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The best founders are futurists

josephwalla.com

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Re: The best founders are futurists

#71

Post by mwfunk »

r0s wrote: post #60

Just to derail a bit... I've always disagreed with Jobs over the filesystem thing. There's just a minimum level of knowledge a computer user needs to use the damn thing, and file systems are really fundamental to that. I've never seen an abstraction that worked well enough to replace the file system as we know it, so abstractions stay welded to particular apps. Then you have a bunch of domain specific abstractions re…

100% agreed on voice control and natural language. Regarding learning the fundamentals of computers vs. dumbing down the system, I fear that no one knows the right answer, and that there may not even be a right answer. There are arguments to made for both approaches and there's no one-size-fits-all sweet spot for that design decision.

I have my own opinions on it but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong too. I think this is one of those things where a bunch of well-intentioned people implement a bunch of different designs over the next few decades, and it just sort of converges on something even though every design leading up to it was fundamentally wrong in some sense, or went to far in one direction.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#72

Post by whyleyc »

codex wrote: post #37

I find that this article is representative of much of the content of HN these days: provocative assertions made by relative nobodies with little supporting evidence save anecdote, but made with the full voice of authority. Found a middling startup or two, and you're suddenly an expert. Call me old fashioned, but I like to get my blanket generalizations only from those significantly richer, more powerful, happier, or…

Please spare us from this pointless meta-commentary - it's both boring and unnecessary.

It is possible that someone who hasn't founded a billion dollar company actually might have something interesting, insightful and useful to say. At least I hope so, otherwise you just condemned innovation to the gallows.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#73

Post by jasey »

...Among its visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.... - From the Steve Jobs biography

Re: The best founders are futurists

#74

Post by touristtam »

I don't think that taking jobs as a reference for thinking ahead of time is specially good; In this particular video, he is presenting, to the general public, the 'file system' as a general software application that can be replaced by another one. This is totally and entirely misleading: without file system I doubt he can maintain any unified and persistent local data storage on a computer.

I understand that, ultimately, he is talking about the file explorer software application, but getting layman to confuse the two is almost a sin, as those users are potentially novice expert in the making (plus the fact that he is repeatedly say 'app', 'app', 'app', as if this would make the software application of the mac environment more of a software than on other platform ....).

If you really want to put a video of future thinking in the computing world, ... well welcome to 1968: http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html

Re: The best founders are futurists

#75

Post by dmead »

codex wrote: post #37

I find that this article is representative of much of the content of HN these days: provocative assertions made by relative nobodies with little supporting evidence save anecdote, but made with the full voice of authority. Found a middling startup or two, and you're suddenly an expert. Call me old fashioned, but I like to get my blanket generalizations only from those significantly richer, more powerful, happier, or…

oh but those people realize they are nobodies. posts like this are a terrible attempt at self promotion.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#76

Post by 6d0debc071 »

dsowers wrote: post #63
codex wrote: post #37

I find that this article is representative of much of the content of HN these days: provocative assertions made by relative nobodies with little supporting evidence save anecdote, but made with the full voice of authority. Found a middling startup or two, and you're suddenly an expert. Call me old fashioned, but I like to get my blanket generalizations only from those significantly richer, more powerful, happier, or…

Interesting how you discredit advice from "relative nobodies." The world is mostly full of relative nobodies. You must have a hard time opening your mind to learn from anybody.

That wasn't the guys only criteria, so you're strawmanning them to an extent.

Even putting that aside though:

People who know what they're talking about write books. Oh not all of them, granted, but there are so many humans publishing so much stuff - so many of whom will be experts - that it makes at best limited sense to listen to anyone but the best. The world may be predominantly full of nobodies but that makes it a sorting problem.

Indeed, you could argue that for some literature the search data is rapidly becoming more important than producing anything new for a similar set of reasons.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#77

Post by michaelochurch »

cma wrote: post #62
michaelochurch wrote: post #20

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…

Public restrooms are a good example to look at if you want to see what happens when everyone does what they want. In your ideal phony anarchist workplace, who does the maintenance work? And who mops up shit from the bathroom floor?

Well, you obviously didn't read the post to which you replied.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#78

Post by confluence »

The best founders are lucky.

Right place. Right time. Right society.

A clusterfuck of luck if you will.

That's the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from such small data sets that include within them insane variance, complex systems, extreme path dependence, and extremely disparate successful strategies (sometimes VC shoot to the moon works, sometimes bootstrapping, sometimes established spin outs, sometimes tech, sometimes marketing, sometimes government contracting).

There is no best founders are X. Just unique situations accidently exploited by founders who happily find themselves embedded directly within them. Founders are by far the least important factor in the causal chain that ends up with their eventual success, or failure.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#79

Post by cma »

michaelochurch wrote: post #77
cma wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public restrooms are a good example to look at if you want to see what happens when everyone does what they want. In your ideal phony anarchist workplace, who does the maintenance work? And who mops up shit from the bathroom floor?

Well, you obviously didn't read the post to which you replied.

I read it. You said, "First, open allocation doesn't mean "work on whatever you want"and then spent rest of the paragraph saying it does.

How do the bathrooms get cleaned? How does maintenance code get written? You've said in the past that such code is always just a manager trying to show power over peons, that is just paranoid insanity with maybe a touch of bitterness from having to work on it.

Your writing is predictable, tepid, and spam. You have a comment on every single story here dealing with employment.

If I hear VC-istan one more fucking time.. Well let's just say you have probably driven away lots of people from this site.

Re: The best founders are futurists

#80

Post by yuhong »

yid wrote: post #23
michaelochurch wrote: post #20

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…

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

The difference is that you can easily get away from such managers under open allocation.

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