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What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

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Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#21

Post by noonespecial »

vaksel wrote: post #13
noonespecial wrote: post #5

The sudden lack of scarcity would cause the quality of the investments to plummet. YC uses its money carefully because the supply is not unending. When you only have one shot, you aim.

not really applicable, since YC invests in 40-45 companies at a time edit: I was talking about the "one shot" comment

Ask anyone who's ever submitted a YC application (and been rejected!) if they think that the selection process is in any way trivial.

YC invests in 40-45 of the best companies of thousands that apply. Even trying to imagine a selection process that chooses 40Bn worth of YC companies makes my brain hurt.

I think that no matter how hard you tried to stand it up, it would flatten out like warm jello to "anyone who writes a few coherent sentences on the application gets some cash".

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#24

Post by zaidf »

timr wrote: post #16
Xichekolas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah this idea is silly, but his original point about saving GM (that it's also silly) probably still stands. His figure for GM employees is old (2005). Last I saw, the current unionized hourly workforce is 60k employees (see link below). If you simply gave those employees $125k each, it would only have cost the government $7.5 billion. That kind of money should allow all those employees plenty of time to find o…

The argument about GM is the silliest part. I think it's somewhat plausible that YC could find a way to use $40Bn productively. Again, the point of this bailout is not just to save 60,000 current GM jobs. The point is to save the GM, the GM supply chain, the local economies of several large industrial states, and the millions of people in an economic ecosystem that has built up around GM. Looking at only the 60,000 j…

How many jobs do you think 60,000 employed consumers can create?

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#25

Post by pg »

mahmud wrote: post #20
pg wrote: post #9

If someone wanted to give us that much money to invest, I'd probably do it, just to see what would happen. We could probably cook up some schemes for scaling. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a lot like scaling software. You run into a lot of unexpected problems, but you also end up finding ways to solve most of them. Plus you get unforeseen effects of scale, some of them good.

Please do not try to "cook up" small start ups. It's better people juice their own ingenuity on their own time, when they have something big at stake. I grew up in a communist country and I remember how the state gave allowances to housewives in order to invigorate women's businesses. It didn't turn out that well; most women, like most men, are not interested in the ungodly effort and the labor of love that goes into…

Don't worry, the scenario is a hypothetical one, to put it mildly.

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#26

Post by pg »

amichail wrote: post #2

The failure rate will skyrocket as all these startups compete for users.

It's not users you compete for, but needs. And those are effectively infinite. The limiting factor would more likely be the rate at which technology can evolve. But it would be kind of cool if you ever reached that point.

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#27

Post by Xichekolas »

timr wrote: post #16
Xichekolas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah this idea is silly, but his original point about saving GM (that it's also silly) probably still stands. His figure for GM employees is old (2005). Last I saw, the current unionized hourly workforce is 60k employees (see link below). If you simply gave those employees $125k each, it would only have cost the government $7.5 billion. That kind of money should allow all those employees plenty of time to find o…

The argument about GM is the silliest part. I think it's somewhat plausible that YC could find a way to use $40Bn productively. Again, the point of this bailout is not just to save 60,000 current GM jobs. The point is to save the GM, the GM supply chain, the local economies of several large industrial states, and the millions of people in an economic ecosystem that has built up around GM. Looking at only the 60,000 j…

> the GM supply chain, the local economies of several large industrial states

I don't see how these are going to just disappear if GM is gone. There are other car companies these suppliers can sell to. Of course there will be disruption, and probably some job losses, but not the whole 2-million-person industry (to use the industry number). And if some of those jobs do disappear, maybe it's because demand for the product no longer supports them.

I know my perspective is different on this, because I'm 25, and honestly cannot fathom a lifetime with one company. My career will be a couple years here and there, and most likely I'll have more than one career as well. So it is alien to me that anyone wants to protect (or even prefers) this idea of having a single job, at a single employer, for life. Why is it so terrible that someone might have to find a new job or that a town might die out?

That said, I'm not unfeeling about this issue. I realize these are real lives here (my dad is a GM retiree). What I don't understand is why we are bailing out the company, and not the workers.

I'd rather we spent the money on retraining the employees, hopefully giving them skills in an industry that isn't slowly dying. And this generalizes to all those losing their jobs, no matter the industry. Stop trying to save the individual companies (bailouts) or whole industries (tariffs and subsidies) and educate people.

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#28

Post by gruseom »

mahmud wrote: post #18
vaksel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really applicable, since YC invests in 40-45 companies at a time edit: I was talking about the "one shot" comment

for 40B, people will get into starting up for the salary . don't start a company to make ends meet, start it to execute a haunting vision that you can't get rid of (ever wonder why people quit their jobs, often to their financial detriment, to startup? yeah, it's a curse.)

start it to execute a haunting vision that you can't get rid of

I agree with this - only partly, because it isn't necessarily in a person's control - but a haunting vision that you can't get rid of is a real asset. It's easier to devote insane effort to something that your intellect and/or soul are deeply invested in than to something arbitrary or trivial. I wonder whether luck is more of a factor in the latter kind of project.

In any case, I am having this experience these days, quite unexpectedly as I never set out to have it and used to feel dismissive when hearing people talk about "vision". I'm grateful for it. It makes it easier to crawl over broken glass.

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#29

Post by zaidf »

mahmud wrote: post #18
vaksel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really applicable, since YC invests in 40-45 companies at a time edit: I was talking about the "one shot" comment

for 40B, people will get into starting up for the salary . don't start a company to make ends meet, start it to execute a haunting vision that you can't get rid of (ever wonder why people quit their jobs, often to their financial detriment, to startup? yeah, it's a curse.)

  for 40B, people will get into starting up for the salary.
That will simply be another challenge the application process will need to address. That's assuming it even becomes a problem.

Re: What if Obama gave Y Combinator 40 Billion Dollars

#30

Post by zaidf »

Xichekolas wrote: post #27
timr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument about GM is the silliest part. I think it's somewhat plausible that YC could find a way to use $40Bn productively. Again, the point of this bailout is not just to save 60,000 current GM jobs. The point is to save the GM, the GM supply chain, the local economies of several large industrial states, and the millions of people in an economic ecosystem that has built up around GM. Looking at only the 60,000 j…

> the GM supply chain, the local economies of several large industrial states I don't see how these are going to just disappear if GM is gone. There are other car companies these suppliers can sell to. Of course there will be disruption, and probably some job losses, but not the whole 2-million-person industry (to use the industry number). And if some of those jobs do disappear, maybe it's because demand for the prod…

Completely agree with you.

I think it is fair to see the 40B as simply saving the 60K or so jobs and little more. If a natural disaster took 60K lives, I do not think it will cause a prolonged national economic depression.

Likewise, I do not think adding 60K employed consumers will go a long way in fixing the current economic crisis.

Of course, saying that the 40B will "save" the jobs is in itself a big assumption. There is every chance that GM will run out of 40B and still shut down.

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