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A Local Revolution?

paulgraham.com

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Re: A Local Revolution?

#61

Post by ojbyrne »

ojbyrne wrote: post #56
ChristianPerry wrote: post #4

I felt the effect of being in Silicon Valley the moment I moved out here. The area is not only teeming with endless talent, energy, and enthusiasm, but (and this is important) we have an entire culture that makes this talent, energy, and enthusiasm possible in the first place. When I moved to San Francisco from Chicago, I felt the change immediately. People simply get me out here. They understand why I'm doing what I…

The flip side of that is there's a complete lack of any criticism, and to me it feels like that will be its downfall (Detroit met its downfall, and so will Silicon Valley). A recent case in point is the whole DiggBar controversy. I'd suggest that the criticism has come entirely from outsiders or people "not of the valley," Meanwhile there's been a whole tide of "digg is taking over the world," "digg is growing up" fr…

By voting me up, you guys have proved me at least slightly wrong. The one thing that Northern California is demonstrably great at (over the long term) is providing room for the outsider. It seems like that's being eroded lately.

Re: A Local Revolution?

#62

Post by jedavis83 »

newhouseb wrote: post #9

"The most likely scenario is (1) that no government will successfully establish a startup hub" Take a look at HaiDian/ZhongGuanCun in Beijing, chock full of startups big and small. From my understanding, the reason entrepreneurs flocked there originally was because HaiDian offered huge tax breaks versus the rest of China (for the explicit purpose of developing a high-tech industry). In my eyes, HaiDian is a huge coun…

You're making a substantial assumption, which is that startups look for tax incentives when founding. Since nearly all startups are unprofitable for a while, I suspect that most don't really care what the tax codes in the area are, as long as they aren't ridiculous (insert your version of this accordingly).

I feel tweaking tax codes to encourage startups won't have its intended consequence, but rather encourage established companies to try to pretend that they're startups. They are much more likely to have the resources to chase tax incentives than a real bootstrapping startup.

Re: A Local Revolution?

#63

Post by aditya »

warfangle wrote: post #14
ChristianPerry wrote: post #4

I felt the effect of being in Silicon Valley the moment I moved out here. The area is not only teeming with endless talent, energy, and enthusiasm, but (and this is important) we have an entire culture that makes this talent, energy, and enthusiasm possible in the first place. When I moved to San Francisco from Chicago, I felt the change immediately. People simply get me out here. They understand why I'm doing what I…

Funny story: I was sitting at a bar out here in Bushwick, Brooklyn, just finishing up my dinner and sipping on a nice stout. Woman next to me glances up from her book and says, "You aren't a programmer, are you?" "Um.. yes, actually. I do user interface development. How'd you know" "Oh, I just moved here from the Valley... I guess I just know the type when I see it." Weird, but eye opening!

What bar was it? I just moved to Bushwick and all I see is Popeye's and Dunkin Donuts. Maybe I'm just further out...

Re: A Local Revolution?

#64

Post by iamelgringo »

raheemm wrote: post #44
ChristianPerry wrote: post #4

I felt the effect of being in Silicon Valley the moment I moved out here. The area is not only teeming with endless talent, energy, and enthusiasm, but (and this is important) we have an entire culture that makes this talent, energy, and enthusiasm possible in the first place. When I moved to San Francisco from Chicago, I felt the change immediately. People simply get me out here. They understand why I'm doing what I…

PG might be on to something here. I used to live in Austin back in the mid-90s. It has has great weather, a great university and several startups that went onto become big (Dell, Pervasive, etc). And yet Austin has failed to compete with Silicon Valley and in the last decade might have even become less relevant in the tech sector.

I've really been amazed at the caliber of people that I meet through the Hackers and Founders meetup that are from Austin. There's really a great little sub-culture here of ex-Austinites that are interested in founding startups.

Austin's loss is Silicon Valley's gain.

Re: A Local Revolution?

#65

Post by MaysonL »

tjic wrote: post #25
prospero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it bad that in order to automatically generate binding legal documents, someone involved needs to be educated in the subtleties of legal language? A walking, talking lawyer should be personally responsible for the quality of the documents being generated. If there's no such person, you're putting the onus of validation on the client, which I think misses the entire point. In most of these cases, it's not the g…

> Why is it bad that in order to automatically generate binding legal documents, someone involved needs to be educated in the subtleties of legal language? I wouldn't put up a huge stink if the law was "you must pass the bar exam". However, the law is "you must attend 3 years of law school". > These laws do not exist solely to frustrate you Agreed. They exist to decrease the supply of lawyers, thus increasing the pri…

However, the law is "you must attend 3 years of law school".

Actually, there are still a few states where you can join the bar after clerking for a number of years and passing the bar exam.

See, for example: http://www.wsba.org/lawyers/licensing/faq-rule6.htm

Re: A Local Revolution?

#66

Post by pg »

ojbyrne wrote: post #56
ChristianPerry wrote: post #4

I felt the effect of being in Silicon Valley the moment I moved out here. The area is not only teeming with endless talent, energy, and enthusiasm, but (and this is important) we have an entire culture that makes this talent, energy, and enthusiasm possible in the first place. When I moved to San Francisco from Chicago, I felt the change immediately. People simply get me out here. They understand why I'm doing what I…

The flip side of that is there's a complete lack of any criticism, and to me it feels like that will be its downfall (Detroit met its downfall, and so will Silicon Valley). A recent case in point is the whole DiggBar controversy. I'd suggest that the criticism has come entirely from outsiders or people "not of the valley," Meanwhile there's been a whole tide of "digg is taking over the world," "digg is growing up" fr…

You must have seen a strange slice of the Valley. People here think much more critically about startups than in the rest of the US. People in Nebraska aren't worrying about Twitter's business model.

Re: A Local Revolution?

#67

Post by pg »

rgoddard wrote: post #6

The other question to consider is if the revolution is local, does that really matter for the society at large? The startups are creating value for the rest of society, regardless of where the startups are located. Using the internet as the means of distribution, decouples the location of the business from the consumers of the product, thus allowing the startups to have a central location. The business revolution wil…

The fact that the Industrial Revolution was localized mattered a lot to the regions that were left behind. It made them the victims in the ensuing era of colonialism.

Re: A Local Revolution?

#68

Post by [deleted] »

dantheman wrote: post #50
prospero wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to back up that assertion? I'm not saying regulatory capture doesn't exist, I'm just saying it's not the primary driving force behind legislation. You don't get to just say I'm wrong and make vague references to historical trends. Unless a company already has lawyers on staff, they have no way of determining whether a legal expert system is a good product or not. For that reason, it cannot be a substitute…

Well there are many cases of regulator capture, the AMA, the railroad industry, the airplane industry (pre-deregulation), the telephone industry (pre-deregulation), and the cable industry. The recent mandates on testing toys for lead, has pretty much outlawed small toy producers. You can't prepare food at your house and legally sell it (even if you say this was cooked at my house). The FDA debacle with juice pasteuri…

[deleted]

Re: A Local Revolution?

#69

Post by emmett »

old-gregg wrote: post #35

When you interpret Paul's "startup" as a "newborn Internet media company" the essay makes a lot of sense, especially the comparison to movie business. But if you interpret "startup" as "newborn consumer electronics company" or a "newborn software company" or anything else more generic not squeezed into a web page it falls short: first, the percentage of GDP generated by internet media is miniscule, the whole thing is…

The kind of companies Paul is talking about appear to be software companies, in general. More new software companies originate in Silicon Valley than anywhere else in the world by a wide margin. Most new software companies (Google, for example) tend to be internet companies, but that's just because the internet is the most sensible way to distribute most software now.

Re: A Local Revolution?

#70

Post by davidw »

jodrellblank wrote: post #52
davidw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really such an open-and-shut case? No, but a reasonable percentage of those convinced that "it's all the government's fault" are going to continue to see it that way no matter what (and get offended when that gets pointed out, apparently). Just like other people think that more government/laws/rules is always the answer. For that matter, I'm pretty convinced of my "radically moderate" views which are somewher…

For that matter, I'm pretty convinced of my "radically moderate" views Of course you are. If you thought they were wrong, you wouldn't hold them as your views, would you?

I'm fairly willing to be convinced that, on some point or another, the best course of action lies close to what I held to be true, but differs by a few degrees. I also try and think about the holes in my argument and to consider the fact that I am not actually omniscient, and may very well be wrong about things (it is rare, but does happen:-).

I was thinking about this, and part of the problem is that these threads often feel like someone selling me something, rather than trying to figure out how things really work. They'd be much more interesting if people "let down their guard" a bit, upped the reasoning, and lowered the propagandizing. I guess it may not feel like propaganda to those involved, but I really like reading comments like mechanical_fish's, which cast a wide eye on things, considering all points of view, rather than people pulling out all the stops to fit the facts to their point of view.

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