91–100 of 152 posts
What are some recent powerful startups? The only ones I've seen are AI grifters (not even useful AI) and Polymarket/Kalshi, which makes me cynical; although I've seen some decent startups that are small (i.e. non-powerful) but nonetheless profitable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airbnb is insanely expensive and I have to do everything myself. The only reason to choose it is because it has some great venue that Booking is missing, but it's very rare.
The only time I ever used AirBnB the host cancelled on me 2 days before my trip while I was scrambling to find a replacement. Absolutely awful user experience that truly offers nothing to people in their moments of extreme need.
> Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O'Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. > Hired CEOS take the power of the companies they run for granted, whereas founders remember the days when the company was so weak that it had to delight users to survive. I'…
Exactly what I came to say. This 100% is hippy dippy head in the clouds stuff. Sure if your product is 100% digital you can "be generous" in so far as it costs you nothing. Real products, real services. Hell no. You will get robbed blind if you give people too much slack or come off as willing to easily pay out.
I learned this the hard way early on doing contract work. Multimillionaires would actively try to take advantages of my naivety and inexperience to coerce free work out of me. Also I highly suspect many of them get a sick sense of pleasure out of it. Good luck being "generous" to those types.
Take a look at those donate for pain videos on tiktok if you don't believe there is significant population of sadists out there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean less powerful relative to startup founders, I mean less powerful in terms of how we allocate resources in the economy.
Why would that be a good idea? Greed has been clearly very efficient at allocating resources and money is the first resource of any business endeavour. Politics and courts should frames and boundaries around that greed's reach, otherwise just let it alone.
I wonder what the tipping point was where the general attitude towards PG and his essays changed. It's tempting to say AI, but I feel it was more like AirBnB era? When people saw how one of YC's golden goose affected the local communities, the rosy color on our glasses inevitably faded.
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So perhaps you appear to the one "too lazy to research the facts"?
[1]https://www.ugent.be/en/news-events/updates-case-postdoctora...
> Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O'Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. > Hired CEOS take the power of the companies they run for granted, whereas founders remember the days when the company was so weak that it had to delight users to survive. I'…
>bootstrapping a textiles business Exactly what I came to say. This 100% is hippy dippy head in the clouds stuff. Sure if your product is 100% digital you can "be generous" in so far as it costs you nothing. Real products, real services. Hell no. You will get robbed blind if you give people too much slack or come off as willing to easily pay out. I learned this the hard way early on doing contract work. Multimilliona…
I wonder what the tipping point was where the general attitude towards PG and his essays changed. It's tempting to say AI, but I feel it was more like AirBnB era? When people saw how one of YC's golden goose affected the local communities, the rosy color on our glasses inevitably faded.
OpenAI Airbnb Stripe Coinbase DoorDash Scale AI Dropbox Reddit Instacart GitLab Kalshi Replit Twitch These are the companies advertised on ycombinator.com. The only one I like is GitLab which I'm neutral about. All other are companies I dislike.
> Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O'Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. > Hired CEOS take the power of the companies they run for granted, whereas founders remember the days when the company was so weak that it had to delight users to survive. I'…
As a startup with deep pockets, you think you can afford to be generous, without realising it is made possible due to borrowed time and money. When the bills come due, generosity ends and enshittification onsets.