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We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

mertbulan.com

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Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#151

Post by pembrook »

Zanfa wrote: post #137
pembrook wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast vast vast majority of companies do not sell a product below-cost. And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sounds like they're actually happy with the current offering and that's not an area that your fellow humans would find useful for you to work on. Yes, one of the responsibilities of a founder is fundraising. If you can't sell people on investing in your vision that is...a somewhat bad sign.

> The vast vast vast majority of companies do not sell a product below-cost. Maybe in terms of the number of companies, but in terms of percentage of market size, I'm not sure. Literally the entire social media adjacent market at the moment, including instant messaging is about offering a service below cost, killing any chance of non ad supported platforms. > And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sound…

This comment reads like a very rational, risk-averse person convincing themselves why they should never try doing anything new or interesting.

Yes, markets are democracies which are messy and complicated and competitive and hard and not as easy as issuing top-down decrees from the elite.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#152

Post by pjc50 »

roenxi wrote: post #112
pjc50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charger situation is much better than GDPR or CE marking, in that it clearly mandates what should be done. The other two get bogged down because it's so unclear what has to be done to be compliant while actually shipping a service or product.

The typical formula is: if you aren't confident that you are complying with the law, maybe don't operate a business that way. Welcome to compliance! That is the thing with bureaucracy; it isn't there to help people run just-acceptable privacy violating businesses. It is there to squelch the ones that are unacceptable. If you want the EU to write an acceptable business plan it'd be "don't start this business, it might…

> if you aren't confident that you are complying with the law, maybe don't operate a business that way

Sure, and that's why there's far fewer EU startups.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#153

Post by h05sz487b »

nwellnhof wrote: post #56

The mythical German "Mittelstand" again. This word is absolutely meaningless. It has been used to describe small businesses, but also companies like Robert Bosch GmbH which has 400,000 employees. "Mittelstand" is nothing but a vague idea Germans cling to, so they feel special.

Not too big, not too small, very cozy. I need it.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#154

Post by pjc50 »

impossiblefork wrote: post #143
milesrout wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, Linux isn't made for free by hobbyists. The biggest contributors are profitable, largely American tech companies. Intel, AMD, even Microsoft is now a contributor. Secondly, the idea that you can just replace the entire software industry with Linux is... Are there even words to describe this? Linux is just an operating system. You can't replace a whole industry with "a couple of cheap packages."

I'm not saying that you can replace the entire software industry by Linux, but you can replace Windows with Linux, you can build simple locally run software to replace many of the well-known services, you can put some efforts into creating local clones with greater adaptability to match the biggest SaaS services, etc. Basically, to go after the easy 90%. Then we go from a world with data in the cloud, massive adverti…

> The software to kill SaaS and Facebook might be so simple that a couple of people could write it by themselves

Today's version of the HN classic "no wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame" (on the launch of the original iPod)

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#155

Post by wavemode »

milesrout wrote: post #144
hresvelgr wrote: post #97

I think Mittelstand is perhaps misdirecting away from a more interesting conversation. Reading between the lines, this highlights an inherent bias in the majority of American companies to provide service to extract value as opposed to providing service for public benefit. Simply put, it's "move fast and break things" versus "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE." If you want to dig deeper, this is a consequence of America begin…

>Reading between the lines, this highlights an inherent bias in the majority of American companies to provide service to extract value as opposed to providing service for public benefit. American businesses do the same thing businesses do anywhere: try to generate more valuable products and services than they consume. It really is as simple as that. No value is "extracted" when you sell bread for more than it cost to…

You're glossing over the nuance. Selling bread for a profit is of course what any bread business will try to do. But only some bread businesses would be willing to increase profits by switching to cheaper ingredients, flimsier packaging, rushing production and lowering the quality of the bread.

This isn't about communism vs. capitalism. It's about Airbus culture vs. Boeing culture.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#156

Post by impossiblefork »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #148
impossiblefork wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what if the big-software type economy isn't actually that useful? Maybe you can grow it to 30% of GDP if you start doing a bunch of bad stuff, but if it can be replaced by open source local stuff-- if it's possible to simply kill facebook, Microsoft etc. and replace them with Linux together with a couple of not incredibly expensive software packages developed to provide a substitute, then why should we have…

Germany has a big-nothing economy right now. Compared to that, even a small-software economy is useful. Germany can't live on everyone else's money indefinitely, at some point everyone else is going to get fed up that they have to be paying more tax and higher energy prices because Germany can't sustain itself.

What?

They literally build machines that everybody needs to live. They make everything, all sorts of little of bits you need. If you need a special chemical reactor that resists some weird thing, it's probably from Germany.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#157

Post by pjc50 »

impossiblefork wrote: post #126
pembrook wrote: post #74

The authors examples of “Digital Mittelstand” companies are not businesses at all but tiny “creator economy” side projects. These do not scale to 30% of GDP in the same way high value B2B industrial equipment does (in manufacturing you happily pay $100,000 for a piece of machinery because it can turn inputs into more valuable outputs at scale). Instead of coming up with incorrect ideas about what the government shoul…

Yes, but what if the big-software type economy isn't actually that useful? Maybe you can grow it to 30% of GDP if you start doing a bunch of bad stuff, but if it can be replaced by open source local stuff-- if it's possible to simply kill facebook, Microsoft etc. and replace them with Linux together with a couple of not incredibly expensive software packages developed to provide a substitute, then why should we have…

> Maybe you can grow it to 30% of GDP if you start doing a bunch of bad stuff, but if it can be replaced by open source local stuff-- if it's possible to simply kill facebook, Microsoft etc. and replace them with Linux together with a couple of not incredibly expensive software packages developed to provide a substitute, then why should we have a big-software economy?

People have been saying this for twenty or thirty years, and in the meantime the economy has coalesced further into fewer American megacorps. It's a mirage. Things do not work that way.

(AI is going to be exactly the same: the huge corporate valuations are predicated on there being exactly one big AI company which takes a significant chunk of value from all word-based work being done today)

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#158

Post by h05sz487b »

lnsru wrote: post #128
gizmo wrote: post #104

> However, if you’ve ever used a product marked “Made in Germany,” you’ll understand what German culture truly values: mastery of a craft and uncompromising quality. You won’t find many Germans willing to sacrifice their health or personal milestones—like the birth of a child—for work, or to forgo their well-earned vacation in Mallorca. They’re not the kind to release half-baked products and patch issues later, nor a…

The attitude isn’t changing, I can assure you. Few people see what’s happening for real in the country. The other ones are living in the delusional small nice Germany preparing for 1972 Olympics. If you ask about limiting uncontrolled immigration you’re already Hitler’s son. If you ask about basic product improvement, that makes production cheaper you shouldn’t rock the boat, because it was always done that way. Exam…

Sounds like an insurance driven decision.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#159

Post by pjc50 »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #99
pembrook wrote: post #74

The authors examples of “Digital Mittelstand” companies are not businesses at all but tiny “creator economy” side projects. These do not scale to 30% of GDP in the same way high value B2B industrial equipment does (in manufacturing you happily pay $100,000 for a piece of machinery because it can turn inputs into more valuable outputs at scale). Instead of coming up with incorrect ideas about what the government shoul…

Europe is dying. It is an old socialist relic, with a completely outdated model of reality. The successes of the extreme left and right shows that the political nobility are done. Sadly europe never realized that low taxes, capitalism and liberty is what drives wealth. I wonder if, in a generation, when the best brains moved to the US, asia and argentina, the continent will finally awake from its socialist slumber? H…

HK was a special case of being an intermediary port city. Same with Singapore. The European equivalents are Luxembourg and Monaco.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#160

Post by Zanfa »

pembrook wrote: post #151
Zanfa wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast vast vast majority of companies do not sell a product below-cost. Maybe in terms of the number of companies, but in terms of percentage of market size, I'm not sure. Literally the entire social media adjacent market at the moment, including instant messaging is about offering a service below cost, killing any chance of non ad supported platforms. > And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sound…

This comment reads like a very rational, risk-averse person convincing themselves why they should never try doing anything new or interesting. Yes, markets are democracies which are messy and complicated and competitive and hard and not as easy as issuing top-down decrees from the elite.

Right, so we agree that a product being successful has little to do with being better or worse than competitors and more with other externalities?
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