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Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

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Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#51

Post by jgmmo »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #44
jgmmo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Pixar didn't come from Apple. It came from folks who left Disney. Then Steve Jobs, as himself - not Apple - invested in Pixar.

This is not true. Pixar was originally Lucasfilm's computer graphics division lead by Ed Catmull. It was separated and sold to Steve Jobs.

True or False, the guys running Pixar were ex-disney cartoonists?

What does it matter if they were a division of lucasfilm when Steve Jobs became majority shareholder?

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#53

Post by tsunamifury »

foobarqux wrote: post #46
gumby wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly nerds admittedly) are routinely in…

> Product managers have a lot of sway Can you elaborate on what you mean to say here? Is it that PMs have a lot of influence compared to engineers?

PMs who have no technical, design or marketing skills have used their free time time monopolize the time of executives with process loops in order to arbitrage credit and "responsibility".

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#54

Post by jgmmo »

Retric wrote: post #37
jgmmo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Pixar didn't come from Apple. It came from folks who left Disney. Then Steve Jobs, as himself - not Apple - invested in Pixar.

Pixar did not start up from a few random people leaving a company with a new idea. Jobs paid the company 5 million for the IP and then invested another 5 million to get things started. Granted, he sat on the board instead of being the CEO, but he was far from a hands off invester. Regularly investing more money and eventually becoming the CEO.

But you do understand Steve Jobs != Apple. In the argument about whether or not Apple has produced startups you said Pixar was an example, but that is not true. It's an example of Steve Jobs being entrepreneurial.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#55

Post by tsunamifury »

logicallee wrote: post #48
foobarqux wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Product managers have a lot of sway Can you elaborate on what you mean to say here? Is it that PMs have a lot of influence compared to engineers?

it's actually a funny statement given the definition of a product manager... it's like saying the CEO has a lot of sway over company policy. well, yeah.

PMs of old were supposed to be the smartest or most experienced people in the room. Now, mostly due to microsofts export of thousands of poorly trained politically savvy, they are infecting other companies.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#56

Post by steveax »

pvg wrote: post #6

Article doesn't seem to give any evidence of this. Apple's been around forever and former Apple (and NeXT, if you stick to the logic it's some sort of Jobsian startup-suppression field) employees have been involved in zillions of startups over the years. EA, Danger/Android, Nest, Flipboard come to mind.

Also JLG's Be Inc (BeOS)

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#57

Post by javier2 »

jsjohnst wrote: post #35
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #18

(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this) My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more pron…

I've a number of friends on various teams, from WebKit, to iOS, to datacenter folks, to various app teams, and hardware teams and not one has ever consistently worked a 40hr work week. Most are easily averaging 50-60, with spurts close to or over 100 before launches. Consistently the message I've heard is people are expected to "work till its ready", so I'm not sure where you'd have heard this about Apple.

How do people do that? I'm fairly new in the game, but right after Christmas I had to work 3 weeks, about 70 hours each in a row. I was _exhausted_ after that. By the end of the third week, my head was just spinning and I went on a low morale and creative drought for 3 months... I could barely code deserialisation functions without losing focus..

So basically, how do you do it and keep sane?!

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#58

Post by hkarthik »

foobarqux wrote: post #46
gumby wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your family.” I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly nerds admittedly) are routinely in…

> Product managers have a lot of sway Can you elaborate on what you mean to say here? Is it that PMs have a lot of influence compared to engineers?

In many companies, Product Managers act almost entirely towards their own self interests (launching innovative products, stamping their name on major initiatives, and generally one-upping each other along the way). Any leaders who push an agenda which would jeopardize their aspirations (like re-architecting cross-product infrastructure, addressing long standing technical issues, or improving customer experience) are quickly squashed by the cabal.

With the right top level executive strategy, Product Management can be leveraged for the greater good and keep the company's products fresh and exciting. However, when left to their own devices, they often shift focus towards their own self-interests to the detriment of their company's overall success.

Microsoft is often the most cited example, largely because of how the culture changed after Bill Gates stepped down from the CEO role.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#59

Post by sliverstorm »

derefr wrote: post #36
bomanbot wrote: post #19

Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to the startup world…

> rent out a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS I was pondering the viability of almost exactly this. Could one invest in a hardware pipeline that efficiently combines e.g. 3D printing with FPGAs to create the consumer-electronics equivalent of Lulu.com's just-in-time small-batch book printing + drop-shipping. Or, in other words: you can do pretty much anything with the sensors in a modern smartphone. All most manufactu…

There's a risk/flaw/gap with that plan. Modern consumer electronics depend on humongous volume discounts- 10x or even 100x- on parts, plus tremendous economies of scale on design & assembly.

JIT small-batch assembly seems roughly analogous to other low-volume electronics, which are obscenely expensive. For example, specialty bench equipment like spectrometers can cost as much as a house.. There are many factors at play there, but you can bet one of them is very low volumes.

This is why, at least so far, the kind of play you describe is accomplished with large batches of a generalizable platform that can be sold into many different devices.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#60

Post by Sir_Substance »

morgante wrote: post #43
gumby wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...harder to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass manufacturing innovation. Don't forget all the hardware companies you know today were once startups. Yes there's a current fashion to call companies that are basically small businesses "startups", but the term encompasses a far more profound class of enterprise. And Apple itself was founded by an engineer (Woz) who first got his start…

> Don't forget all the hardware companies you know today were once startups. Unfortunately the winds of VC have changed a lot since then. Originally, VCs were willing and eager to invest millions in a promising innovation. Now they expect you to demonstrate traction before any large investments—which is infinitely harder with hardware startups.

Really? I get the strong impression (what with people throwing the word bubble around and making regular comparisons to the dotcom era) that VC's are far less picky today then they were 10 years ago.
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