Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–169 of 169 posts

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#161

Post by rapind »

loxs wrote: post #153
thelean12 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know the money is so alluring, but how much is your soul worth and will that money make you happy? I really don't understand this attitude. If someone offers me enough money so that I never have to work again, you expect me not to take it? I'll sell any company if I could get $4 million after tax and never have to work again. Every single time I'll take that offer. I guess that's how much my "soul" is worth. And…

To me it seems really preposterous and dishonest when somebody does NOT think like this. We have one life. The time we do not spend with our children (or the time we postpone having them "for the greater good") can never be returned back.

Sanctimonious much?

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#162

Post by ineedasername »

jbay808 wrote: post #135
ineedasername wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, thought I think the smaller $ amounts have also been helped along by reduced startup costs. Heck, a startup can literally get $100,000 of AWS credit for free. In manufacturing terms that's like getting the factory for free, you just have to configure the assembly line to build your specific product. So $400,000 will go a lot further these days than it would have 20 years ago.

20 years ago, you'd be competing with much smaller salaries from the big tech companies, which would make recruiting much easier. If you meet some smart people in college, you could more easily convince each other to try building something together, especially if they're averse to corporate 9-5 culture. Whereas now it's pretty likely that they'll have their eyes on FAANG jobs.

Good point, that's true. The lack of FAANG dominance at the time meant that labor cost would have been cheaper even before inflation. On the other hand, founders & early employees of startups often accept little or very reduced salaries on the prospect of large gains on exit, especially after the bubble burst & Y2K went away, leaving excess talent unused.

It would be interesting to analyze the difference between the lowered infrastructure costs against increased salary costs to see what the net $ effect was in terms of funding a comparable startup. If you were willing to ignore the increased cost of scaling if/when you hit the hockey stick growth and simply opt for a few co-located dedicated servers running a LAMP stack, maybe infrastructure costs would still have been low enough that the difference would be negligible. Although you might still have needed more dedicated expertise in dev ops to manage it, increasing salary... I'm not sure. I was in college 20 years ago and not very caught up in following startup culture until a few years later.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#163

Post by vlovich123 »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #102
vlovich123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those high salaries though arguably just allow people to build nest eggs to go the startup route whenever they want. The real challenge is that, rationally, startups an extremely large gamble on a lottery where your expected value is As an anecdote, I have a friend who was working at a startup that got acquired by Google recently (he’s a Staff SWE so he’s making really good salary). He noted if he had just stayed at…

By the time they have the nest egg, it's too late to launch a startup without hiring people who FAANG are competing for.

It’s not unreasonable by the time you’re 30 or 40 that you have sufficient funds that the team or project is more important to you than a salary for a few years, especially since it’ll always be there later anyway.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#164

Post by elevenoh »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #85
rexreed wrote: post #83

> Tip for acquirers: when a startup turns you down, consider raising your offer, because there's a good chance the outrageous price they want will later seem a bargain. There's no evidence that this is the case. Indeed, after founders are acquired their fierce competitive spirit and drive often starts to dissolve once the founders have gotten their exit and the teams run into the inevitable corporate realities that e…

I know lots of founders will read this, please for the good of humanity stop being acquired. I know the money is so alluring, but how much is your soul worth and will that money make you happy? The future of humanity depends on tech people making tiny principled stands like this over and over. Don’t believe the lies spewing out from the acquiring company. Nothing will ever be the same again and your product will be e…

>The future of humanity depends on tech people making tiny principled stands like this over and over.

Well put. And the reward? You + family/friends look back on your work with deep fondness & respect if you choose principles > acquisition $.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#165

Post by sampsonitify »

randomsearch wrote: post #32

Speculative comment: if the product is advertising, then Google and Facebook have cornered that market and it looks like search and personal social network advertising could be natural monopolies. So there won’t be more Google’s, because there are already two and that’s what the market can support. If that’s true the only way to generate Google-like companies (in terms of innovation) is to find a different business m…

What about China? There is a western heliocentricity to so many comments.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#166

Post by rufus_foreman »

minikites wrote: post #90
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know lots of founders will read this, please for the good of humanity stop being acquired. I know the money is so alluring, but how much is your soul worth and will that money make you happy? The future of humanity depends on tech people making tiny principled stands like this over and over. Don’t believe the lies spewing out from the acquiring company. Nothing will ever be the same again and your product will be e…

>I know the money is so alluring It's the only motivation. Why do you think wealthy and high income people fight so hard against repaying the society that educated them and provided the infrastructure to allow their business to flourish?

>> Why do you think wealthy and high income people fight so hard against repaying the society that educated them and provided the infrastructure to allow their business to flourish?

Sorry, but I'm not seeing it. Here is a list of the Giving Pledgers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Giving_Pledgers.

They have all committed to giving more than half of their wealth to charity. 5 of the 10 richest Americans are on that list. It amounts to around $1.2 trillion.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#167

Post by randomsearch »

sampsonitify wrote: post #165
randomsearch wrote: post #32

Speculative comment: if the product is advertising, then Google and Facebook have cornered that market and it looks like search and personal social network advertising could be natural monopolies. So there won’t be more Google’s, because there are already two and that’s what the market can support. If that’s true the only way to generate Google-like companies (in terms of innovation) is to find a different business m…

What about China? There is a western heliocentricity to so many comments.

What do you mean re: China?

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#168

Post by dalbasal »

jonny_eh wrote: post #136
dalbasal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes a lot more sense from a 2008 perspective. Google IPOed in 2004 for 2-3% of its current market cap. The tech monopoly dynamic wasn't where it is now. Also, he turned out to be right. Acquisition prices (eg fb acquisition of whatsapp, IG, etc) went up. Investors made a lot more small bets. A lot of "new Googles" got made. That may be played out already, but this is 12 years later.

> A lot of "new Googles" got made. Such as?

facebook, netflix, twitter, uber... essentially all the "unicorns" of the last decade.

I suppose that what a google is, or was in 2008, is debatable. Two of the above are fellow "FAANG" members today. In a 2008 sense, I think we can take it as meaning 'new $50bn+ tech company." There are lots of those.

Re: Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

#169

Post by entee »

sebmellen wrote: post #36
entee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it really depends. Money in the right hands can be amazing because you can aggressively pursue an idea that takes a lot more money to get off the ground. This requires a clear idea of what matters to the business. If you don’t have that idea, money can allow you to pivot and tune your product quickly and hire the very best. The downside is the temptation to do everything, to not make decisions. Money enables…

I'm not sure I agree with that. Of course there are many moonshot projects where money is of vital importance. But for most things, the market is the best signalling mechanism available. Having little money forces you to be very attuned to the signals of the market, giving you an advantage over those who might insulate themselves from that feedback mechanism with a buffer of money. It's hard to keep yourself attuned…

I think that’s totally true in cases where the market is a rapid and reliable feedback mechanism. It’s a delicate balance, and I can see how a large bank account leads to avoiding the hard choices or the rapid iteration necessary to find a good product market fit. See Quibi.

However,in some industries, the relationship isn’t quite as straightforward. I work in biotech, so in my case the market is realistically not going to be part of the story until we have a drug, which will be a long time from now. Until then our “market” is pharma partnerships or financing opportunities, both of which are only partially rational exercises in value determination. For us, lots of money is helpful to weather the storm and really build a great technology. There’s also little risk that if we treat a disease, we won’t have people want the treatment, so product market fit isn’t quite the same issue.

That said, it’s easy to lose focus by forgetting that the tech isn’t the point (finding a good drug is) and that we can’t try all options. But those are in our control.

Post reply on HN