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I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

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Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#521

Post by throwaway132448 »

eries wrote: post #251
throwaway132448 wrote: post #38

Why do you anthropomorphize companies? Is it to absolve individuals of responsibility? > We've all experienced watching a company we love or admire be warped and broken beyond recognition; until it's a husk of its former self, or worse. I wanted to understand why. And I wanted to know what all of us can do to stop that from happening.

I happen to think that organizations are literally alive. They are superorganisms. To be more scientifically accurate, they are examples of the class of beings which are "emergent intelligence." I don't think there's any way to talk about this without running into the problem of anthropomorphization. So I tried to be really careful with it in the book. You'll have to judge for yourself if you think I got it right. An…

I think conflating emergent behaviour with life (let alone intelligence) as we had typically defined it, is unfortunate and obliterates a lot of nuance.

I’d much rather we let things burn more quickly - there’s nothing sacred about these companies and no reason to believe they should not be transient.

When you try to halt every small forest fire, like we have done since 2008, then uncontrolled destruction becomes inevitable.

You’re too emotionally and financially invested in the status quo to be an instrument of change.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#522

Post by archdang »

ramesh31 wrote: post #470
sdellis wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for being a good sport about my joke! And also thanks for answering a gazillion questions here on HN with care, patience, and curiosity. I have to say, to your first point, that exploitation (of humans, labor, resources, consumers, etc.) has always been the primary driver of accumulating large wealth under capitalism. Sure, "innovation" sometimes has a role in softening the blow, but let's be real. That was tr…

>"I have to say, to your first point, that exploitation (of humans, labor, resources, consumers, etc.) has always been the primary driver of accumulating large wealth under capitalism" Under all forms of human civilization, since the beginning of agriculture allowed one person to accumulate more cattle than another. Capitalism is actually a great equalizing force from that yoke - it allowed for the first time to get…

Meh, lazy thinking on religion and oversimplification of history. Yet, there's absolutely an argument to be made that capitalism has provided wider mobility than the Chinese bureaucratic system, the medieval church or merchant states provided before. But mobility is measurably worse in the US now than mid-century and we can and must do better.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#524

Post by nicksbg »

dominicrose wrote: post #513
nicksbg wrote: post #510

I think that for example Zuckerberg has built a structure where he is basically irreplaceable. It had to do with A/B shares where, while having a lot less shares, he made sure to have the controlling ones. While this is good while the founder is alive, it sort of begs the question how long will the company that has structure like that run after the founder is gone. I believe it could go to some family foundation that…

> this is good while the founder is alive Are we still talking about Facebook?

More or less unless you are considering Zuckerberg a cyborg. But jest aside, I was referring to a unique legal setup where he can not be forced out even if his decisions are catastrophically bad like whole thing with VR or good for shareholders.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#525

Post by davedx »

lebovic wrote: post #168

I worked at Anthropic, and I wouldn't attribute much to the structure itself – so I'm wary of using it as a positive example here. I do attribute a lot to specific people. Concretely, to much of the intitial team, who they recruited on the research/infra side, and some very close personal relationships within research/infra. That dynamic, paired with their unwillingness to accede to something against their values, is…

The policy decision to silently nerf AI/ML code produced by Fable surely wasn't just something "accidentally imported via a bad hire"? It seems to me like Anthropic wants to control who can develop frontier AI models. Maybe from inside Anthropic that seems like a noble mission, but from the outside it seems like downright shady anti-competitive behavior.

I saw in latest news the decision has been partially reversed -- because of external pressure...

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#527

Post by utopiah »

mehulashah wrote: post #135

Eric - I've worked for NASA, ATT, IBM, HP, Amazon, and Google, not to mention a couple of startups that I started in between. None of them (except the startups, but they were brief) stayed true to their original mission. I haven't read your new book, but IMO, it's because the founders leave and the next leadership don't share the vision or values of the founders in the same way. After all, a company is a collaboratio…

For NASA I don't know but all others that are private companies the "mission" is never "the mission". The mission is "making more money" and everything else, including the change in culture, is the result of how single focused "good" (according to the market) companies are.

I was pondering about a piece of wisdom people often say, roughly going like "Oh yes, invest in stocks, the market always goes up!" and even though technically true they forget to mention that it's the case because losers get kicked out. A company that doesn't performed is removed from the indices so sure, market goes up BECAUSE losers leave.

This isn't a moral stance by the way, just highlighting mechanisms to participate, and survive, in those environments.

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#528

Post by alfredz »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #474

I'll give you a read. If you haven't read it already, I strongly recommend the Knapp Commission Report. Its about police corruption in New York City in 1972, but its lessons on systemic and institutionalized corruption are highly transferable to other contexts. Probably the most common naive mistake I see is people thinking their subfield is special and they are the first to really notice / understand fraud within it…

[flagged]

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#529

Post by shever73 »

incompatible wrote: post #511
eries wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how many people love telling this story, both within and outside of Costco, I think it's more the former than the latter. One way you can tell is that the COO, who was cursed at in this story, later succeeded Sinegal as the CEO and, in fact, has gone on record defending that hot dog price many times.

I'm curious about how the story ends, did they cut the cost of making the hot dog, continue losing money on it, or give up and raise the price?

They manufactured their own hot dog manufacturing plant:

> "What we figured out we could do is build our own hot dog-manufacturing plant (in Los Angeles) and make our own Kirkland Signature hot dogs. Now we are doing so much hot dog business that we’ve opened up another plant in Chicago. By having the discipline to say, ‘You are not going to be able to raise your price. You have to figure it out,’ we took it over and started manufacturing our hot dogs. We keep it at $1.50 and make enough money to get a fair return."

https://www.425business.com/news/costco-ceo-craig-jelinek-on...

Re: I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA

#530

Post by incompatible »

shever73 wrote: post #529
incompatible wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about how the story ends, did they cut the cost of making the hot dog, continue losing money on it, or give up and raise the price?

They manufactured their own hot dog manufacturing plant: > "What we figured out we could do is build our own hot dog-manufacturing plant (in Los Angeles) and make our own Kirkland Signature hot dogs. Now we are doing so much hot dog business that we’ve opened up another plant in Chicago. By having the discipline to say, ‘You are not going to be able to raise your price. You have to figure it out,’ we took it over and…

Ah, vertical integration.
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