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Making Startups Powerful

paulgraham.com

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Re: Making Startups Powerful

#81

Post by epolanski »

dools wrote: post #67
ignoramous wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the essay. It is mostly about pivoting towards an outsized outcomes for founders & leveraging various avenues available to their advantage.

I don't mean less powerful relative to startup founders, I mean less powerful in terms of how we allocate resources in the economy.

Why would that be a good idea?

Greed has been clearly very efficient at allocating resources and money is the first resource of any business endeavour.

Politics and courts should frames and boundaries around that greed's reach, otherwise just let it alone.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#82

Post by epolanski »

justonenote wrote: post #27

We really need a change in mindset around what success means. Concentration of power, concentration of resources, concentration of market share are some measures of success. Out competing your rivals until you grind them into dust is some measure of success. This is the Peter Thiel and Bezos and to a large extent the ycombinator and PG philosophy of success. It's dressed up as "just innovation bro" whereas the truth…

> We really need a change in mindset around what success means.

How?

Wealth and power is all that society obsesses about and there's an endless list of suckers for people that appear to be wealthy or powerful. Hell, even this board is filled with rat races spamming how to climb the pyramid in companies I vomit just thinking about "oh, this is how I got promoted to L17 from L16" or bs like that.

Nobody's getting interviewed and hailed for saving the most lives in an Indian hospital or risking its life reporting in Gaza under constant Israeli bombs and shooting.

But sure there's endless content of how this or that startupper created yet another unicorn with some pointless B2B saas.

People want to hear and reflect and empathize with winners who have all, not with the "real" heroes impacting the world positively through sacrifice and pain.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#83

Post by dqh »

iterance wrote: post #74
howunfortunate wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sense is that it's context dependent. If you've got VC backing (or could soon) and are making deals in SF, the generosity path makes a lot of sense. Limited downside, infinite upside. You can afford generosity. If you're starting with $2000 and bootstrapping a textiles business out of Kolkata, it's a terrible idea, you're likely going to immediately get burned and never recover. (take with a grain of salt as I hav…

Generosity is not "giving stuff away for free when it hurts you badly to do so." Neither the giver nor the receiver are comfortable when generosity hurts the giver, and the dignity of both may be compromised as well. Generosity that is disrespectful of comfort and dignity is worth very little. A company with $2000 in its first few days need not give away $1000 to act generously.

Agreed. They can probably afford to invest time into delighting those early customers i.e. doing things that don’t scale.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#85

Post by dqh »

ignoramous wrote: post #78
dqh wrote: post #60

> Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O'Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. > Hired CEOS take the power of the companies they run for granted, whereas founders remember the days when the company was so weak that it had to delight users to survive. I'…

> always instinctively followed the generosity path > experienced that when customers are delighted and that when frictions are removed Charlie Munger: When other companies find ways to save money, they turn it into profit. [Costco] passes it on to customers. It’s almost a religious duty. [They] sacrifice short-term profits for long-term success”. > not always been able to convince others Many different ways to condu…

Thank you for these references, I really appreciate it.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#86

Post by dools »

epolanski wrote: post #81
dools wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean less powerful relative to startup founders, I mean less powerful in terms of how we allocate resources in the economy.

Why would that be a good idea? Greed has been clearly very efficient at allocating resources and money is the first resource of any business endeavour. Politics and courts should frames and boundaries around that greed's reach, otherwise just let it alone.

Because when investors allocate resources based on the ability of those resources to generate a profitable return you end up with an increasing volume of resources being used in the service of fulfilling the needs of a decreasing number of people.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#87

Post by jheriko »

dqh wrote: post #60

> Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O'Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. > Hired CEOS take the power of the companies they run for granted, whereas founders remember the days when the company was so weak that it had to delight users to survive. I'…

[dead]

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#88

Post by argee »

ignoramous wrote: post #78
dqh wrote: post #60

> Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O'Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. > Hired CEOS take the power of the companies they run for granted, whereas founders remember the days when the company was so weak that it had to delight users to survive. I'…

> always instinctively followed the generosity path > experienced that when customers are delighted and that when frictions are removed Charlie Munger: When other companies find ways to save money, they turn it into profit. [Costco] passes it on to customers. It’s almost a religious duty. [They] sacrifice short-term profits for long-term success”. > not always been able to convince others Many different ways to condu…

Warren's response:

https://youtu.be/Z1sTs8wkAbw

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#89

Post by justonenote »

epolanski wrote: post #82
justonenote wrote: post #27

We really need a change in mindset around what success means. Concentration of power, concentration of resources, concentration of market share are some measures of success. Out competing your rivals until you grind them into dust is some measure of success. This is the Peter Thiel and Bezos and to a large extent the ycombinator and PG philosophy of success. It's dressed up as "just innovation bro" whereas the truth…

> We really need a change in mindset around what success means. How? Wealth and power is all that society obsesses about and there's an endless list of suckers for people that appear to be wealthy or powerful. Hell, even this board is filled with rat races spamming how to climb the pyramid in companies I vomit just thinking about "oh, this is how I got promoted to L17 from L16" or bs like that. Nobody's getting inter…

Religion

It doesn't need need to be tied to some mystical god, "music is my religion" is a phrase that has been used and is understood easily, and you can replace music with many other nouns, games, science, family, dog grooming, whatever.

You can kind of see this in the rise of weird internet cults around celebrities and obviously many IRL cults over the years, and I don't know if the frequency of weird cults has increased in the last 3 decades but I would take wild guess and say it has.

"Make religions cool again" is a bit of a hard sell considering worldwide events but unless we can come up with a better word for a shared value system where people sacrifice things they can gain, for the good of the group, I don't think there is a stronger word.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#90

Post by shimman »

epolanski wrote: post #80
jwilber wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Airbnb has been awful since 2022. Hotels always cheaper, easier, and better.

Airbnb is insanely expensive and I have to do everything myself. The only reason to choose it is because it has some great venue that Booking is missing, but it's very rare.

The only time I ever used AirBnB the host cancelled on me 2 days before my trip while I was scrambling to find a replacement. Absolutely awful user experience that truly offers nothing to people in their moments of extreme need.
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