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What is this telling us about the stuff he writes with full conviction today?
That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them experts in all things. We should not idolize celebrities and not accept their hot takes wholesale. Be wary of ultracrepidarians.
> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…
What is this telling us about the stuff he writes with full conviction today?
That times change? This was a lot more accurate when it was published in 2007.
(Others have pointed out that 2007 wasn't even a particularly bad year for MSFT.)
He's not wrong there, I once had to use my laptop to display Jeff Bezos's Powerpoint when he was at Startup School because I was the only person around they knew had Windows. I tried so hard to like OSX, using it as my daily driver for two years, and I still wish I did.
> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…
If you're a person who is at one end of a funnel (in this case; new tech companies) and you see a 100% adoption which is contrary to the mainstream: you would think you have good insight.
You might forget that you're looking at:
A) A cargo culture
B) a homogeneous cohort.
This is the same way that people knew ahead of time that Microsoft Office would kill off Lotus notes. Since all school's were transitioning (or had transitioned) to Microsofts products.
It's also why people knew AWS would be so popular ahead of time, because new tech companies were not renting compute anymore, they were passing their credit cards to Amazon - even causing some companies to bet their products on making tooling to make AWS easier.
If you're at one end of the funnel, you can see the future.
Was this the future? or was it a false positive based on a cohort? - I definitely think the market dominance of Windows on the Desktop has been thoroughly challenged since 2008, and it's rare I see people elect to use Windows for and I work in AAA games, which is insanely Microsoft dominated.
Those toxic companies have billions of cash, then backed by the tens of thousands of billions from funds like vanguard and blackrock. This money is sort of "weaponized". If you are not "them", if you stick to the basic "economic rules", you are already gone as you cannot exist.
If you make something people want you can sell it. When I started our company 4 years ago I'd have considered $1m ARR a massive achievement. Now I'm here in my heart I feel a need to grow and raise or we'll die - but In my head I don't think this is actually true.
I don't think there has been a time in human history before where a company of our size (30x median wages) could have been built without needing a great deal of capital.
If Microsoft/Google et al want to use Blackrock/Vanguard's money to buy up small companies that creates more incentive for the young and idealistic to start such companies. While economic security is of sufficient value that resisting a first buyout would be hard for most (hence Sergey and Larry trying to sell for $1m) once a first buyout has been achieved a second buyout can never be forced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them experts in all things. We should not idolize celebrities and not accept their hot takes wholesale. Be wary of ultracrepidarians.
plutocrat is newly discovered word of the day.
kakistocracy, kakistocrat.
> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…
It was never that complete. Gamers used pcs. Paul grahams surprise missed an entire segment of the market.
Additionally Mac usage statistically never exceeded windows. Paul lived a bit in a rich persons world and he’s around a lot web developers who like osx because it’s unixy without the issues of old Linux.