Nice complaint-brag
ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
101–110 of 127 posts
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The American Dream", self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier" are all good things IMHO. However, they aren't the same as "unreflectingly capitalistic" and "pre-occupied with monetary success". I'm not going to address the rest of your America bashing because the response requires a nuanced answer that I don't have the time to write today. I'll leave that to others.
> However, they aren't the same as "unreflectingly capitalistic" and "pre-occupied with monetary success". They have become inextricably linked. Maybe early in the 19th C. you'd be right. After the rise of american industry and maufacture and its corresponding propaganda (edison, etc.) AND after the cold war, "capitalism", "democracy", "patriotism" all became intertwined. Such that today The American Dream is almost…
The extent to which you have littered your own biases throughout this thread, and then expected everyone to regard them as the true interpretation, is absurd and childish.
If that's doesnt read hollow and pathetic to you I dont know what could. It's complete mythologising of two people "building" a company, it's display of hurt feeling over the fact that $10bn doesnt impress people enough, its utter pre-occupation with self-aggrandizement and money.
For example, this. I'm amazed you can't find one positive interpretation to agree with. The $10bn price tag is a reflection of the company's commercial success -- a reflection of the hard work, smart decisions, luck, timing and scale involved in that success. To an American it's obvious that two people didn't personally build the company, but it's also respectable that they undertook a massive risk to create opportunities for others to join in their effort and partake in the rewards.
The fact that you can only arrive at an extremely cynical interpretation really says more about you, and goes a long way to confirm the assertion of the article.
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're disproving your own point. In the same paragraph, you say "The idea of great risk is a myth" and "There are many small business that represent a much bigger risk for their owners". Think about it.
The idea that I'm talking about is that the reward from a company is proportional to the risk taken. My example shows that small companies can sometimes impose a greater risk to their founders than the risk taken by the founders of Facebook or Google.
And? What is your point then? Would you be upset if the gold mine you discovered took 100' of digging before it yielded even an ounce, but your neighbor picked a spot where he only needed to dig 10' to get a pound of it?
The fact that the risk wasn't called in, so to speak -- that the worst case scenarios did not come to pass -- in no way diminishes what was risked. Beside, you have cherry-picked two cases where it is quite easy to construct a plausible a sounding (and factually false) "no risk" argument. HN routinely features entrepreneurship efforts where much was gained and much was won. Your main gripe appears to be that the risk-reward maxim is not describing a literal, linear relationship.
Next up, the sun doesn't always set in the west! (provided certain map orientations, times of the year and fluctuations in magnetic north)
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Language is culture, good luck injecting chinese expressions into english... they just don't work. Language is the way we think, translating the way we think to one language changes how we think (i.e things are lost). > The times where each country could have their own soup are over. There are more people who don't care about the anglosaxon world than there are people who do care (China is a prime example here).
> Language is culture, good luck injecting chinese expressions into english... they just don't work. Ni hao English has a lot of loan words and imported phrases, and new ones are always on the horizon.
Clearly he means expressions, e.g. idioms and that sort of thing.
It's time to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu
Quick, without using Google tell me what I mean.
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#105Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…
Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed. Financial success is important because it allows their organization to continue functioning but it's hardly the top motivator for business owners I've spoken…
The most generous American employers barely meet the minimum legal requirements in Europe. Americans tolerate conditions of employment that would be utterly unthinkable to most western Europeans.
EU workers are entitled to a minimum of four weeks paid holiday. The EU requires 20 weeks of paid maternity leave, mandates a maximum working week of 48 hours for most employees and enshrines a great deal of protection against unfair dismissal. Those pan-EU minimums are exceeded in most member states.
A very large proportion of European companies, especially French and German businesses, regard the wellbeing of their employees as a primary aim, not a cost of doing business. Planning is done in the long-term, with the creation of stable and sustainable jobs being a primary objective. Silicon valley 'perks' like subsidised canteens and employer-sponsored social clubs are the norm for semi-skilled manual workers in many EU countries.
That's before we even address things like generous welfare benefits, state healthcare and other policies that are as normal in the EU as they are unthinkable in the US. The Democratic party would be considered centre-right in most European countries. A left wing in the European sense simply does not exist in the US. 20 seats in the French Senate are held by communists - not socialists (they hold 128 seats), but bona fide Internationale-singing, red flag flying communists.
If you think that Americans aren't unusually capitalistic, you really need to travel more.
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Language is culture, good luck injecting chinese expressions into english... they just don't work. Ni hao English has a lot of loan words and imported phrases, and new ones are always on the horizon.
Clearly he means expressions, e.g. idioms and that sort of thing. It's time to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu Quick, without using Google tell me what I mean.
> Clearly he means
I wouldn't have posted if a different interpretation were clear.
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#107Maybe this attitude of nobody cares is more healthy.
Versus "look at that startup that got acquired! Look at his successful their founder is! And look at all the billions they have that YOU DON'T".
To me, THAT is more depressing.
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#108Well the big difference between those two stories (Google buys ONO and Vodafone buys ONO) is that one would imply change (for the consumer - for founders both is of course a big change) and the other doesn't. Who cares if the corporate overlord at ONO is called Richard Alden (ONO "founder" in Varsavsky's eyes) or Vittorio Colao (Vodafone CEO)?
You nailed it. Vodafone acquiring ONO is just changing uniforms.
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed. Well, most of the business people I know of, only see a need in areas that they thing are profitable. How many try to actual affect people's lives in subst…
> Well, most of the business people I know of, only see a need in areas that they thing are profitable Yes and people only live in areas where they have a way to get food, air and water. A business can't function without profits. Naturally, a business owner will spend their energy on addressing needs through a model that can sustain itself. Others may choose to go the non-profit route and try to sustain themselves th…
>Yes and people only live in areas where they have a way to get food, air and water. A business can't function without profits.
Well, tons of musicians, writers, painters etc don't give up if they have to function without profits. In fact lots of them keep at their craft, without ever achieving much monetary success, and they produce stuff.
A person making a web service could do just as much, if he really wanted to "fill a need and change the world". At least he/she could go at it for a reasonable income, without aiming for bucketloads of money. And yet, lots of people here sneer at "lifestyle businesses".
Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares
#110This has very little to do with national moods/prejudices and much more to do with boring/atypical industries vs. hot consumer ones. ONO got no attention largely because it's "boring" to a mass audience. There are plenty of examples of this domestically, e.g. + Child focused ecommerce company Zulily filed a $2.6B IPO, but got very little attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6740927 I'd also note that there…
Notice the pattern of blindness: If something ain't happening in one of big tech hubs (SF, NYC), it's invisible to the media.