Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#31

Post by Aloisius » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

the Google culture — which is more prone to eventually jumping ship and creating a startup.

That's funny because I've always considered Google a place where great people disappear and never come out except for a small number who start a company only to be aquihired by Google.

I could be wrong about that as well.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#32

Post by larrys » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

vilmosi wrote: post #15

marvel_boy wrote: post #3

Summing up: Apple's good pay, benefits and soaring stock.

That's not really an answer. Many companies offer just that and more.

But with Apple there is the "aunt and your friends and family factor". Everybody has heard of Apple and a large swath of people would tend to be impressed by the fact that you worked there. It would also tend to be the type of place that obviously looks good on your resume if you need to get another job in the future so it offers that as additional security.

Techies might care that you worked at Tesla, much of the rest of the world does not.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#33

Post by larrys » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

marvel_boy wrote: post #3

Summing up: Apple's good pay, benefits and soaring stock.

Further summing up: It's a great career "statisfice".

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#34

Post by rhizome » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

benihana wrote: post #30

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

Interesting, I only know one person who works at Apple. She's a copywriter and she says that it's definitely a 60 hour a week job.

At least.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#35

Post by jsjohnst » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

I've a number of friends on various teams, from WebKit, to iOS, to datacenter folks, to various app teams, and hardware teams and not one has ever consistently worked a 40hr work week. Most are easily averaging 50-60, with spurts close to or over 100 before launches. Consistently the message I've heard is people are expected to "work till its ready", so I'm not sure where you'd have heard this about Apple.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#36

Post by derefr » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

bomanbot wrote: post #19

Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to the startup world…

> rent out a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS

I was pondering the viability of almost exactly this. Could one invest in a hardware pipeline that efficiently combines e.g. 3D printing with FPGAs to create the consumer-electronics equivalent of Lulu.com's just-in-time small-batch book printing + drop-shipping.

Or, in other words: you can do pretty much anything with the sensors in a modern smartphone. All most manufacturers probably need is smartphone boards (with maybe some options of extra sensors) in custom cases with fancy buttons and displays, maybe custom remotes, and a cute little 4-colour double-walled box. That describes everything from Nest to Roku to some drone controllers.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#37

Post by Retric » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

jgmmo wrote: post #26

Retric wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue Pixar is a far more well known example outside of SV.

What are you talking about? Pixar didn't come from Apple. It came from folks who left Disney. Then Steve Jobs, as himself - not Apple - invested in Pixar.

Pixar did not start up from a few random people leaving a company with a new idea. Jobs paid the company 5 million for the IP and then invested another 5 million to get things started. Granted, he sat on the board instead of being the CEO, but he was far from a hands off invester. Regularly investing more money and eventually becoming the CEO.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#38

Post by _delirium » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #31

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

the Google culture — which is more prone to eventually jumping ship and creating a startup. That's funny because I've always considered Google a place where great people disappear and never come out except for a small number who start a company only to be aquihired by Google. I could be wrong about that as well.

That's sort of Google's reputation in machine learning: if you're tired of the lower salaries and grant-chasing of academia (or just don't like teaching), or have had enough of the uncertainty of a startup, Google is a comfortable place to go, with a large and stable salary, good access to data & compute time, good benefits, etc. Seems more common for people to try out academia and/or startups first and then go to Google later, rather than the other way around. I haven't done any kind of proper count or survey, though.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#39

Post by beambot » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #36

bomanbot wrote: post #19

Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to the startup world…

> rent out a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS I was pondering the viability of almost exactly this. Could one invest in a hardware pipeline that efficiently combines e.g. 3D printing with FPGAs to create the consumer-electronics equivalent of Lulu.com's just-in-time small-batch book printing + drop-shipping. Or, in other words: you can do pretty much anything with the sensors in a modern smartphone. All most manufactu…

You're probably better off using something like Samsung's Artik (https://www.artik.io/) that is basically cellphone-grade integration using existing high-density components.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#40

Post by beambot » Sun, Jun 07, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

jsjohnst wrote: post #35

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

I've a number of friends on various teams, from WebKit, to iOS, to datacenter folks, to various app teams, and hardware teams and not one has ever consistently worked a 40hr work week. Most are easily averaging 50-60, with spurts close to or over 100 before launches. Consistently the message I've heard is people are expected to "work till its ready", so I'm not sure where you'd have heard this about Apple.

> show up, do good work...

> work 50-60 hrs per week

Those aren't incompatible. In fact, based on current and former Apple employees I know, you're both right. It's also worth pointing out the extreme compartmentalization at Apple. I imagine that makes it more difficult to get a handle on systems-level considerations that are so key for lean startup teams.