You buy it, in which case you already have money, and you're probably better off investing in index funds. c. You inherit…

I know someone who owns several and is quite wealthy. He started out owning a small, shitty car wash and he gradually built/acquired more and upgraded them. You succeed in business the same way you succeed in any other aspect of life, you either get lucky or you work hard or some combination. In his case it was mostly hard work over at least a decade.

The fixation so many people in the comments have on starting a carwash is why most businesses fail. The right approach is to figure out what you're likely to succeed at and start that business, not to pick one because it has a high valuation and copy it (this is how must tech entrepreneurs work). Maybe the carwash market is saturated, some other market isn't and someone will make a bunch of money filling that gap.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#115

Post by green_dee »

nologic01 wrote: post #51
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A business is group of people building things together. Disagree. A business is an operation meant to make money for investors. Things that call themselves businesses and don't do that over a period of X are failing, as businesses, for the duration X. A business is an organization, and organizations don't have to be businesses, even if they share some of the same attributes such as concern for expenses, desire to g…

> A business is an operation meant to make money for investors. please stop repeating Friedmannite vacuities as if they are laws of nature. What exactly is a business is defined by contractual arrangements that have nothing inevitable about them. Nothing. Money did not exist before it was invented. Its a social construct and actually idiotically simple. "Investors" did not exist before the invention of the corporatio…

I would engage in a(n) {name you want} that does not deliver money to its investors.

But I would not buy even a share of {name you want} if it does not deliver profit to its shareholders.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#116

Post by groby_b »

thelastparadise wrote: post #109
caconym_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have $3M in the bank then you are already a millionaire and the choice as framed above doesn't make sense anymore. It's not a 70% chance of being a millionaire—it's a 100% chance of being one already with a 70% chance of making another million which, as you say, looks a lot different to somebody who already has $3M than to somebody who has < $1M.

I think that's whst he's saying. You're saying what he's saying. There is no disagreement.

What she's saying :) We're rare, but women in tech exist.

But otherwise, yes. I was pointing out that "everybody" isn't quite true.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#117

Post by munificent »

retrocryptid wrote: post #96
munificent wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you understand the obvious survivorship bias problem with that demand.

But if your assertion is "we used to have a lot of business in the past that failed quickly," I would hope you would offer some data to backup that assertion.

That is not my assertion, because I'm not user pclmulqdq.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#118

Post by antipotoad »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #68

Pretty much all businesses used to be basically ephemeral until about 150 years ago. The whole idea of a business that is intended to run perpetually just didn't exist in the West, and anything that ran long was tied to a family that plied a trade. Businesses were also a lot easier to understand: a corporation might run a ship or a mine, and go out of business (still having made everyone a lot richer) when the captai…

For anyone else wondering, Zildjian was founded in 1623 in Constantinople.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#119

Post by carlosjobim »

RajT88 wrote: post #61
carlosjobim wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a widespread false idea that there exist some kind of system in governance, but this has never existed. It is just humans in an eternal power struggle. Whenever the "system" or rules don't benefit the rulers, they are not valid. It's a system to the extent that it exists inside the heads of the people who believe in that system. And most of people have a warped idea of what that system even nominally is, bec…

I do not know what to tell you. The history of my country is filled with examples of the government successfully addressing problems too big (or too inconvenient) for the private industry to address. To the extent the private industry is enabled by the government to pillage, it is lack of regulation or lack of enforcement. The solution to that is more governance, not less. The private industry will not decide to do w…

> I have no doubt the problems you are describing in your country are real. What I am not hearing is solutions. Just complaints.

The best solution is individual. It is probably the only solution. Individual as in you do what you can to protect your person, your property, and your labour from the government. Apart from that I can only use words try to wake people up from the cult of government worship, but I'm aware of the futility of it. People will eagerly send their own children to die in a ditch by artillery fire in order to protect their false idol of government.

Re: Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

#120

Post by retrocryptid »

munificent wrote: post #117
retrocryptid wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if your assertion is "we used to have a lot of business in the past that failed quickly," I would hope you would offer some data to backup that assertion.

That is not my assertion, because I'm not user pclmulqdq.

That's how conditionals work.
Post reply on HN