111–120 of 297 posts
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I just learned this quote now and I love it. Very true. Much of tech mythology, where we are told "started from nothing" actually started from a place of at least some capital and privilege.
Look into bill gates mom ;)
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would you mind giving a greater explanation of what they mean by this? I couldn't grok the meaning from context, other than the obvious its not really possible to simply startup half baked out of your house or something along those lines
What I took from it is that the story about starting a company in a garage is about the humble origins. But to start a company in a garage you must have access to a garage; lots of people do not have this level of resources. The origins of these companies are not as humble as they sound, they rely access to resources that are not actually common (unless you look from the POV of a well-offish 'middle class' family)
My grandparents, First generation immigrants without a college degree bought a beautiful single family house in 1960s Northern California on a working class salary. In fact they lived across the street from George Lucas (My grandmother knew his parents). They too, were a completely average, middle class family. Not any different from Steve Jobs or the hundreds of other success stories.
Over the course of the 80s, 90s, and 00s, the same city and cities like it became notorious for crime and gang violence, homes became unaffordable, and the conditions that allowed someone to "start a company out of a garage" was wiped out as society stratified into the super rich and the super poor. Which should serve as a cautionary tale of any place that is thinking of emulating the California success story.
Nice take. Don't let the DEI lead-in sway you from reading this observation about tech moguls trying to reclaim their glory days.
> "... the guys who had big tech startup successes in the 90s and early aughts think that 'DEI' is the cause of all their problems."
Who is the author referring to here?
(I realize that DEI has been rolled back at some companies, and Zuckerberg in particular has derided it, yet I still feel like the author is referring to some commonly accepted knowledge that I'm out of the loop on.)
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Innovation in trad engineering disciplines didn't stop when the industry gained professional guilds and legal status. We have far better buildings, extremely reliable jet planes, high speed rail, the internet...
I disagree. I believe we’ve had far less progress in real world engineering in the past 50 years than the 50+ prior.
Car crash death rates in the US have been declining for 50 years in both total number and per-capita rates (except for an uptick that started in 2020, presumably some knock-on effects from covid): https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... -- 40,990 deaths in 2023 vs. 54,052 deaths in 1973; 12.06 vs 25.51 per 100k population
Car fuel efficiency has ~doubled since 1975: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1237-may-...
Airline fuel efficiency has quadrupled since 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/medi...
Corn yields per acre have doubled since 1975: https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTren...
Lithium-ion batteries didn't practically exist in 1975.
Modern blue LEDs (and thus white LEDs) didn't exist until 1990.
The entire personal computing industry. The Internet. Search engines. LLMs. Cellular networks. Neodymium magnets. Reusable orbital launch vehicles. Genetically modified crops. mRNA vaccines. CRISPR.
I partly disagree, software still sucks and it's a great time to build. The #1 OS is slow and crashes all the time. The #1 email client takes 10s to load on my mother's laptop. Most popular products are slow, buggy, filled with spam, & filled with dark patterns. Enshittification won. FAANGs are the new IBM. Let's build better stuff.
There will eventually be new waves that create opportunities for startups again, LLMs are like that in some cases, but I’d argue that mobile phones were by far a larger disruptive innovation than LLMs so far.
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Most of the big unicorns of the past cycle, uber, airbnb, etc, where mostly plays on -we can do illegal shit- and grow faster than laws close us up
The problem any realistic assessment will have to struggle with is that they did illegal shit, exploited existing loopholes and created a better experience. Taxis before Uber were a shit show. The worst Uber drive you had would still be aboce median for the pre-Uber taxi experience. Same goes for finding a place to stay before AirBnB if you wanted anything outside a chain hotel. That doesn't justify all they did, but…
Easier done with VC's money tho
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I just learned this quote now and I love it. Very true. Much of tech mythology, where we are told "started from nothing" actually started from a place of at least some capital and privilege.
From the immigrant perspective that was true for many, coming from another country where any status in the US is better. They may be privileged from the perspective of others who couldn't make it out, but from the US perspective it's something different.
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Look into bill gates mom ;)
I mean Bill Gates grandparents were buddies with the Rockerfellers. Even if Gates didn't directly get money from them simply being close to that level of influence and power gives you essentially freedom to print money with very little effort through effortless connections to whatever you need. Oh you need advice from a $10,000 a day law firm for a difficult business situation? My dads friend John works at "prestigio…
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Look into bill gates mom ;)
There's no denying that Bill Gates was highly privileged, but his business acumen and early development achievements were also extraordinary. At least, two great factors combined. We can also include the initial team and cofounder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look into bill gates mom ;)
There's no denying that Bill Gates was highly privileged, but his business acumen and early development achievements were also extraordinary. At least, two great factors combined. We can also include the initial team and cofounder.
- brave
- prepared
- connected to vast sums of easily-accessed loaner money
Not necessarily equal measures to all three.
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