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Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#201

Post by tomjen3 »

6ren wrote: post #112

6. Bring Back Moore's Law hmmm, maybe developer cycles are more valuable than machine cycles really is getting out of sync with current conditions? I didn't connect stalled clock-speeds to the web being slow til reading this. One reason is that web-serving is usually embarrassingly parallel, as each client is independent. Some other causes are increased client-side JS; assembling many services (eg. amazon); increased…

That is an interesting point, but I don't really buy it. According to what he said we should make the integration tighter -- favor simple codes over frameworks -- but my guess is that it breaks down when a service can no longer be run on one computer or, as is the current problem, one processor core.

At that point we need more abstract abstractions. I my guess is that much of the problem steams from problems with lowlevel threading and I guess programs would be easier to write if we could use async message passing between threads, rather than shared memory. I know that the performance will suck compared to threads (say only 50% as efficient) but at the same time we only need a single iteration of Mores low to solve it and I believe that it would scale much better where that matters -- in the brains of the developers who have to write these things.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#202

Post by dwerew45234sdf »

akrymski wrote: post #190

We're a YC company (www.post.fm) working on one of those ideas - email. We've encountered lots of headwinds as PG mentions, and we've managed to stay strong to our beliefs by keeping the team small and focused, and using our product ourselves to constantly remind us that what we're working on is better than Gmail. It's not been easy admittedly, we didn't come up with some small idea that could grow into an email repl…

You talk so abstractly. Can you give some concrete examples of how you would be better than gmail?

In what ways will your service be faster than gmail? How much time will I save?

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#203

Post by tomjen3 »

stcredzero wrote: post #143
6ren wrote: post #112

6. Bring Back Moore's Law hmmm, maybe developer cycles are more valuable than machine cycles really is getting out of sync with current conditions? I didn't connect stalled clock-speeds to the web being slow til reading this. One reason is that web-serving is usually embarrassingly parallel, as each client is independent. Some other causes are increased client-side JS; assembling many services (eg. amazon); increased…

Bloated frameworks, and software with many layers (some quite unnecessary) were facilitated by increasing clock-speeds - but at least it's possible to get rid of them. Also, work has been done on JS JIT compilation. Server languages are getting faster too. It's instructive to note how much more compact alternative operating systems have been made compared to the mainstream ones. Full fledged BeOS systems used to weig…

Today the OS has to support way, way more different hardware than BeOS and Symbolics ever had to. BeOS made their own boxes right? Symbolics certainly did and I doubt they had a TCP/IP stack build in....

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#204

Post by tomjen3 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #155
nl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Search is another word for artificial intelligence. Email means a universal way for people to communicate. Lunar bases & flying cars aren't ambitious, they are just expensive. Personal robots are here now in vertical spaces[1] and there are at least 200,000 cyborgs walking around now[2]. I think both these areas are worth working in, but I think you underestimate the ambition of a word like search . [1] ht…

OK, but "cleaning" is yet another word for artificial intelligence. I think you underestimate the power of economics. Can you imagine how many people are busy cleaning things? I find it amazing that the difference between tasks like washing cloths and cleaning toilets is so small for humans and so huge for machines. We've had washing machines forever, but we're still cleaning our toilets manually. And cleaning is jus…

Please. Stop. Bringing that old saw back while claiming that 'this time it is for real'.

Humans can do wonderful things when the alternative is to starve or lose their habitat. It is not different this time, it will not be different the next time, nor any time after that. Won't happen until we have a perfect AI which can do all jobs. Then, and only then, will humanity take a permanent vacation.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#205

Post by tomjen3 »

jakejake wrote: post #141
run4yourlives wrote: post #104

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

The frightening part is the idea that you would be trying to disrupt seemingly invincible tech companies like google, which would be an insane business plan for a startup looking for a $50k kickstart investment. But, I remember when google was first released. I thought the search engine market was already full with yahoo and alta vista dominating at the time. Who knew?!

What is it they say? It seems invincible until it suddenly doesn't any more.

But at any count what companies seem like or appear to do doesn't matter to your company. What matters is what they are and what they do. If they seem scary, good, that will only serve to keep others from trying to beat them -> less competitor for you.

Now go forth and conquer.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#206

Post by mmaunder »

The conclusion on Tactics and starting small and achievable is pure gold and something I took a decade to learn. I'd simply emphasize that it's important to fulfill a real need on a small scale. e.g. Harvard students really wanted to stalk each other, a basic interpreter really was needed, Columbus sailed west to find faster trade routes.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#207

Post by akrymski »

chmike wrote: post #200
akrymski wrote: post #190

We're a YC company (www.post.fm) working on one of those ideas - email. We've encountered lots of headwinds as PG mentions, and we've managed to stay strong to our beliefs by keeping the team small and focused, and using our product ourselves to constantly remind us that what we're working on is better than Gmail. It's not been easy admittedly, we didn't come up with some small idea that could grow into an email repl…

I'm also working on the email problem but on a different aspect. If, as PG suggest, you consider a new protocol, is there a way to share this work so others may build on it and contribute to push this big snow ball or do you plan to make it a proprietary technology ? I fully agree that SMTP is broken. It is so obvious when examining DKIM.

We're not creating a new protocol. Sure SMTP and MIME are quite awful, but the network effects if these standards are so vast that even Google couldn't make a dent with Wave.

IMO a new protocol is something that can come later, we've explored that, but only an email service in a leadership position can make those sorts of changes to the standard thus forcing others to implement them.

At the end of the day there can always be a more efficient protocol, but I don't think that's the biggest problem in email.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#209

Post by simondlr »

momoro wrote: post #186

Re: "5. The Next Steve Jobs" / "None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them." Jack Dorsey.

Agreed. When I was reading it, I was thinking of him as well. Square is a shining example of simplistic design and value.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#210

Post by freshfey »

repsilat wrote: post #145
Alex3917 wrote: post #7

The problem with search is that not only is Google getting worse, but I've also mostly outgrown it, in that it isn't sophisticated to answer pretty much any scientific question I would want to ask. - No way to search for a scientific question and get a summary of the current scientific consensus or viewpoints on specific issues - It's really hard to access academic journal articles online. - Even when you can access…

> It's really hard to access academic journal articles online. We obviously need something better than the status quo here, but the status quo isn't as bad as it seems if you know how it works. Quick hints: email the article author. They'll probably more than happy to send you an article and a quick summary worded for a lay audience (not to mention talking your ear off about their more recent work...) They're not wor…

Actually the use case you described seems very ripe for disruption if you ask me. Because it's hacking your way to the solution, whereas we could need a better solution.
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