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Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#41

Post by ghobs91 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
closeparen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disrupting and extracting value from NIMBYs would definitely be on my personal “request for startups” list.

NIMBYs seems to be the new slur for "exerting property and voting rights". That's democracy and capitalism. There's a reason it's not in their backyard. It's their backyard.

If it was property rights, they'd be voting on what can be built on their own property. Instead, NIMBYs vote on what can be built in the surrounding neighborhood and beyond, as if the purchase of a home also includes a guarantee that everything around it can never change.

It's elitist gatekeeping and deep selfishness masked as "wanting to retain neighborhood character".

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#42

Post by landryraccoon »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
belligeront wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Exerting property rights' = preventing others from building on their property. 'Exerting voting rights' = zone newcomers, poor people, and apartment dwellers out of existence so they can't vote in our local elections.

Yes, those rights. If you’re a newcomer, buy where the community aligns with your development and density desires. Otherwise, go elsewhere. Don’t expect the community to change for you because you think your ideas are “better”. This isn’t meant to sound combative, these are just facts.

I’m afraid this reasoning totally falls flat for the SF bay area and other tech hubs. It can’t simultaneously both be the case that Google, Facebook, Uber, Apple and Microsoft are permitted to have outsized global influence and massive impact on communities everywhere AND Sf bay/seattle/wherever else gets to tell every other community to mind their own business because local communities should control their own culture.

Those companies themselves create the conditions that force tech workers everywhere to look for jobs in a few select cities.

That is the height of hypocrisy. The moment Google and Facebook stake out massive cultural monopolies is the moment the community they reside in has to give up a little bit for the well being of the larger national and global community.

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#43

Post by koboll »

ghobs91 wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYs seems to be the new slur for "exerting property and voting rights". That's democracy and capitalism. There's a reason it's not in their backyard. It's their backyard.

If it was property rights, they'd be voting on what can be built on their own property. Instead, NIMBYs vote on what can be built in the surrounding neighborhood and beyond, as if the purchase of a home also includes a guarantee that everything around it can never change. It's elitist gatekeeping and deep selfishness masked as "wanting to retain neighborhood character".

It's rational economic self-interest. This is why zoning regulation needs to come from jurisdictions higher than the local government.

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#44

Post by toomuchtodo »

landryraccoon wrote: post #42
toomuchtodo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, those rights. If you’re a newcomer, buy where the community aligns with your development and density desires. Otherwise, go elsewhere. Don’t expect the community to change for you because you think your ideas are “better”. This isn’t meant to sound combative, these are just facts.

I’m afraid this reasoning totally falls flat for the SF bay area and other tech hubs. It can’t simultaneously both be the case that Google, Facebook, Uber, Apple and Microsoft are permitted to have outsized global influence and massive impact on communities everywhere AND Sf bay/seattle/wherever else gets to tell every other community to mind their own business because local communities should control their own cultu…

I agree that tech companies are the problem, and the only solution is regulation to force them to decouple geography from their jobs. Those jobs could be done remotely or relocated to other communities, yet they dump the externalities on local communities. And this is the result.

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#45

Post by akhilcacharya »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #31
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

Perfectly encapsulated in this tweet: 18: Go to Harvard or Stanford for CS. 22: Work at FAANG companies. 25: Quit and raise millions for your startup. 26: Sell your company to a FAANG company/IPO 28: Join a VC firm, invest in people like you, and make predictions on Twitter all day. https://twitter.com/TheLexTimes/status/1105131411411886081

I think this has become outdated. From my experience FAANGs are largely filled with people who are risk-adverse, which is why it makes sense to me that the next gen of startups will come from alumni of successful unicorns given the risk-seeking attitude you had to have in the first place to join one of those cos earlier on. I mean how many ex—Amazon founders do you see? Probably not at all in proportion to the number…

>I mean how many ex—Amazon founders do you see? Probably not at all in proportion to the number of alumni relative to all VC funded cos.

Is there a reason to single out Amazon specifically? Because I’ve heard of lots of Xoogler founders and exFB founders.

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#46

Post by ghobs91 »

koboll wrote: post #43
ghobs91 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was property rights, they'd be voting on what can be built on their own property. Instead, NIMBYs vote on what can be built in the surrounding neighborhood and beyond, as if the purchase of a home also includes a guarantee that everything around it can never change. It's elitist gatekeeping and deep selfishness masked as "wanting to retain neighborhood character".

It's rational economic self-interest. This is why zoning regulation needs to come from jurisdictions higher than the local government.

Which is why I don't blame the NIMBY homeowners for doing it as much as I blame the current system for being designed to allow nonstop input from local groups. There is such a thing as too much democracy, and this is it.

Zoning should be made on the state or county level, and for every development that's planned to be built, if it follows the zoning, approve it. Enough of this nonsense "yeah it follows zoning but I don't like it".

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#47

Post by Jasper_ »

pdog wrote: post #17
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

Perfectly encapsulated in this tweet: 18: Go to Harvard or Stanford for CS. 22: Work at FAANG companies. 25: Quit and raise millions for your startup. 26: Sell your company to a FAANG company/IPO 28: Join a VC firm, invest in people like you, and make predictions on Twitter all day. https://twitter.com/TheLexTimes/status/1105131411411886081

I don't get it. Should highly capable people not pursue a lucrative career path?

When "success" means having your product shut down and getting yourself acquihired, we as an industry need to find a better definition of success.

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#48

Post by YaxelPerez »

koboll wrote: post #43
ghobs91 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was property rights, they'd be voting on what can be built on their own property. Instead, NIMBYs vote on what can be built in the surrounding neighborhood and beyond, as if the purchase of a home also includes a guarantee that everything around it can never change. It's elitist gatekeeping and deep selfishness masked as "wanting to retain neighborhood character".

It's rational economic self-interest. This is why zoning regulation needs to come from jurisdictions higher than the local government.

Like Japan: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html...

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#49

Post by yazaddaruvala »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
belligeront wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Exerting property rights' = preventing others from building on their property. 'Exerting voting rights' = zone newcomers, poor people, and apartment dwellers out of existence so they can't vote in our local elections.

Yes, those rights. If you’re a newcomer, buy where the community aligns with your development and density desires. Otherwise, go elsewhere. Don’t expect the community to change for you because you think your ideas are “better”. This isn’t meant to sound combative, these are just facts.

I’m genuinely curious what you think we should do about getting stuck in local optimums?

Allowing buildings to be 2x the height means, lower home prices in general but also the oldest owners have the worst views/property prices in the neighborhood. So optimizing locally, people should not want more homes built.

Meanwhile, 2x taller buildings mean, 2x the people can sleep at night and work in the morning boosting the economy without the inefficiency of a long commute, traffic, CO2, etc. I.e. long term improvements for a larger set of humans.

In the name of progress/innovation shouldn’t the calculation be based on ROI for humanity/environment/etc and not based on a locally popular vote?

Re: Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

#50

Post by closeparen »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
closeparen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disrupting and extracting value from NIMBYs would definitely be on my personal “request for startups” list.

NIMBYs seems to be the new slur for "exerting property and voting rights". That's democracy and capitalism. There's a reason it's not in their backyard. It's their backyard.

Allying with a few neighbors to defect against the rest of the world doesn't confer some kind of automatic "democratic and therefore good" quality on the behavior.
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