The last paragraph of this article is where the inanity of this tiring line of thinking really exposes itself.
Coding a a travel search engine in node.js might titillate a hacker, but what on earth does that have to do with a founding a successful startup when compared to things like product design, marketing, user experience, market targeting, etc? Not a whole lot. Which is to say that no one set of priorities or roles within a startup should be catered to or worshipped, at the cost of sound strategy and direction for a startup.
Painting hackers as primadonnas who must be woo'd and courted as the top caste of the startup community doesn't do hackers any favors, let alone all of the other players necessary in a successful startup.
As someone who fits this skillset and aspires to fill this kind of role at a web startup, can someone tell me what the qualifications are to actually be this person?
I think the article makes valid points, but it seems to me that if anyone ever proposed to fill this kind of role, they'd be roundly ridiculed as the stereotypical "ideas" douchebag who has no real skills to offer (as is often the case on HN).
How do you legitimately lay claim to this skillset and set of responsibilities?
I don't think it's difficult to understand at all. The way I would describe it is: about.me with different design and a focus (though not exclusively) on mobile devices.
Yes, I do. I think it's pretty logical to assume that you would begin to see many more money managers and executives as you go down the list. But I don't really see what that's getting at.
The point is that the same people doing the same things are getting much more than they used, and it's a direct result of actual policy changes. I'm not sure why identifying these people as individuals and professions is all that relevant. But do I think that tech entrepreneurs are a minority in those few million people? Yes. Call me crazy.
I think the real question is: Do you have reason to believe that the pretty well-documented overhaul of tax, monetary, and regulatory policy that has taken place in this country over the last few decades didn't actually happen?
If so, that's a conspiracy I'd love to hear about.
Come on. I think you very well know that the superrich class being discussed is more than just the Forbes 400. It's about the top 1% or 5%. There's a whole lot of room beneath these 400 people that take up space in this class of superrich that has grown in the past 30 years at the expense of everyone else. The Forbes list just validates that the way to make the absolute most money is to start a company. And that's great. But again, irrelevant.
Here's some quick research you could've done to test YOUR hunch:
"These numbers actually understate the wealth of America’s top 1 percenters. Each Fed Survey of Consumer Finances, as Kennickell notes, specifically excludes from the survey sample any of the people wealthy enough to make the most recent Forbes 400 list of America’s richest. In 2007, the Forbes 400 held a collective net worth of $1.5 trillion.
But in 2007, even without the fortunes of the Forbes 400, the top 1 percent still held a whopping 33.8 percent of America's total family wealth. Families in the bottom 90, all together, only held 28.5 percent."
The cases you cite -- tech entrepreneurs whose startups generate vast wealth -- aren't really that relevant to Rich's argument.
While I guess they do make up a portion of this class of superrich (without any research, my hunch is a small portion), the larger problem Rich describes is that society just isn't rewarding people the way it used to, and that there's been a deliberate rigging of the system for the past 30 years that is allocating capital in the hands of a very select few. Pretending like those few are all Zucks and Sergeys is a deliberate misreading and has nothing to do with this problem.
I think your reaction to this, judging from your writing, comes from the fact that you are very much surrounded in a culture of startups and tech innovation, where money is made by creating new things and expanding the pie, not reallocating its slices. That's great, but isn't a reason to deny some obvious -- and depressing -- realities about what's happening to America's social and economic fabric.
The tech startup scene may be a bright light in this pretty dark trend, but is not a reason to deny the trend exists.
Lastly, this is bad for startups. The allocation of capital based on merit is the linchpin of an innovative and growing economy, and the lifeblood of what you do day in, day out. You really should be on the other side of this argument.
Not till I read this post and the ensuing comments.
Snark aside, it would be helpful (and more interesting) if you at least elaborated on what you found displeasing, and perhaps even some ideas on how to improve it.
While I think this is a fine question for discussion on HN, you have to understand that 99% of HN users are clearly going to recommend the for profit route. HN is all about startup culture -- building, iterating, and constantly exposing yourself to market forces to see what works. It's the basic principle that everyone here lives and works by.
I happen to share that opinion, but perhaps my opinion might have added value because I've spent years in the DC nonprofit world you mentioned. And I can say from experience that the non profit structure as it is conceived by most organizations today is detrimental to innovation and success. Non profit advocacy is broken. This is obviously a huge topic, but I will quickly just comment on your specific situation.
Your startup is a content play, right? Never mind the subject matter. Sure, it's about do-gooder environmental stuff, but at the end of the day, you have to play by the same rules as all other content providers. Whether you like it or not, you are competing with HuffPo, TMZ, I Can Haz Cheezburger, etc etc. You are competing for people's attention. Going the non profit route just seems like a way to fool yourself into thinking you are insulated from market forces, when there's truly no insulating yourself from them. So why fool yourself. Expose yourself to the market, it will make you better and will give you a clearer and quicker picture of what works and what doesn't. The idea that things that make the world a better place shouldn't have to play by the same rules is BS. That's just a good way for an organization to die a slow, clueless death.
My two cents. But this is HN, so what did you expect? :)
Very valid point, most petitions are in fact a sham.
But given that exercises like these are incredibly important to the viability of organizations -- organizations whose mission/cause/work you presumably agree with -- wouldn't it be pretty bad if everyone just stopped taking part in these?
The bottom line is that these petitions work and allow organizations to carry out a mission that their members do in fact support, whether or not the petition is a sham. It's definitely a problem that they have to resort to doing crap like this, but until there is a better way, I don't see what else they can do.
I guess what sets HN apart is the premium it places on quality rather than growth/traffic. And that it caters to a specific niche rather than a bunch of disparate, mainstream topics. So the question is if it could still do well given those differences.
I think that's a pretty fair example. But reddit is much less lean of an operation than HN.
Would Reddit be considered more successful if it was a leaner organization? They say in that post that revenues aren't great, but I wonder if that has more to do with the size/nature of the reddit operation.
If it isn't, then my questions is: are they just not doing a good job of monetizing, or is it just very difficult to monetize that kind of site?
Cool idea. One little thing I just noticed: when I click on an autocomplete term in the search field, it doesn't initiate the search. I have to hit the search button. Just a small user experience thing.
One slightly bigger thing: While it's a cool idea, it leaves me wondering why I should use this instead of googling "[specific dish/recipe] videos." Google gives me a lot more videos than this site does right now.
But if you can crack that and offer something new in the area of cooking instruction videos, you'll definitely have something, since cooking videos are really popular.
It's a cool implementation, but I see one major flaw: unlike HN and other social news/submission sites, its popularity ranking doesn't seem to factor in when items were submitted.
Hence, if you take a look, the top three items there were submitted 3 months, 4 months, and one year ago, respectively. That might work for Best Buy's intentions, but generally that wouldn't make for a very sticky/relevant site. Would really like to see them incorporate date of submission into rankings.
Most of the philosophers we revere did exactly this -- define and put forth universal ideas for what is meaningful in life. No one is forcing these ideas on you, and it's easy to take shots at the "man in the arena" who steps forward to tackle a subject. I found it pretty interesting, as I had never thought much about the impact of this new class of "achievement" modern society has created.
These kinds of reactions only stifle dialogue and debate. I think it's generally understood that this is his opinion, and that he doesn't have designs to become a dictator and make this opinion the law of the land.
Coding a a travel search engine in node.js might titillate a hacker, but what on earth does that have to do with a founding a successful startup when compared to things like product design, marketing, user experience, market targeting, etc? Not a whole lot. Which is to say that no one set of priorities or roles within a startup should be catered to or worshipped, at the cost of sound strategy and direction for a startup.
Painting hackers as primadonnas who must be woo'd and courted as the top caste of the startup community doesn't do hackers any favors, let alone all of the other players necessary in a successful startup.