61–70 of 229 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone afraid of breaking a few rules isn't a founder. The lesson: create something people want. The rest will work itself out.
Right. And what about the people you hurt on the way to the top?
So a company that blatantly cheated will pay some fines and still be worth billions. The founders and early employees will all be rich, or richer than they were when they started. The investors will get a very healthy return. The lesson: break the rules and grow so fast that by the time regulators catch up, you can put on a show of reforming and still keep most of the value that you created. Admirable disruption or h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. And what about the people you hurt on the way to the top?
Some rules are victimless. Or downright nonsensical. I don't like this tone of moralizing regulation. As if being non-compliant is inherently unjust.
So a company that blatantly cheated will pay some fines and still be worth billions. The founders and early employees will all be rich, or richer than they were when they started. The investors will get a very healthy return. The lesson: break the rules and grow so fast that by the time regulators catch up, you can put on a show of reforming and still keep most of the value that you created. Admirable disruption or h…
Breaking rules to set up a sham business that scams and steals is one thing (and often the reason the rules exist). Breaking rules to create a product that most people like and find better than the alternative is completely different. Unfortunately many of the laws created in the name of "consumer protection" do little to protect anything but the entrenched interests that lobbied for the laws.
So a company that blatantly cheated will pay some fines and still be worth billions. The founders and early employees will all be rich, or richer than they were when they started. The investors will get a very healthy return. The lesson: break the rules and grow so fast that by the time regulators catch up, you can put on a show of reforming and still keep most of the value that you created. Admirable disruption or h…
Not that Aereo or Napster were cheaters, or even doing anything wrong, but they were engaged in technological efforts to bypass the intent of the laws on the books, and it didn't pay off.
So a company that blatantly cheated will pay some fines and still be worth billions. The founders and early employees will all be rich, or richer than they were when they started. The investors will get a very healthy return. The lesson: break the rules and grow so fast that by the time regulators catch up, you can put on a show of reforming and still keep most of the value that you created. Admirable disruption or h…
You sir are correct. I'm curious though; are there any really good solutions to this type of problem? You can't rewind time and go back and taking away all assets gained in such a manner, while doable, would pretty much put the company out of business even if they're willing to comply. Seems like there isn't really a good way to prevent companies from breaking the law. Well unless you do some sort of regular inspecti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with putting companies out of business? I understand that it ends up having impacts on people that aren't necessarily involved in the misbehavior, but it provides officers and investors a significant incentive to avoid wrongdoing.
The complication is that "wrongdoing" is in the eye of the beholder. Is Uber committing wrongdoing? The taxi companies certainly think so. Many municipalities think so. A lot of folks on Hacker News think so. But the folks who had a few too many beers and missed the last Caltrain and would otherwise drive home drunk if Uber didn't exist? The innocent folks that would otherwise have been killed by a drunk driver if Ub…
This is quite a stretch. Uber is eliminating drunk driving fatalities now? Those same people couldn't have called a cab before Uber existed?
> Zenefits uses its own product to manage its employees, and Conrad controlled the account, which meant he personally approved every benefits change or vacation request for hundreds of (later, more than 1,000) employees. “We have people in HR now, but they actually don’t have access to the HR system,” Conrad said in an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. “I do all of it myself. I’m a little crazy.”
Forget the Chrome extension, this is simply psychotic behavior.
> Dalgaard says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone—and I’ve seen a lot of people—think as comprehensively as [Conrad] did about the market he was going after and how to build his product.” And this level of gullibility mixed with greed is why the world economy is so jacked up. Did you stop to think its because you know nothing about insurance? Conrad went to Harvard? So that he was kicked out of his previous compa…
You can't know everything about someone's past and past actions don't necessarily dictate future actions, but to correct you slightly: Conrad says he failed out of Harvard, but then later returned to finish an arts degree in Chemistry. I believe Harvard has the highest pass rate of any university (except, perhaps, diploma mills), at 98%. Using a Harvard degree as overriding credentials is a misstep.
You appear to be assuming a rather uncharitable interpretation of this data, but there are, of course, a number of explanations for it.
So a company that blatantly cheated will pay some fines and still be worth billions. The founders and early employees will all be rich, or richer than they were when they started. The investors will get a very healthy return. The lesson: break the rules and grow so fast that by the time regulators catch up, you can put on a show of reforming and still keep most of the value that you created. Admirable disruption or h…
In short, the law they broke was learning the material too rapidly.
I'd happily call this admirable disruption. The real failure lies with the California regulators who made it a crime to click through a powerpoint too fast - unfortunately, unlike the CEO of zenefits, they kept their job.