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The best founders are futurists

josephwalla.com

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: The best founders are futurists

#21
I would say 70% of my ideas are futuristic, which is why I'm working on the other 30%

That 70% depends on technologies that plain don't exist yet, or are highly experimental at best since some depended on funding that isn't there anymore so the underlying tech needed to move to the next stage is still nowhere to be seen.

Case in point: without CAD we wouldn't have stealth planes. The theory existed on paper and attempts at stealth go all the way back to WWII, but it wasn't workable until we had the computer power to crunch the numbers.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#22
If you live in the future, there is no poverty

If you live in the future, there are no diseases

If you live in the future, you can live for 200+ years

If you live in the future, we stopped using fossil fuels

If you live in the future, computers don't track us

If you live in the future, facebook doesn't exist

so lets get back to work..

Re: The best founders are futurists

#23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please stop turning every thread into a diatribe against Google or pitching open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems? 1. Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is " I want to work on whatever I want". 3. From what I can tell, you were at Google for…

Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want". First, open allocation doesn't mean "work on whatever you want". It means that people work for the company directly rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an intermediary w…

> rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an intermediary who will usually use that power for extortionist purposes and force the other person to serve his career goals

What you're describing is a borderline sociopath, not a result of closed allocation.

You make a lot of conjectures. Do you have any evidence or verifiable experience to back up these claims:

> Employee and company actually have a common interest that is typically thrown under the bus in a closed-allocation environment.

> Also, the quality of projects that exists under closed allocation is inferior because people can't vote with their feet.

> However, open allocation is almost always strictly superior to the alternative, which is closed allocation.

Sounds like you should be a management consultant.

> Is that a threat?

Sigh...there's your persecution complex again. I wish I had the power to delete your posts from my own feed (perhaps a browser extension?).

Michael, I mean this very, very sincerely, and out of genuine concern -- please do consider the possibility of talking to a counselor. I don't know a thing about you or your situation beyond your posts here, but I've seen you bring up suicide in another thread (not to imply that you're suicidal), and your inability to move on from an ostensibly bad experience at Google suggests to me that you might well benefit from a professional ear.

Edit: I'm only saying to you what I would if I knew you in person.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#24

In 5 years, if progress continues (and, in all things human, it might not): 1. The top software companies will be running open allocation. It won't get into the mainstream by then, and maybe not ever, because it's not practical for all industries. (You can't run OA easily in finance for regulatory reasons.) However, you'll have to pay hedge-fund money to recruit talented people into a closed-allocation company. 2. Lo…

This has inspired my thought for a startup idea: downstop.com.

It's the opposite of Upstart https://www.upstart.com - where people can go can short the future prospects of people such as yourself.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#25

OK, that's an interesting piece. I'll take a stab at a "If you live in the future ..." statement that goes along with what we're doing at Fogbeam. If you live in the future, computers will be more intelligent and will make it far easier and faster to find exactly the information you are looking for, will make useful predictions to guide your decision making, and will enable new management structures for organizations…

If you live in the future, computers will read your mind and bring that information to you without you having to ask. Google Now is one very early start to this.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#27
post #7

This is a tautological claim. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the biggest successes were those significantly changed the world... No way!? That's why they're successes! Lots, and lots of examples of people who similarly dreamed of changing the world with BIG ideas that completely failed. The bigger idea, the lower your probability of success, but with a larger potential return (both personal…

A corollary is that both these claims can simultaneously be true: 1) most successful founders are futurists; and 2) most futurists are cranks.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale. I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want". First, open allocation doesn't mean "work on whatever you want". It means that people work for the company directly rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an intermediary w…

> rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an intermediary who will usually use that power for extortionist purposes and force the other person to serve his career goals What you're describing is a borderline sociopath, not a result of closed allocation. You make a lot of conjectures. Do you have any evidence or verifiable experience to back up these claims: > Employee and company actually have…

I don't know you or Michael, but just from this exchange, it looks like you are the one out of line here. Nothing you have written has contributed to the discussion.

Sometimes people have obsessions. I will rant for days on how much Java sucks as a language, how 99% of American corporations have idiots running their supply chains, how energy storage is the singular important problem facing alternative energy, and how City Planners are a bunch of nimwits that are inadvertently destroying livelihoods of millions of people in their quest for the ultimate Sim City. I'm sure you have some of your own. It isn't that big of a deal to ignore someone's posts on HN.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#30
post #17
post #7

This is a tautological claim. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the biggest successes were those significantly changed the world... No way!? That's why they're successes! Lots, and lots of examples of people who similarly dreamed of changing the world with BIG ideas that completely failed. The bigger idea, the lower your probability of success, but with a larger potential return (both personal…

Let's sum up this article. In order to be successful monetarily, you need to make something people want. This guy is a savant.

Great. More middlebrow dismissal. [1]

Instead of just dismissing an article for the obvious points, try to identify at least one idea that could be considered novel or worthwhile. In this article, the suggestion of "X will inevitably be part of the future, so I will build it" is a novel idea, at least to me, and especially with the list of real-life examples he gave.

That is completely different than building what people want. For example, a different color phone case for a new smartphone is something that many people want, but not a "future" idea as the article suggests. Robot butlers like in The Jetsons [2] will inevitably be part of the future, so there's an idea.

Learn to think positively and see the potential of all things, including "obvious" articles. I'd certainly recommend The Magic of Thinking Big [3], namely the example about prisons.

[1] pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jetsons_characters#...

[3] http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V1BMPI

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