Why to Not Not Start a Startup

There will be more startups over time, but eventually this growth will hit a limit. There are only so many people who can participate in a startup. Eventually the startups grow and merge with big companies and that's where most of the people will spend their life working. Startup will always remain an adventure fit only for the elite.

I'm only partly covered by this list. It's true that I don't really have an immediately viable potential cofounder, but it's also true that if I had one, I still don't think I would start a startup in the near future. My main problem is that I'm most interested in machine learning and robotics, and neither of those seem particularly friendly to starting a startup. (Alexa doesn't run on robots, so I can't bypass the need for revenue, and selling robots to people other than the government has so far been a fairly limited market.) Grad school is much more friendly that way, and that's what I'm planning to do at the moment.

This may change in the next few years, but it doesn't seem like robotics will ever be as low-capital an operation as the Web.

There is a distinction between "revenue is not important" and "if lots of users love you, you can probably figure out how to make money out of it (if you arn't acquired first)".

Another alternative is to work 4 days a week, and use the extra day for your startup.

"It's exciting to think we may be on the cusp of another shift like the one from farming to manufacturing."

The biggest reason why startups are so much more feasible now than ever before is because of the plummeting costs of production. Whereas twenty years ago it would have taken millions of dollars to do a startup, today a college kid with a powerbook can do one in his dorm room. Every year the tools of production get exponentially more powerful and less expensive.

To play devil's advocate, these same factors that are currently driving startups may ultimately be their demise as well. Almost every tool can be used for both good and evil. A hammer can be used to drive a nail, or also to harm someone. Governments have taken it on themselves to try to allow the good uses of any given technology while regulating the evil purposes. The problem is that every time they try to regulate away an evil, there is inevitably a little spill over that prevents us from using the technology for good. Every time a powerful new technology is invented, we end up losing little bits of our rights and civil liberties.

As technologies exponentiate in both their power and interconnectedness, it seems as if society (at least ours) will go down the road of increasingly restricting freedoms in order to prevent terrorism and other evils.

It isn't hard to imagine that as the costs of production approach zero, so will the freedoms that enable us to start startups. In many countries, such as Japan and Germany, it is so hard to do anything other than the status quo that it is effectively illegal. In Germany the government subsidizes the wages of students finishing school, which makes it effectively impossible to get a job without graduating. And in Japan it's even worse.

If the past is any indicator, the same forces driving the boom in startups are ultimately going to be drivers in forcing people into more restrictive social structures.

N.B. I don't necessarily believe this, but I think it is a serious argument that has never really been rebutted. Perhaps because the guy who proposed the idea was driven insane by it is currently doing life in prison for killing a bunch of people (Kaczynksi).