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

After the end of the startup era

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 304 posts

Re: After the end of the startup era

#211

Post by DamonHD »

tertius wrote: post #204
DamonHD wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed: if a few hundred million westerners made a real effort to curtail frivolous footprint then that 10b may happen with a lower-than-current total footprint.

Convincing a few hundred million to act in a certain way without force won't happen before we got 10b. I don't think that's an outlandish prediction to make...

Yes, but I get annoyed at some fat white western guy claiming that all those poor brown people a long way away are the problem. We (my family in the UK) managed to cut tonnes per year off our footprint while raising two kids in the UK; not that hard. Some would much rather blame others rather than even make any effort.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#212

Post by tormeh »

Alex3917 wrote: post #13
skrebbel wrote: post #4

NYC-based angel investor Jerry Neumann calls this the "deployment age" and has a very nice, and somewhat prescient, write-up about it: http://reactionwheel.net/2015/10/the-deployment-age.html

He's just quoting Carlotta Perez. But he doesn't get it quite right, we're in the installation phase for some technologies and the deployment phase for others.

Yeah, he's kind of focusing on only his field, but that's OK. AI and genetic engineering are clearly just getting started, but if it's not in his field then it might make sense for him to not care.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#213

Post by edoceo »

hkmurakami wrote: post #192
Animats wrote: post #168

From the article: "We’re already seeing this. Consider Y Combinator, by all accounts the gold standard of startup accelerators, famously harder to get into than Harvard. Then consider its alumni. Five years ago, in 2012, its three poster children were clearly poised to dominate their markets and become huge companies: AirBnB, Dropbox, and Stripe. And so it came to pass." "Fast forward to today, and Y Combinator’s thr…

The journalist reveals his or her ignorance by not considering Gusto or Flexport to be well positioned, imo.

Yeah, Gusto is a big win IMO. Payroll stuff sucks, especially for early stage businesses. I've used all the services over the past 15 years, my current company is using Gusto, still sucks, but sucks the least, best price, best service. And 1000s of small businesses trust Gusto to process millions of dollars of their most sacred money each month. Underrated.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#214

Post by guaka »

hkmurakami wrote: post #192
Animats wrote: post #168

From the article: "We’re already seeing this. Consider Y Combinator, by all accounts the gold standard of startup accelerators, famously harder to get into than Harvard. Then consider its alumni. Five years ago, in 2012, its three poster children were clearly poised to dominate their markets and become huge companies: AirBnB, Dropbox, and Stripe. And so it came to pass." "Fast forward to today, and Y Combinator’s thr…

The journalist reveals his or her ignorance by not considering Gusto or Flexport to be well positioned, imo.

Plus the article could do with some basic fact checking.

"The web boom of 1997-2006 brought us Amazon, Facebook, Google, Salesforce, Airbnb"

Wikipedia AirBnB page: "Founded August 2008; 9 years ago"

Re: After the end of the startup era

#215

Post by DamonHD »

odiroot wrote: post #81
caust1c wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the future is built on small businesses. But to have the most impact on the environment we could all just stop eating so much meat.

We could stop flying, driving and buying electronics from Asia. Are you willing to do it?

I've done most of those, reduced my family's footprint by tonnes CO2e per year, and we are not wearing sackcloth and ashes.

http://m.earth.org.uk/

Re: After the end of the startup era

#216

Post by aranjedeath »

api wrote: post #122
dyarosla wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the biggest smartphone market: 7. Games

I guess I don't game much, but yes that can be added too. Still there is a huge gap between phone games and PC and console games.

Also, for clarity, the browsing and gaming done on phones isn't casual.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#217

Post by Roritharr »

reitanqild wrote: post #124
adventurer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've almost given up on the Play Store. It's overblown with all sorts of useless garbage. Want an alarm clock app? There are hundreds, if not thousands. I couldn't even find what I was looking for. Paid apps., Ads, in-app. purchases. It's an alarm clock for heaven's sake.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid... Paid. Used it for years. Just works. Integrates with my Hue lights. All kinds of settings including one that refuses to turn off the alarm if I don't use the NFC code in the bathroom (you can use QR codes as well as plain barcodes as well, just hide them away from reach from your bed.

That's the ONE paid Android App that i have been using for 5 years now. The only other paid "App" i use is Action Launcher 2 (3 didn't click for me).

Re: After the end of the startup era

#218

Post by fauigerzigerk »

adventured wrote: post #49
Cacti wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the argument that 1995 through 2015 was a cycle completely different from whatever the next one will be, is not without merit. I mean, it is easy to forget, but many, many things had to come together at one time in order for this to pop off like it did: * high speed internet * widespread consumer demand for high speed internet and services * multi-core, low-power hardware that gave us smartphones and cheapish "…

It is likely entirely without merit. Many thing had to come together from 1975 to 1995 to enable the things you're referencing. The list you made is not impressive versus the past, it's normal. What happened from 1995 to 2015 that was more important than the Internet, transistor, microprocessor, router, DRAM or the GUI? Good luck resolving that debate. Many thing had to to come together from 1955 to 1975 to.... I don…

That's right, and I'm not at all convinced that the author of the TechCrunch article is correct.

But there is one important difference between the past 20 years and the 20 years before that. The number of people participating in a self-employed or entrepreneurial role has been far greater in the past two decades than before.

We did see some of that during the PC revolution as well, but it was disproportionally smaller in scale.

I haven't done the research to say whether there were historical periods before in which such large swaths of the population were gripped by the idea that they could start their own business based on a new technology.

It's possible that it happened before, but I don't think it was like that between 1975 and 1995. Certainly not towards the end of that period because I would remember.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#219

Post by andreasgonewild »

asadlionpk wrote: post #133
andreasgonewild wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This boils down to a fundamental divide in life view. Anyone who has done any amount of expanding their consciousness will tell you that there is a ghost in the machine. It's always a mistake to assume that all you can see is all there is to see.

I do some AI work and recently have been thinking on this, can you expand on this. Or point me to the right direction regarding this idea.

It's always there for anyone to grab. Try lying on your back with all your gadgets turned off and eyes closed; and observe your brain thinking for a while; which is about as difficult as meditation needs to be. Might take some practice to not identify with the thoughts and get carried away, or to not block yourself by trying too hard. Then ask yourself while lying there: Who am I? Literally :) Who is observing the thoughts? The experience is not of this world, it can't be transferred using words. There are other ways to get a glimpse, mushrooms, ayahuasca etc; but introspection is the way to go for lasting results. I spent 32 years writing software, and I just know that a computer will never be able to do the same thing.

Re: After the end of the startup era

#220

Post by andreasgonewild »

bobsil1 wrote: post #123
andreasgonewild wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This boils down to a fundamental divide in life view. Anyone who has done any amount of expanding their consciousness will tell you that there is a ghost in the machine. It's always a mistake to assume that all you can see is all there is to see.

I am a materialist, there is no magic :)

You are also most probably human, have you even bothered to have a look inside?
Post reply on HN