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Great Founder Theory (2020)

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Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#11

Post by ITB »

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many.

Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or they might have been invented in another country, greatly hurting America’s prospects. To this date Amazon has the best e-commerce logistics on the planet.

Doing things ahead of its time, by gathering the right people and enough money, is a very unique skill. Couple that with being well positioned for a certain “inevitable” innovation and that limits the number of people even more.

There’s also a compounding effect. Walking backwards from humanity’s global tech maxima, if every key innovation was late by a few years, the overall maxima might be late by hundreds of years, maybe worse. Maybe humanity ends due to an asteroid impact because we didn't get advanced enough to protect ourselves in time.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#12

Post by woodruffw »

ITB wrote: post #11

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many. Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or t…

The counterargument to “great man theory” is that it’s ahistorical (in that most great advancements have multiple independent discoverers), and unduly emphasizes individuals rather than circumstances.

In other words: it’s hard to believe that there’s something intrinsic about Newton, Galileo, etc. that would have fundamentally prevented the arc of human history and knowledge had they not done what they did. The much more parsimonious explanation is that “great men” were in the right place at the right time to apply their (undisputed!) talents.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#13

Post by gniv »

__loam wrote: post #2

It's absolutely incredible to see someone take the Great Man Theory, something that has been greatly criticized in historical circles, and apply a tech bro bullshit veneer to it to pass it off as some new and amazing thought worth sharing with everyone. Here's my own Great Founder Theory: I don't think founders matter nearly as much as people in Silicon Valley think they do. They're basically there to give VCs a figu…

> They're basically there to give VCs a figure head they can point to and claim some new effort to financialize and monopolize another part of our economy is backed by some brilliant ass hole they found somewhere who started this thing in their garage. There have of course been very intelligent and hard working founders, but imo whether your startup succeeds has much more to do with product market fit and timing than it does with the quality of the founder.

This reads funny to me since unwittingly you seem to agree to the Great Founder Theory. Product market fit is hard to come by but is relatively easy to recognize. This is the role of VCs. You try to argue that founders are interchangeable but I don’t see it. If anything, VCs are more interchangeable.

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#14

Post by kubb »

woodruffw wrote: post #12
ITB wrote: post #11

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many. Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or t…

The counterargument to “great man theory” is that it’s ahistorical (in that most great advancements have multiple independent discoverers), and unduly emphasizes individuals rather than circumstances. In other words: it’s hard to believe that there’s something intrinsic about Newton, Galileo, etc. that would have fundamentally prevented the arc of human history and knowledge had they not done what they did. The much…

And that we are genetically predisposed towards worshipping individual human-like figures. Think for a second about Gilgamesh (one of the oldest known works of literature!), Prometheus (gave humans fire, where would we be without him), Hercules (killed a menacing beast, thank god for that), the Olympic gods, Gaius Julius Cesar, Napoleon, Lenin, modern celebrities (they're so talented and totally deserve their success).

Is it surprising that we want to believe in "great men"?

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#17

Post by adw »

ITB wrote: post #11

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many. Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or t…

Apple was built on a lot of peoples' ideas, some original and many borrowed (like all companies); Steve Jobs' gift was for editing.

SpaceX is an entirely unoriginal company (really good execution, though). The genius of SpaceX is in the systems which enable that execution. It's not even really a particularly significant company.

Founders are right person, right place, right time, and _place and time are more important than the person_. Why do so many come from America? Because _place_. The right place from about 1750 to maybe 1835 was northern England; the Bay Area has had a really good run.

Brian Eno, as often, has a word for it: "scenius". https://austinkleon.com/2017/05/12/scenius/

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#18

Post by mellosouls »

Announcement page, actual document is linked at the end of the advert. (2020, pdf). Not sure why the author prefix is in the title here.

https://samoburja.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Great_Found...

A non-pdf introduction to it here:

https://medium.com/@samo.burja/great-founder-theory-93751e25...

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#19

Post by gniv »

woodruffw wrote: post #12
ITB wrote: post #11

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many. Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or t…

The counterargument to “great man theory” is that it’s ahistorical (in that most great advancements have multiple independent discoverers), and unduly emphasizes individuals rather than circumstances. In other words: it’s hard to believe that there’s something intrinsic about Newton, Galileo, etc. that would have fundamentally prevented the arc of human history and knowledge had they not done what they did. The much…

> The much more parsimonious explanation is that “great men” were in the right place at the right time to apply their (undisputed!) talents.

But isn’t this part of the point? How many times did we not get the right person in the right place? How much further would we be if we had gotten, say, a Galileo during Rome’s heyday?

Re: Great Founder Theory (2020)

#20

Post by woodruffw »

gniv wrote: post #19
woodruffw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterargument to “great man theory” is that it’s ahistorical (in that most great advancements have multiple independent discoverers), and unduly emphasizes individuals rather than circumstances. In other words: it’s hard to believe that there’s something intrinsic about Newton, Galileo, etc. that would have fundamentally prevented the arc of human history and knowledge had they not done what they did. The much…

> The much more parsimonious explanation is that “great men” were in the right place at the right time to apply their (undisputed!) talents. But isn’t this part of the point? How many times did we not get the right person in the right place? How much further would we be if we had gotten, say, a Galileo during Rome’s heyday?

> How much further would we be if we had gotten, say, a Galileo during Rome’s heyday?

Who says we didn’t? There isn’t a single point in human history that wasn’t covered by exceptional intelligence; the observation is that this doesn’t make discoveries fungible over time. Discovery, innovation, invention, etc. are instead all compounding processes.

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