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Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

marcrand.com

71–80 of 158 posts

Re: Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

#72
post #2

I can see it happening. You have to utilize a lot of other one person startup services, so ultimately it’s a still a virtual company. But you won’t have to be beholden to anyone other than the customer.

So every individual becomes a company? The natural tendency of capitalism is to create bigger companies for "scale". Even if it was possible, what exactly would be the benefit of one person companies?

If you can’t imagine the benefits then don’t worry about it. The jungle ain’t for everybody.

Re: Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

#73

One thing I want to point out about software is that its perpetually commoditized. Any piece of valuable software will get a free version after some amount of time. It happened to compilers, operating systems, and renderer. It's gradually happening to game engines. That's why the largest software companies are really just network effect monopolies. You only use it because other people use it or it relies on some sort…

Minecraft? Not at all. Please stop rewriting history. Minecraft definitely had a small dev team but it wasn’t a single persons effort and wasn’t close to being one. You don’t create a world changing video game by yourself.

I bought the alpha for 10 euro when it was just one dude posting on a forum and I can tell you it was very much already Minecraft and going viral.

Re: Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

#74
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to forget that his girlfriend worked two jobs for 5 years to even support him being able to do that, yeah, he was "alone". Just like trust fund startup bros make it "alone" (with the 500k their parents gave them).

Yes this still counts as "alone". Stop diminishing hard work and talent. A lot of parents give their kids 6 figure amounts, almost all of them don't do anything with it.

And some go broke 4 times even with a billion from their parents. And still claims a win!

Re: Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft? Not at all. Please stop rewriting history. Minecraft definitely had a small dev team but it wasn’t a single persons effort and wasn’t close to being one. You don’t create a world changing video game by yourself.

I bought the alpha for 10 euro when it was just one dude posting on a forum and I can tell you it was very much already Minecraft and going viral.

I have the same memories. Obviously we can never know for certain but if notch had decided not to hire anyone and continued to work on the game himself, I’m very confident it would have eventually made a billion. The core game hasn’t changed since 2010, and it was already absolutely captivating in those early days.

Re: Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

#77

>Heather Cox Richardson ... could easily replace her two copy editors with Claude. I'd be surprised if she felt the same way.

yeah this is some insanely out of touch nonsense.. I have no idea who she is but the idea that any of the current crop of models could replace a copy editor is laughable. Just ask it how many times the letter b appears in blueberry.

The models can replace humans. They can't do it well, but it might be good enough. If you are tiny and just barely making money at all in your job you should evaluate if this cost cutting is good enough or not.

i'm getting the idea though the whoever she is - she is making good amount of money: she should demand a higher bar that I don't think llm's can meet today just because she can afford it and the risk that it matters is too high.

Re: Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company

#80
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this still counts as "alone". Stop diminishing hard work and talent. A lot of parents give their kids 6 figure amounts, almost all of them don't do anything with it.

>Couldn't ever do it alone without having someone (that loves him) sacrificing so much for him. >Yes this counts as "alone" I don't even know what to say to that, I guess we're just straight up redefining words to make yourself feel good?

I am curious which of the following (if any) you would define as alone:

1) one person but they take VC funding

2) one person but they use open source solutions

3) one person but they live with their parents

4) one person that lives completely off of what they earned themselves previously, but they did get government funded student loans that let them make money in the first place.

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