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'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#12TLDR: (Using Phil Libin's own logic against him) Startups are likely to fail, so it's just as absurd to say you're doing it to change the world as it is to believe you're doing it for the money. You're still better off joining an organization that has momentum and resources.
This invites inevitable argument though, since: 1. It's endlessly debatable which companies are actually changing the world. 2. The ones most people think of first are based on charity, which is again arguable and limited to very short term gain.
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#13"work for an international non-governmental organization or UNICEF. What you do will actually have a greater chance of changing the world through those organizations." Citation needed!
Working for a charity will NOT change the world, since charity places are already oversubscribed. There's an interesting Oxford-based thinktank that works on the most effective forms of making a difference called 80,000 Hours. They're quite a good read, I'll leave the link here. http://80000hours.org/
OT: I find very funny that 80K Hours singles out "banker" as a positively socially impacting career. I guess all those people that were evicted after the housing bubble collapsed don't count :)
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#14I disagree with the logic behind this piece and I believe it's conflating expected value with utility. Basically, if given a 0.1% chance of earning 50 billion dollars or a 50% chance of earning 3 million dollars, one could convincingly argue that the most rational choice is the latter because the marginal utility of money diminishes rapidly. However, if given the choice between a 0.1% chance of saving 50 million live…
Except that's not his general point. It is not about economics or balance of probabilities. Economics is just another barrier to overcome for a startup.
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#15I agree with this. I am a college student and I recently left my part time job at a start up. It went from trying to change how people interact across the globe to trying to put anything out there that would help the company survive. Got tired of seeing failed prototypes and never would be too soon for hearing the word "pivot" again
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#16TLDR: (Using Phil Libin's own logic against him) Startups are likely to fail, so it's just as absurd to say you're doing it to change the world as it is to believe you're doing it for the money. You're still better off joining an organization that has momentum and resources. This invites inevitable argument though, since: 1. It's endlessly debatable which companies are actually changing the world. 2. The ones most pe…
1. Yes.
2. I don't think of the ones based on charity. The ones that come to mind are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and AOL (in its day).
My point was just that there are other ways to change the world. I used a poor and overdone example by work seemingly related to charity (how come no one is picking on the marine biology example), but you could very well have a world changing impact and be an author or a professor or a painter. Heck, you could be a mechanic or a stay-at-home mom. There's no reason changing the world has to be tied to profession at all.
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#17"work for an international non-governmental organization or UNICEF. What you do will actually have a greater chance of changing the world through those organizations." Citation needed!
Working for a charity will NOT change the world, since charity places are already oversubscribed. There's an interesting Oxford-based thinktank that works on the most effective forms of making a difference called 80,000 Hours. They're quite a good read, I'll leave the link here. http://80000hours.org/
Great resource. I generally agree and spotted that flaw in my logic as I wrote it, but it wasn't the point of the piece so I left it. There's plenty of ways to change the world, not all relating to charity. My point was that if you want to have a certain positive impact, don't tie it to a vehicle that has a 10 percent chance of success.
I might revisit the topic in another post of what it means to change the world, so I appreciate your contribution.
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#18The "change the world" rhetoric that most of these startups use is marketing copy to get naive engineers to work for them for half market salary. At most of the hot VC startups, the rank-and-file tend to believe in "the mission" but the higher-ups don't.
It's like many religions. The peasants believe it and work dutifully, but the high priests know it's bullshit but keep it going because it works.
For the record, I think the 2009-12 "social" startup boom is Over. The economic bubble might stick around for a couple years, but we're already at the point where VCs and management have laid down their terms and figured out where to draw the lines, and going into (or trying to start) one of these "hot" companies makes no sense. You're not really better off (from a career perspective) working at a hot VC-funded company than you are taking the stable, boring job at an insurance company in the suburbs. Not anymore. If you're not rich (and 99% who got involved in that racket aren't) you missed the opportunity. Time to let it go and move on.
What I hope to see is more of a movement into Real Technology. That's where we should be doubling down. Things that might make you crack open that linear algebra or logic textbook. There are real problems worth solving, and creating the next build-to-flip IUsedThisToilet.com is not one of them.
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#19The author of this article seems to be confusing "changing the world" with helping people. UNICEF and similar organizations are great at helping people, but they really aren't meant to change the world. They just make the existing one a little less terrible for those who are worst off. I can't imagine a compelling argument saying that digging wells or tree planting has changed the world more that Facebook or Google o…
No, I think I quite understand their world changing impact, but those are two examples of the very few companies that have reached the sort of scale where they actually change the world. They represent the vast minority of successful startups, which are a vast minority of all startups.
In any case, what is changing the world if not helping people? Or, as I phrased it in the post, improving the circumstance of mankind?
There are plenty of ways to do it, and it need not be charity (marine biology or journalism, the other examples from the post, are not charity) and it need not be altogether altruistic in purpose, but to change the world in a desirable way necessarily means helping people. For example, Google helps me find information. Facebook helps me stay connected with friends and family.
Re: 'To change the world' is a terrible reason to do a startup
#20I disagree with the logic behind this piece and I believe it's conflating expected value with utility. Basically, if given a 0.1% chance of earning 50 billion dollars or a 50% chance of earning 3 million dollars, one could convincingly argue that the most rational choice is the latter because the marginal utility of money diminishes rapidly. However, if given the choice between a 0.1% chance of saving 50 million live…
That would be the case if there were any for profit startups that were actually saving lives, but most startups that are relevant to this forum are making life, at best, marginally better for the privileged class, which can conveniently be delineated by the fact that they have access to technology in the first place.