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Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

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Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#101

Post by mbell »

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…

> 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.

There is some truth to that but it's not the custom chip manufacturing that drives it. It's not even what I guess I would call 'excellence in material design' that drives it. Really it's a combination of the choice to not cut corners on hardware combined with the scale and market position to support the cost.

As an example a lot of has been made in the past about Apple's charges, both laptop and iDevices, they are small, sleek and powerful for their size. There isn't anything special going on there from an electronics perspective, they didn't invent new types of power conversion, they just didn't cut every possible corner to reduce cost and they had the budget to allow custom parts when off the shelf didn't fit. I don't mean custom IC's here I mean custom metal fab, maybe custom caps that are 'normal' other than being shaped a bit differently, etc. Apple has the volume and price point to let them do this when the vast majority of companies don't.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#102

Post by narrowrail »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #87
CamperBob2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you cannot exactly rent a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS to try to build it on your own and sell it market. To Amazon's credit, I can imagine Bezos reading your comment, frowning, and muttering, "Why the hell not?"

Taiwan? I mean, Motorola and even AMD have sold their FABs out to companies who then provide capacity out to the highest bidder. Now they do trail in process, so 14mm might not be available for a couple of years.

I thought Motorola spun out their chip division as Freescale, which just merged with NXP (Philips' chip spin off? Did Motorola retain some portion?

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#103

Post by BashiBazouk »

jgmmo wrote: post #51
CyberDildonics wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Pixar was originally Lucasfilm's computer graphics division lead by Ed Catmull. It was separated and sold to Steve Jobs.

True or False, the guys running Pixar were ex-disney cartoonists? What does it matter if they were a division of lucasfilm when Steve Jobs became majority shareholder?

It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. The "founders" were not from Disney. John Lasseter who worked for the division that would be spun off from Lucasfilm was. But keep in mind for much of Pixar's life it was a hardware/software company producing tools for all kinds of high end imaging uses including animation. John Lasseter did cool demos and other projects to promote the hardware/software. The modern Pixar powerhouse of animation came to be more from accident/desperation than plan...

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#104

Post by codesushi42 »

vacri wrote: post #99
PMan74 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also scratching my head, Advertising and ? - Youtube, Gmail - really just advertising - Android - is it a cash cow, there's some lic fees I guess but not huge - Google Apps - is that big money?

Google Apps for Business is a big moneymaker.

It makes money, but it's not that big of a money-maker.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#105

Post by cromwellian »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #100
cromwellian wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working backbreaking hours with bad work/life balance is considered unGoogley. There are sometimes when people burn the midnight oil, but in general Googlers don't work 60hr weeks. I think the primary difference may come down to a culture of secrecy. Openness breeds cross fertilization, couple that with very few restrictions on Googlers in working on side projects, open source，and collaborating outside Google and it…

I've worked at both Apple and Google, as a SWE. I found very few engineers at either company who are phoning it in. There is great passion in both organizations. I also found engineers to be very vocal internally at both companies, Apple at least as much as at Google. Apple engineers absolutely do not "fall in line" without a fight. Google is definitely more open in the way you describe, both in terms of collaboratin…

I think that's true but scrap and pivot is generally what the startup experience is like, so if you aren't accustomed to failure and throwing away work and uncertainty as to whether you'll ship, you might not like the startup experience.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#106

Post by gdubs »

jgmmo wrote: post #51
CyberDildonics wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Pixar was originally Lucasfilm's computer graphics division lead by Ed Catmull. It was separated and sold to Steve Jobs.

True or False, the guys running Pixar were ex-disney cartoonists? What does it matter if they were a division of lucasfilm when Steve Jobs became majority shareholder?

The central core of Pixar, when it originated at Lucasfilm, were people from NYIT led by Ed Catmull. John Lasseter didn't join until later, and he's the only prominent ex-Disney person I'm aware of.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#107

Post by komaromy »

ddorian43 wrote: post #76
gumby wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.” I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly nerds admittedly) are routinely in…

which is the second cash cow?

What I've usually heard is AdWords and AdSense.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#108

Post by Animats »

nickpinkston wrote: post #91
derefr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At Plethora, we're building the mechanical pieces of this - starting with full-auto, on-demand CNC milling as fast as LuLu or similar, then adding more capabilities. Happy to make some free parts for anyone's ideas on here! http://plethora.com nick@plethora.com

Compare emachineshop.com. They have been doing that for years, and have a site with actual information instead of just pretty pictures.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#109

Post by Animats »

nickpinkston wrote: post #91
derefr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At Plethora, we're building the mechanical pieces of this - starting with full-auto, on-demand CNC milling as fast as LuLu or similar, then adding more capabilities. Happy to make some free parts for anyone's ideas on here! http://plethora.com nick@plethora.com

Compare emachineshop.com. They have been doing that for years, and have a site with useful information instead of just pretty pictures.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#110

Post by acqq »

dasil003 wrote: post #63
morgante wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget all the hardware companies you know today were once startups. Unfortunately the winds of VC have changed a lot since then. Originally, VCs were willing and eager to invest millions in a promising innovation. Now they expect you to demonstrate traction before any large investments—which is infinitely harder with hardware startups.

Not only that, but software startups used to not be so cheap either. 15 years ago you need to raise millions just to buy servers. Granted that wasn't the case in the early days of software (Microsoft didn't need servers when they were a startup), but it's an interesting dynamic in the internet age.

> Microsoft didn't need servers when they were a startup

Wrong. Gates and Allen used Harvard's University mainframe to do their first gig, then paid for other mainframe time:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC

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