Hard Startups - <AUTHOR> https://blog.samaltman.com/hard-startups <comment><USER2> The problem with startups building hard tech is it takes a long time to fail. Failures that take decades doesn't work in the startup model. Image working on a fusion reactor. It might take 25 years to fail. The failure may not be that your idea doesn't work, but because some other kind of reactor comes along that is a better business (ie, cheaper). At this point, you are now a world class expert at a technology that is not economically viable. But, you can't transfer that knowledge, or at least most of it. You are also now 50 years old, give or take. You don't have 25 years to work on the next hard problem. You certainly don't have time to fail again. Back in the day when lots of people worked on hard technology, they were paid well to _work_ on the problem; their life time earnings did not depend on creating a viable business. Because of that, they usually earned a pension, too. Because if you failed, you could retire comfortably, or, at least have enough to choose a second career that didn't pay as well. That model doesn't work for startups.

<comment><USER3> Right. Which is why government research is probably a better model for these world-changing basic technologies than Silicon Valley.

Ugh, can you imagine how bad TCP/IP would have sucked if it had been developed by venture capital funding?

<comment><USER4> There are a few examples of government agencies which can make many parallel bets, on the understanding that most will fail but a few may pay off big. But, by "a few examples", I actually just mean DARPA. I'm sure there are others, not many though.

Politics does not work well with "most of these projects failed". It's too easy of a target. Anything that failed, is an easy target for a congressman to take aim at as being "wasted", because in some sense that particular investment was wasted, in the same sense that every insurance payment is wasted except for the one right before you need insurance.

But, the logic behind "many long-shot bets in parallel" is inherently more difficult to explain in the political arena, which is why I think VC may actually be better at some of these kinds of things.

<comment><USER5> > I actually just mean DARPA

NASA is the obvious next example. They pay for a lot of esoteric stuff that once made they don't actually end up needing - but having paid the startup costs - end up contributing to other fields.

I think FEMA also does similar things though at a much less parallel (but a higher volume).

Most of the "regulate and promote an industry" (a dumb idea for structuring them but I digress) agencies also do this. The NRC for example does a lot of research on storing and recycling nuclear waste, but also on new nuclear technologies.

And other military agencies aren't worth leaving out. The army core of engineers pushes a lot of contractors to deliver unique solutions that end up getting resold, see the concrete barriers in Iraq.

<comment><USER6> IARPA, DTRA, SCO, DIU. The DoD spends like 50B a year in research and development.

NIH and CDMRP grant programs is several additional billion.

<comment><USER7> NIH is about 40 billion, and does a lot less development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an interesting perspective, but not one I found to be broadly shared by the dozens of VCs that I interacted with during fundraising. That we were doing a hard thing, despite having an experienced, capable, and "battle tested" founding team, as well as early revenue that was nothing to sneeze at, was very often a knock against us. Early on, it was kind of hard not to take this a bit personally, but that quickly gave way to shrewd calculating reality.

I think this is a perspective that's afforded to the VCs who have either the pockets or the connections to carry out the strategy that's called out in the OP. Namely, that the startup is probably going to need a lot of money to get to clear product-market fit/readiness before being able to really scale.

For the throngs of early-stage VCs out there who can't write Million Dollar checks more than a couple times a year, there's a built-in risk aversion to going after something "deep tech" shaped because they literally can't afford it.

What worked for us at the end of the day was essentially having larger, later- stage funds who'd been exposed to or burned by the problems we're solving go to bat for us, and also to find very focused & targeted VCs whose thesis about the future of the world aligned very strongly with ours. We're very happy with where things ended up.

One conflating problem I observed during fundraising was that as it became clear that finding thesis alignment was essential, many VCs go out of their way to appear very generic in their thesis. Though others are great about being very specific. When you find a fund that invests in say biotech, they're often really up front about that in numerous obvious ways from their website, to the background of their partners, to their investment portfolio. As a founder not explicitly targeting biotech it is then easy to filter out.

However, when it's not so cut and dry (I assume because many VCs want as much deal flow as possible), it actually makes the problem worse for both parties. Founders waste time targeting VCs that don't make much sense, and VCs waste time talking to founders that don't make much sense, but there's a natural tension because you're both living & dying based on matchmaking with each other, and so it feels like you're doing something really irresponsible by clearly signaling and constraining ahead of time who you'll talk to. Because, "What if...?"

I learned a ton from the process. It's a really odd knowledge base to have that's useful in almost no other situation.

<comment><USER9> Interesting thoughts. Since you apparently have significant experience raising VC funding, I'm curious about your opinion on the following (others, of course, are welcome to chime in). If you were working on a deep tech (science- based) startup and considered using venture capital, would you _prefer_ pitching your idea(s) to VCs, who happen to have relevant domain expertise (most likely, as their educational background) due to potentially being enthusiastic about relevant domain and problems as well as having better understanding of an industry and having some (additional) connections or, on the contrary, _avoid_ such VCs as potentially being "biased" and/or having less enthusiasm / belief in probability of solving relevant problems and, subsequently, the success of the venture? (For the purpose of this question, assume that the market need is validated.)

<comment><USER8> You want to pitch to VCs who you can get to believe you're solving a real problem that exists (or will obviously exist) in the market, the solution to that problem that you're providing scales super-linearly when money is added to the pot (i.e. is a product, not a service), and that the actual market opportunity is huge in total Dollars.

It helps then if they're familiar-ish with the markets you're addressing so they'll be aware of some of the challenges and sizing considerations (we talked to many, many VCs who just had no idea how big markets were outside the ones they were familiar with, like the enormity of the "Operational Technology" market compared to the IT market), and also that you can clearly articulate what you're making is an actual repeatable product to sell.

The most important thing to remember is that VCs want to make money, your ideas are just a path to making money, so your #1 job is to show them how they're going to make lots of money, not show them how clever your ideas are.

<comment><USER9> I appreciate you sharing your opinion. So, essentially, you don't seem to think that potential cons of approaching VCs with domain knowledge that I mentioned above (inherent "bias" and lack of belief in possibility of certain solutions) outweigh relevant potential pros. Regarding other aspects, I certainly realize VCs' market size and financial upside considerations.

<comment><USER8> It could present issues if you're speaking to a particularly disagreeable VC, but you're unlikely to convince that person anyway. They've decided they've got an axe to grind and they're going to use you as the grindstone.

If you're in a situation where you're having to overcome objections in your pitch, most of the time you've already lost, and you should just move on. The goal for your pitch is to figure out how to sidestep or head off at the pass any of the objections you've heard before.

<comment><USER9> Understood, thank you. I agree with your points. However, just to clarify, the basis for my original question is whether it is possible to predict VCs' "(dis)agreeableness", based on their domain expertise or lack thereof. I appreciate your opinion and look forward to hearing more thoughts from this community.

<comment><USER8> That I don't think is likely to be any kind of stable predictor. It has more to do with their personality than their background as near as I can tell.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough. Keeping this in mind, I think that I should do my best to refocus on working more on validating my ideas as opposed to over-analyzing potential funding issues that might or might not happen down the road. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Before I started Submotion, I did a fairly thorough analysis of what kind of startup I wanted to create.

I decided that I wanted to create something that

\- was B2B. Consumers are fickle, things can explode but they can also go out of style just as fast. It's more sexy and makes for better smalltalk but my assessment is that they are much more difficult to grow predictably.

\- targets SME's. I am somewhat extroverted for a developer, but I will never be the type who goes golfing with CEO's to close deals. Million-dollar deals is not my game, I will go for higher numbers of small ones.

\- targets tech-savy businesses. Because I speak their language, I understand their needs and I stay in the loop of their world out of curiosity, not because I need to keep up with my industry.

The problem is neither hard nor easy, by the definitions of this article. It's deterministic; there's just a bunch of work to be done. I'm doing it. It's slowly evolving. This is definitely a reflection of me being 40 when I started it, it's somewhat boring but that suits me perfectly :-)

<comment><USER11> HNCS (Hacker News Comment Section) is turning into AWZ (A WarZone) with these acronyms.

Here are some definitions of acronyms:

B2B: Business to business.

SME: Small and Medium Enterprise? Subject Matter Expert?

CRUD: Create Read Update Delete.

B2SMB: Business to Small Business?

CEO: Chief exec officer, SEO: search engine optimization, they have nothing to do with one another.

VC: venture capital

I'm not sure what SME means, that's why I posted this.

<comment><USER12> Yes, SME is subject matter expert.

<comment><USER13> In this context I assume it's Small or Medium Enterprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Counterpoint: If you're looking for a life-changing outcome you probably shouldn't work on a hard startup until after you've already saved some money working somewhere else -- like at least spend two years somewhere stable so you can get approved for a mortgage. Investors in hard startups are often more like patrons who don't really understand the tech in which they are investing. They probably got their first taste at money from selling a software app and then invested that money in other "easy" software startups until they had enough money to patronize your quantum computing project. Think of the clout they are generating from magnanimously throwing money at PhDs they've convinced to waste their lives in a field that will never produce practical outcomes. When there's an economic downturn, the investor will still be rich, just not enough to continue patronizing your project. The PhDs may scrape by somehow or eventually be overcome by the existential dread that they should have worked on something with fewer hurdles and higher probability of success so they pivot to work on a location sharing app or venture capital investing.

<comment><USER15> Are you talking about Jim Simons and the Flatiron institute right here? In his case at least, he is paying pretty well.

<comment><USER16> Rentec is the polar opposite of "easy software"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel like the money quote was buried in the postscript.

> Another solution to this problem is to think about startups that can become > quite successful with less than ten people. As compensation packages from > the giant tech companies continue to increase, I suspect this will become a > trend.

As cash comp at big public companies grow and the future value of startup options plummet, we need to start thinking about different ways to start businesses, and this feels like the right solution to me. Starting a company with 10 competent people that I enjoy being around and targeting $5-10mm in revenue sounds perfect. Maybe $10mm isn't reasonable, but even if we hit 1/4th of that amount, it's still plenty to support a small company.

<comment><USER18> Is 2.5mm really viable for 10 people within SF Bay Area? That would mean compensation would be around $250k per person (not including payroll taxes, office rent, and whatever else cuts into that). That's distant from the compensation packages being given out by Big N.

<comment><USER19> I would take a pay cut if it meant working with a high talent concentration team that was small enough to be agile end to end in the full sales -> ops -> product/dev -> support cycle.

But that's a unicorn. You don't find a unicorn, you stumble upon it one day and miss the opportunity because you can't rationalize the fact that you actually saw a mythical creature.

<comment><USER20> It doesn't have to be a unicorn. Maybe it's incumbent on the rational participants in this community to figure out a way to do what you're describing. New business models can be even more valuable inventions than new technologies. Perhaps VC has run its course for business and engineering ICs who don't have preexisting wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's odd (read: motivated by self-interest) that he didn't make any attempt to establish the failure rate of these startups and the distribution of outcomes for employees.

Further, he didn't even argue for a referendum on equity comp. He's blatantly peddling the same broken model of "sell them your fugazzi so they can't tell their talent is being plundered for (founder/investor) economic gain". It's downright insulting. I'd like to read Altman's thoughts on making the cap table transparent to startup employees. I'm sure it'd be a riot.

So why is Altman saying any of this? Because he relies on the portfolio model. He doesn't care if 99 companies fail and the employees within them end up with squat as long as the 100th is an earth-shattering home run. And he needs the world to start taking more massive risks on YC's behalf, so they can keep making piles of bank. This is the incentive structure dictating EVERY single VC's calculus. No one should ever listen to them without understanding this. Incentives. Incentives. Incentives.

The "mission" doesn't matter to a rational person, for a very simple reason: the opportunity cost is the significant amount of wealth (reliably made somewhere like Google) that will afford you the cushion to do whatever you want later in life.

These guys need to get real. The highest EV play is to first get wealthy and THEN do what you want. And it doesn't even have to take that long (most competent engineers could be there by age 35-40).

Don't fall for their "mission" nonsense. It's a monstrous lie designed to keep funneling tremendous amounts of money to the people at the top.

<comment><USER21> Is it really so crazy that people might care about more things than money when considering what to work on?

If I were given the opportunity to go back in time and work at Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, I would probably do so even if paid no money at all. This seems rational to me, both in terms of how much knowledge I could accumulate and just the self-actualization of working on such interesting problems. I imagine the calculation for early employees at start-ups is similar.

<comment><USER22> A mission and a reasonable distribution of equity with fair terms do not need to be mutually exclusive, that's how I read the original comment.

If the C-levels are still getting massive chunks of equity with tiny strike prices while you get 0.01% and a 90-day post-termination exercise window and a massive AMT bill, then this talk of a "mission" is vacuous and likely a diversion from the fact that you as the employee are being under-compensated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I agree with most of this post. But there's one part he's wrong about. The most precious commodity is not talent. As he said "That year, probably over 1,000 photo sharing startups were funded". That means, when that original photo sharing startup was hiring, it could have filled every position x1000 times, if they could find all those candidates. That's an indication of a vast oversupply of talent.

The most precious commodity is Opportunity: Market opportunity.

And, I know, human desires are endless. But, (legally) solvable problems are not endless, they're currently in very very short supply. this is why we end up with start ups like juicero. out of desperation, entrepreneurs are forced to take on problems that aren't really problems because all the real problems are blocked by legislation/legality/monopoly: education, housing, transportation, medical insurance.

<comment><USER24> You envision a world with exactly one way to share photos? In this world, is there also only one word-sharing site?

I think there are more information problems out there than software engineers.

<comment><USER23> Consider this: every day on ProductHunt, we see dozens if not hundred new apps pumped out. How many of those succeed? Not very many. Why?

Each and every one of those apps was designed to solve a problem. So, why is there so little demand? It's because users already have another app/spreadsheet/website/solution/process that does something too similar and because their existing solution is good enough.

The fact that so many apps are being produced and fail to see traction is an indication of massive oversupply of solutions and talent. It's just too easy to produce yet another app, and so everyone does. this inevitably, must lead to an oversupply of solutions.

<comment><USER25> You're exactly right. Outside of deep deep tech (e.g. self-driving cars), you'd have to really, REALLY dig deep to find one or two startups that failed because of lack of technical talent.

Now consider how many startups failed because of lack of customer demand - nearly all of them.

This isn't just an indicator of an oversupply of talent, it also suggests an oversupply of capital. Cheap money lets you find talent, but it doesn't guarantee a path to a profitable business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What bothers me about Sam Altman's writing is the following:

1) He talks about X, X being an observation with survivorship bias painted all over it, but Sam Altman asserts as if it is true. Stop writing with authority over unsubstantiated claims - you can only be humble and say "Perhaps X is true because of my observations, take it with a grain salt".

2) Statements like "Easy startups are easy to start but hard to make successful." are fluffy with no real substance. I might as well read "How to become a millionaire" books.

3) Completely obvious observations: "Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step." You might as well say "When you are embarking on a startup endeavor, make sure it is successful". I can't help but exclaim "No shit!".

IMO these articles and blog posts offer zero advice of substance. I despise them very much. There is nothing to learn from it, this is like grocery store aisle tabloid version of the Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER27> The first point on your list is something that I come back fairly frequently when reading through blog posts like this, or (for example) listening to things like TED talks. I understand that there's a need to stand behind any given thesis, but it seems to me that there is often a lack of distinction between "I'm claiming this to be true primarily based on my experience" and "I'm claiming this to be true based on widely-accepted external factors, like peer-reviewed papers, industry standards, statistically-significant trends, etc.".

When people don't meaningfully differentiate between those two positions while communicating, it passes the burden of deciding which claims fall into which category onto the reader. And since I'm then unable to distinguish if the writer themself recognizes that difference, I find myself less easily able to give any of their claims the benefit of the doubt. That isn't a recipe for taking their advice or conclusions to heart.

<comment><USER26> I think you summarized it better than I could. When stating facts, be assertive and provide source. When stating opinions, state them as opinions, not facts.

As a reader, I wanna chuck the whole thing out of the window.

This is pretty common place - Harari's Sapiens suffers from this behavior excessively - I cannot read it and I don't understand why people like this book so much. Full of unsubstantiated claims.

<comment><USER27> I appreciate you saying that. I haven't read Sapiens, but since we're on HN, I figure it's worth mentioning that I think Paul Graham's writing wanders into this territory a lot. Hackers and Painters has been sitting only half-read on my shelf for a long time because I got too frustrated with it to continue for that exact reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Something that really bugs me about this is the lack of examples where this succeeds. In my mind, a good one is Intel. To that end, how many microprocessor startups actually ended up succeeding at the same working on some fundamental and challenging things? Also, the thing about hard startups is there is a lot of luck involved. Counter to what the author is saying, you do need a degree or some level of measurable expertise to start a hard startup, because not only do you need the expertise, you also need the credibility to get people to work with you and you need that solid team to get funding.

The reality is, many "hard" startups actually were things birthed by experts in a field that got lucky enough to have the right expertise at the right time, but also managed to derisk many aspects of the business by being experts.

<comment><USER29> > _Counter to what the author is saying, you do need a degree or some level of > measurable expertise to start a hard startup, because not only do you need > the expertise, you also need the credibility to get people to work with you > and you need that solid team to get funding._

Interestingly, this criterion causes Microsoft to be in the "Easy Startup" column. (Facebook too, but that seems more correct.)

The Elizabeth Holmes example is also interesting to consider. Lack of degree in a hard field was no barrier to raising a ton of money.

> _In my mind, a good one is Intel. To that end, how many microprocessor > startups actually ended up succeeding at the same working on some > fundamental and challenging things?_

Nit: Intel's first products were memory, not CPUs.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=intel+first+product&oq=intel...](https://www.google.com/search?q=intel+first+product&oq=intel+first+pro&aqs=chrome.2.0j69i57j0l6.5384j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) )

<comment><USER28> Elizabeth was doing a degree in a hard field and had the credibility of her supervisor to lean on, plus a whole host of questionable motivations from those who invested in Theranos. Funny enough, the degreeless founder in a hard startup turned out to be a fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find these 'Valley Koans' popularised in the last long while to be a little troublesome.

Things like 0->1->n Do things that don't scale Andreesen Horowitz bit on 'The Good Ideas That Seem Bad' Paul G's essays.

They all have nice little nuggets of wisdom, but what the almost always lack are good examples and concrete evidence.

Funny that many HN comments are better researched than a lot of these 'Deep Thoughts'.

Since these guys have access to startup data like nobody else, golly, wouldn't it be nice to see examples and break-downs?

i.e. here's 1000 YC startups, and how they categorise in terms of 'hard/simple' problems. Here's their trajectory. Here's some mitigating factors etc..

The reason I write this is because of my flinch on this note from Sam. He's worth listening to, absolutely, but that doesn't mean we can't disagree.

The problem with his thesis is that YC makes all their money from very regular businesses.

There is no 'magic' to Stripe. It's a really great product that did mostly what previous products did, with a much cleaner API that devs loved. This is not koolaid/AI kind of stuff. For pragmatically minded people, yes, it does seem like it could 'really help change the world', but really ... it's not sexy.

AirBnB because it's more consumer, yes, I can see some koolaid about 'sharing' etc. but again I don't think it's in the category of 'tough problems'.

DoorDash, Instacart, Dropbox, Faire, Brex, Flexport, Checkr, Mixpanel.

So many of the big YC companies are solving regular kinds of business problems, in big market places.

The 'heady' startup would be 'Cruise' but that was an odd man out for a few reasons.

All the things it would seem to me that Engineers would _really_ like to solve are not quite on that top list. The 'coolest tech' YC startups aren't really the big hits.

<comment><USER31> The biggest "deep problem"-type leaps in the past few decades have been due to innovations in technological infrastructure: the advent of the internet, GPS, and smartphone for example. All three innovations benefited from the positive externalities of government funding, as well as routine R&D and large corporations. The entities that collectively solved those hard problems only captured a fraction of the profits/benefits of their innovations.

The quickest route to success for a "hard problem" startup is to see the obvious Next Big Thing that is still in early adoption phases, and find the best way to translate it to the broader market. I know, that's not solving a hard problem in the same sense as the OP, but I think it's an underrated strategy with a quicker feedback loop and higher likelihood of success.

What's the Next Big Thing? One of them is AR combined with AI, cloud- computing, and 5G for real-time rendering of 3D objects. That will enable so many incredible things. Imagine the most profitable possibilities, for software, peripherals, physical objects that play a part in the new physical- digital realm, etc...and start hacking now. By the time AR devices are mainstream, you'll be ready to profit immensely while everyone else is scrambling to learn the fundamentals of AR.

VR is fairly mediocre right now. Of course, you know it will get better. However, do you think you correctly predict the magnitude and speed of that change? It's fairly likely that VR will be very, very good in the next ten years. If you're ready for that scenario, you can strike gold.

Self-driving cars are another Next Big Thing. Right now all the attention is on Velodyne, Waymo, etc...and those are promising companies. However, there's plenty of room for startups in that space. Anticipate how self-driving cars will change the world, and profit off of that change. That can make you rich.

I'd rather ride the tsunami of new technologies than try to capture the energy from late-stage ambient tidal waves (such as making another camera app, or a niche ERP tool for enterprise). On the other side of the spectrum, it's noble to try to invent the Next Big Thing yourself, but the odds are against you even if you're extremely smart. You might be just as likely to stumble into the Next Big Thing doing routine work at a big company.

<comment><USER32> Second mouse gets the cheese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "If you want to start a company working on a better way to build homes, gene editing, artificial general intelligence, a new education system, or carbon sequestration, you may actually be able to get it funded, even if you don't have a degree or much experience."

I encourage anyone to give hard startups a shot, but there are tons of PhDs/Postdocs out there who would make amazing founders -- they should make the leap! Often feels to me like recent undergraduates get more encouragement to launch startups than recent PhDs/postdocs -- which is a weird miss especially when it comes to hard startups where PhDs have the advantage of deep understanding of a hard field.

<comment><USER34> I'm currently in the research phase for an idea using algae/other plants that sequester CO2 rapidly and continue to have questions, which lead to more questions. Thankfully there is a ton of research that has been done, which makes diving into the topic easy. But having someone to work with that has a PhD/postdoc in this area could help build the idea faster.

How can I meet someone with a PhD/postdoc in a specific field? Should I just browse ASU for PhD students or look at specific universities and areas.

<comment><USER35> I suggest you look at algae that live in highly alkaline lakes, like soda lakes in Africa. The high pH means the water scrubs CO2 from the air, which is then available (as carbonate and bicarbonate) for the algae to use.

(Mass transfer is an underappreciated limit on photosynthesis. A corn field in still air becomes CO2 limited pretty quickly in bright sunlight.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A colleague of mine more than a decade ago started a company in the alternative energy space with very interesting yet extremely difficult and unproven technology. It took them a decade to find out that the performance of the technology was not quite good enough to be commercially successful.

He burned perhaps a third of his working life grinding away on something that won't succeed - perhaps at all. Yes, there is some chance of a base hit OEM deal for a very niche application of the technology. But it's definitely not making anyone rich after so many years.

Hard startups are exciting and fun, but unless you are already rich, it may not be worth the risk. Comparatively, you could spin up and fail five times at an "easy tech" startup and perhaps have a greater overall chance of winning the one time that you need to win to make it all worthwhile.

<comment><USER37> VCs are incentivized to see more hard startups start. As a founder, I agree you don't want to be doing it, unless you life goal aligns with it or you are already rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Long-term-committed founders are indeed a big advantage to a business.

If you're committed to investing 20 years of your time into a startup, then you're self-funding a multi-$million Series A, just in terms of market value of your time.

Investors who spot a commited founder and buy in at pre-seed valuation are getting a deal.

</comment><comment><USER39> Just 10 years ago the dominant message was, startups today are lucky that they are easy and cheap to spin up. It makes testing hypothesis easy. That brought in a flood of small angel and seed investors with thousands of bonkers ideas.

When I think of hard startups, I think of FitBit, GoPro, or even Oculus. Yet, all those companies did was prove that people want fitness trackers or smart cameras, or screens wrapped around eyes.

Those companies early employees were all specialized PhD employees with very specific skill-sets. You aren't going to go to an 8 week bootcamp and come out able to contribute meaningful to the research needed to pull off those products. Sam is right, yes, you will have an enthusiastic group of people knocking on the door to work there, but the bar is exceptionally high to hire the people you need to be successful.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, AMD, Nvidia, etc, they are all paying top salaries with great perks to work on hard problems with the resources to be successful. Want to build custom servers, Amazon has a dedicated Gravitron engineering team and internal customers salivating at deploying them. Microsoft is currently already shipping AR glasses with a cohort of trained developers already able to write software for them. Apple, well, there's a rumor they are building an ARM laptop, and we know only Apple will be able to shift the industry in that direction. No hard startup could do that. On and on...

Anyway, not trying to be cynical, but I do think the problem is deeper and VCs will need to give huge initial rounds, with really long several years runways, just to bring in the talent needed to compete against the established players. Then, these hard startups need to be prepared for the sea of copycats who will swoop in for free after all the hard research was done.

Another example of what I mean by huge rounds: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/rivian-adds-1-3-billion- in...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/rivian-adds-1-3-billion-in-funding- for-its-electric-utility-and-adventure-vehicles/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Silicon Valley loves to shine its turds. And they love to believe their own stink about how much they're disrupting and changing the world. And yet the most funded startups are just car services and rooms-for-rent and song- sharing-apps and the next social media whatever. When the top 10 SV funded startups are solving really big problems, then I'll start believing this nonsense.

<comment><USER41> So where is the geographic location that does fund hard problems?

SV $ is far from perfect but it is surprisingly audacious and fault tolerant.

A few examples old and young:

Genentech

SpaceX

Joby

TAE Technologies

<comment><USER40> The geographic location of the company or the money? These aren't the same thing.

* There's a lot more biotech in Boston than SV * There's even more biotech in Pennsylvania * Battery tech companies are all over the country * There's a ton of space tech in Texas and Mississippi. Yes, Mississippi. And Florida. * Telecom? Look outside the US for strength * Cybersecurity? Maryland. Virgnia. and Israel. * AI? Literally every major country in the world. * Advanced materials? So many places.

Increasingly SV has less and less to offer. Maybe raw money, but I thought companies were looking for smart money, not dumb money.

<comment><USER42> You specifically reference funding, so I would assume he's referring to VC capital allocation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This seems very related to the blog post that introduced me to Paul Graham, and in turn Hacker News, about a phenomenon he calls Schlep Blindness.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

I would be curious what people think today's most obvious schelps or hard problems are? Nuclear Fission as in OPs post is cool, but Im thinking more along the lines of something a team of competent developers could do.

<comment><USER44> I feel like one of the hardest problems in tech is making search engine that credibly competes with Google.

It's not just because the tech is hard (and it is), but also because they have some of the strongest network effects, user lock-in, and distribution deals.

It sounds almost dumb/crazy for people to try, but there is a newer effort from Europe that I saw on HN recently (i.e. they've been working for ~5 years and are just starting to publicize). And I think PG has mentioned it a few times -- i.e. encouraged people to take on Google :)

BTW I think "schleps" are different than "hard startups". I think schleps are about raw effort where you kind of "know" you'll succeed at the end. It seems like most companies are hard because you don't know if what you're building will succeed, even if you build it.

edit: "new" search company is cliqz: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21724191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21724191)

<comment><USER45> _" It sounds almost dumb/crazy for people to try..."_

Timely comment. I hesitantly shared a "Show HN" this morning for an early search engine I have been working on.

I almost feel silly when I tell people about it because I realize it is such a crazy idea. It's obviously nowhere even close to being a competitor to anyone today, but I figure why not.

I have been lucky with two prior highly vertical startups, so I decided that my next project would involve asymmetric risk.

<comment><USER46> You should definitely connect with Chuck McManis.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ChuckMcM](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ChuckMcM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > _If you want to start a company working on a better way to build homes, gene > editing, artificial general intelligence, a new education system, or carbon > sequestration, you may actually be able to get it funded, even if you don't > have a degree or much experience._

Is this actually true? I have plenty of "hard startups" that I would love to work on. But these hard startups require far more investments and manpower, even to get to the MVP stage. As someone with minimal prior-startup-success and investor-contacts, I get the impression that no one is going to bet significant sums on me and my unproven idea. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER48> You're skipping over the previous sentence, which is that you convince people you're serious about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Solving hard problems is the trap of the genius. I know.

We want a simpler world, but create complex software to do that. All we are doing is moving the complexity under the rug somewhere else. The complexity is still there, warts and all.

Doing something mundane over a large surface area (quantity being the hard vector) is better than solving a really difficult problem that has little reach in terms of real-world value.

The complexity in my own startup is its multi-layered nature, solving multiple problems for multiple levels of ability. I'm still aware of the fail aspect, but one layer will succeed. I know this. I have a 10 year challenge, but sooner is better. I know for a fact what i'm doing isn't being done out in the wild apart from a couple of sporadic os projects badly implemented and a couple of small commercial ventures that kind-of work. On different products on different levels.

If you're going to put your eggs into one basket, make it the basket of n dimensions.

<comment><USER50> I am on a similar arc, attacking a multi-facet problem space and assuming some % of facets will fail. Would love to chat with someone on a similar path. Email me if you are interested in that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> > Few recruiting messages are as powerful (when true) as "the world needs > this, it won't happen any time soon if we don't do it, and we are much less > likely to succeed if you don't join."

This line would work on me if it the founder(s) and I were in the same boat. But when you have 20% and you won't even tell me what percent of the company my X shares are worth, your pitch only makes me thing "I'm less likely to be rich if you don't slave away for a really long time (and I might be a few million if we're modestly successful, and in that scenario you probably won't get anything)". When startup equity distribution becomes more like a pirate ship, where everybody gets X, and the captain gets 2X, then I'll buy into the "we're all in this together" pitch.

</comment><comment><USER52> Hard startup, huh?

Well, that's what I'm doing. I'm doing a SigInt startup to prevent PII breaches and things like this from happening: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/hacked-tornado-sirens-taken- of...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/hacked-tornado-sirens-taken-offline-in- two-texas-cities-ahead-of-major-storm/)

I've got a lineup of hardware with specific industry use cases. Right now, I'm the designer, hardware engineer, software engineer, and more. And right now, Only have around $2k of my own money in it, with possibly more on its way from grants and funds. All equity is ours.

</comment><comment><USER40> Unpopular opinion: Silicon Valley is in the beginning stages of a period of decline. There's lots of great entrepreneurial activity elsewhere, and for building these sorts of "hard startups", the truth is that SF and SV are not the best places to do it. People and rent simply cost too much, and the venture scene lacks depth in these areas.

<comment><USER53> I disagree, having worked both outside and in the Bay Area.

The network effects are unparalleled. We're paid far better (my salary nearly doubled when I moved to the Bay, my rent didn't). It's far easier to find quality talent and freelancers for startups than elsewhere.

But most importantly, the money and culture is here. Raising money outside of the VC scene here is orders of magnitude more difficult and you get far less for the time you spend.

And I could go on about how places I've been (South Florida, Chicago, Research Triad, etc) all claim to want to be the "next Silicon Valley" but they won't. Partly because SV didn't become the "next" anything, it garnered a unique culture that funded massive amounts of innovation, and anyone chasing a trend is too late. But mostly because the money and tech people in those cities are too cowardly to do anything truly innovative, by and large. There are outliers, of course. But frankly there's not a lot interesting going on anywhere outside the Bay and it pays way, way worse.

<comment><USER40> Not for the sort of "hard tech" that Samalt is talking about here. Those network effects aren't as prevalent for those working with nuclear fusion, or space tech, or advanced materials, or battery technology.

Yes, you can find lots of brogrammers cranking away at the next advanced app using React, etc. in the Silicon Valley / SF / Bay area and get paid better there for doing that sort of thing. For that, Silicon Valley has the tech in spades.

But if you want to start an advanced lightning company, for example, the Research Triangle (not Triad) that you refer to above is the place to do it. It's the home of CREE and many other LED innovators. Not Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> _> for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful_

Is this really true? I would hope so but apparently the definition of meaningful is different for everyone. From my point of view funding and talent has been allocated poorly in recent years.

<comment><USER55> I think most people are pretty good at retroactively creating a narrative around whatever they find themselves doing to imbue it with meaning and purpose.

I think most people do want to work on something meaningful, but few start with the purpose and then pursue that.

Then given the difficulty of actually getting into what you want (either access restrictions via things like admission, the randomness of technical interviews, or the thing you want not being very lucrative) - you're better off doing what you can until you have the money to be free. Unless you can tolerate lots of risk, don't worry that much about having a family, or have some existing family wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Another fairly common take on this is a preference for technical risk over business risk. For the VCs that are from the "real" technology era, there seems to be a distinct preference for "if you can solve the technical challenges, you'll mint gold" businesses over things like social networking which simply work or do not in a way that cannot be addressed by the addition of technical or business skill.

These companies tend to be very expensive and take 3Y or so to be tested on the market, so in a way they are not for people who want to follow the as- quick-as-possible MVP approach, but they also tend to have defensibility which your generic SaaS does not have.

</comment><comment><USER57> I love the spirit of this, but I'm not sure this reflects reality as well.

There are some examples that come to mind (boom, openai), but I think many more examples that have a different impetus.

The most common successful impetus i.m.o is "tinkering"

Playing, solving something lightly, and realize it's taking off like crazy.

I think this can be a better light to follow, because it removes the pressure of thinking of the excellent idea out of the bat. Just play, show stuff to users, and see where it grows.

Examples of these kind of successes: Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, YCombinator, PG's first startup, etc

</comment><comment><USER58> I find ycombinator to be acting completely ignorant of why and how it succeed. The whole notion that they can apply the techniques for an internet startup to hard things is bizarre. As the internet S curve comes to a close, new organizations should be built. Using ycombinator's name to launch unsuccessful startups is just asking to destroy Bs

<comment><USER49> So, oh wise one, what should we all be working on?

<comment><USER58> open a bunch of yc only clubs. Turn inward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> And the opposite end of the spectrum, if you want to get something going more quickly: [https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great- bu...](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great-business- ideas-ab51c3d51c)

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm almost thinking hard startups shouldn't exist. If a startup is considered hard, what is making it hard. Probably ecosystem / infrastructure. Maybe a good approach would be to ask the founder why timeline is so long or will cost so much. Once they answer those questions, ask them to build an "easier" startup that will be able to sustain itself and can (eventually) partner with the "hard" startup, which will only be launched once it becomes easy.

And I'm not saying do something different. I'm saying the "easier" startup would be built as a means to enabling the hard startup.

<comment><USER50> This is also how I think software engineering should be organized. But most orgs seem to want hard thing with big priority done now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> >The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it's often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one.

I completely disagree. It has nothing to do with being "easy" or "hard". It has everything to do with the RIGHT people heading the team of RIGHT people. Put RIGHT people together and you can solve both easiest and hardest problems out there.

Companies fail a lot of times because wrong people with wrong or little experience make executive decisions that ultimately destroy these companies.

Poor managers cant build and keep good teams together. Poor managers ultimately erase companies chances to succeed.

<comment><USER23> Consider this: When facebook came on the scene and made it super easy for developers to publish apps, what happened? A bazillion people all the sudden jumped in and next thing you knew, within less than a year, there were 100K+ apps in the app store. That's because, it was easy to do so, too easy. And this leads to a ton of competition. Now, imagine for a second, it was much harder: let's say only a 100 engineers in the world knew how to do it, then there'd be far fewer apps in the app store and far fewer competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I get his point, but it's not expressed well. It's not "easier to succeed." The chart effort/time has a different shape. Upfront effort is tremendous, and if you can get past that _then_ it gets easier.

</comment><comment><USER63> _"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."_

Seems like Sam Altman's hammer is startup investing, so he tries to solve everythin... even the most challenging/ambitious problems through those means.

Doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad approach, but that seems to be his bias.

It's worth having a more nuanced discussion. The current piece sounds more like cheerleading than advice.

<comment><USER64> Strong agree.

I found Sam Altman's writing on quora and followed it off-and-on long, long before I found out "who he is." And his advice is so overly-positive and one- note that, honestly, I thought he was a snake oil salesman or self-help guru. I would never have guessed he was actually a VC / successful entrepreneur.

Frankly, his arguments and writing continue to sound like Self-Help Guru shined through the lens of SV VC to me. Nuance isn't really on the table.

<comment><USER65> Agreed.

I remain amazed until today about his progression. He founded a startup to solve a white upper middle class "problem", raised millions for that, was lucky to get a little bit more when he sold out his startup's users' data to the greater fool and now runs around and tries to get rich off other peoples creativity and sweat through the VC vehicle. When I learned that he actually founded OpenAI that org lost almost all appeal to me.

So yes, it might not be too much of a stretch to picture him as the embodiment of the current silicon valley mindset and all its tech-hybris and duplicity.

<comment><USER66> As opposed to what, being a financial engineer or wealth manager? Or maybe he should be a real entrepreneur and open up a well managed brand of gas stations? Or build a better kitchen utensil? Or maybe leverage political relationships for tax abatements for major real estate deals?

Vs pushing people to strive for grand ideas, restructuring the greatest accelerator in SV history towards big, bold ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Also, when laying out your strategy, don't make the mistake of betting everything on the hard problem working quickly. Uber started as a taxi hailing service, not a self-driving taxi service, and that was the right plan.

Make a model that makes money now using low-risk tech/ops approaches so you have the money to build your flux capacitor to plug into the business you already built to unleash the phase II hard-tech-powered model.

</comment><comment><USER68> Sometimes it is serendipity that makes the biggest breakthrough, though... see for example the Ebola drug now, this same evening, seeming effective against Coronavirus... you as a VC can neither plan for nor invest in any given lab or boutique consultancy worldwide... and the bigger and bigger hammer thrown at hard nuts is just another way, a very expensive one and possibly unsustainable by VC?

<comment><USER35> They tested that drug against Feline Infectious Peritonitis, and it was highly effective (turning a cat death sentence into a 80% cure rate), but decided not to commercialize for that because the market was too small. I bet they're kicking themselves now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> > An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind...

Is that backwards? Wouldn't a tail wind represent "easier"?

<comment><USER70> Not backwards. The point he's making is that hard problems attract talent and capital, which makes them easier to keep going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> In sailing, don't you want wind from the side? With tailwind, you can't sail faster than the velocity of the wind.

<comment><USER72> Airplanes like tailwinds.

<comment><USER71> Not when they are starting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> This is basically drivel. My personal motto is "we chose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard!" The trend of startup failures has nothing to do with the difficulty of the problem they were trying to solve, and everything to do with the fact that smart people can spot when a startup is just a copy of something else already successful.

Yes, startups doing photos sharing apps increased after Instagram was created. That's because most people are idiots and just won't realize they aren't going to disrupt a new industry. Venture capitalists also frequently invest in failures because they too are idiots.

The reason there are only 2 startups trying to do cold fusion energy is because nobody has any clue on how to make that happen, where as social media apps can be designed and built in an assembly line.

Yes, trying to invent a new industry is infinitely harder, but for the most part we all know that startups aren't going to invent successful cold fusion. Either someone will invent it by accident, or some chemist/physicist is going to figure it out as part of a think tank funded by either the government or by one of the existing fortune 50 companies.

Picking a hard problem to solve can't make it easier for your startup to succeed because the hard startups are basically trying to get retardedly lucky. There is no mythical group of employees who you can identify as being the group who will invent cold fusion, which is why these kinds of startups always fail. Funding one of them is throwing money away, where as funding a photo sharing app has a small chance of breaking even if they at least have a unique selling point.

</comment><comment><USER74> I think Tesla, SpaceX is an indication of how much investor faith and strength of stomach is required in order to make things work.

But honestly, how many VCs would rather invest in something else than see 2 rocket launches fail in a row and getting laughed at?

</comment><comment><USER75> This is true: If I'm going to take a 40-50% paycut (or more) then I better damn well believe in their goal and mission, enough that their 1% equity will be valuable to me. It's on an emotional level, not a practical one.

</comment><comment><USER76> It's also true that "easy startups" can iterate into solving progressively harder problems.

The "hard" idea doesn't need to be the mission day one. Amazon was just an online bookstore at one time.

<comment><USER77> The set "easy problems iterated" is a subset of "hard problems" and I would argue a very small and uninteresting subset. Biotech, energy, next gen computing physics; I don't see any of those as iterating on a simple problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The problem with long term goals is that you've permanently screwed yourself if the goal is bad. With short term goals, you get unavoidable feedback quickly that keeps that from happening.

</comment><comment><USER78> Sometime those start-up gurus sound like self-help gurus.

</comment><comment><USER79> Im all-in on hard problems, but the startup echo system isn't. I have to self fund because I don't think there is funding available for projects that take time and don't have a fast ROI. To guild the kid of things that can disrupt the really big players: FAANG, big oil, Detroit, Boeing you need more time and need to solve harder problems. I find it curious that Elon Musk is such a hero in the startup world, when his companies had to be self funded for a long time because VCs don't want to invest in that kind of bets.

</comment><comment><USER80> Probably the hardest startups today tacle climate related problems. They face hard problems and the problem of not yet marketed demands.

</comment><comment><USER81> > Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you're doing.

Is it always the case that successful founders do this commitment?

</comment><comment><USER82> Or just don't be a huge noob and create a real business, without privileged funding.

</comment><comment><USER83> It would be nice if part of the ecosystem was structured more in terms of supporting founders who want to take on hard problems via way of dedicating their life to it. I'll provide my own perspective here in case anyone finds it interesting:

I've been working on my startup for 7 years now, and the damage it's done to my personal life and well-being has pretty much ground progress to a halt, with the exception of advances in thinking in certain areas, which has been nothing short of mind-blowing recently.

Of course, a large part of this is my own failure to plan instrumentally. Admittedly it's quite backwards to spend years planning the mid and high- levels first, then not have a solid plan to get from 0 to 1. Ending up there by accident is easier than you'd think.

Fortunately I now have a fully tractable, instrumental plan that goes from 0 to ripping the guts out of a couple FAANG-scale companies:

1\. Get a well-paying engineering job I'll probably hate, because money, quality of life, and sanity all have instrumental value. Hopefully keep the fire alive during this period.

2\. Work it for about two years, then raise a pre-seed round (at year 9!) to support myself for the next couple of years, while I embark on a formal pre- production phase, and possibly develop an up-to-date prototype/PoC.

3\. Potentially a seed round totaling a few million. Hire a few key people and put together a refined prototype/pitch over the course of a year, for a Series A that no high-caliber VC with sufficient funds could refuse.

4\. At year 12, raise a 100M+ Series A, with the caveat it's going to take about a decade to do properly, with further funding rounds along the way.

5\. Complete the journey, or at least achieve the intended objectives, a decade later at year 22.

\---

I'm well aware that sounds insane, mostly was just a writing exercise to underscore the timescales involved. The funding requirements are high because it's basically a blueprint for something that will become an indispensable part of people's every day life, and it consists of multiple verticals all woven together, sharing a common technology. Thinking about how to do this precisely was not trivial and took years.

End of the day I'd rather be skipping to step two, but I'm ironically out of time at this point. Job it is.

In retrospect, a proper plan would have been this:

a) Work a job until financially comfortable.

b) Do a smaller-scale startup or two.

c) Then dream big.

Hindsight is of course 20/20, and I suspect isolation, desperation, being depressed, being uncomfortable—all those things breed a level of ideation you might otherwise not encounter. It ain't recommended, though at least perhaps there's a silver lining.

\---

For the most part, the tractability of the plan has only increased with time, not decreased, and I don't view competition or someone else figuring it out as a threat.

The biggest threat I face actually, is some of my talent pool may be aging out. Of the 50 or so people I've kept an eye on for years and basically dream of hiring on a daily basis, a few key people are in or approaching their 60s.

On the bright side, if anyone ever doubts how committed I am in the long-term, it should be easy enough to simply respond that I'm moving so slow the people I want to hire may end up retiring before I can hire them!

<comment><USER63> > Get a well-paying engineering job I'll probably hate, because money, quality > of life, and sanity all have instrumental value. Hopefully keep the fire > alive during this period.

Based on what I've observed and heard in discussions (both IRL and on HN), keeping the fire alive over the years is a significant challenge. One key ingredient to that is finding the right community/people for healthy feedback (both positive and negative, as appropriate, over years).

<comment><USER83> For sure. I'm fortunate to at least have a couple friends I can bounce anything off, even if it's just talking to myself sometimes.

As far as keeping the fire alive, I've had little trouble thus far. In fact, the fire's done nothing but increase in intensity for the most part. However when you have a lot of free time, that's perhaps natural.

Being too tired to do anything else outside of job and a long-overdue social/romantic life is a very real concern. The other side of that coin is grinding to a halt on startup progress because my personal life is in tatters. I suppose it's like anything else, where you make time for whatever is most important and practice effective time management.

Arguably the more ambition you have, the better your time management must be. Which is ironic because some of the best ideation and thinking in my experience has come from a lack of structure. Then again, no reason one can't schedule unstructured thinking time when needed.

<comment><USER63> Lol, I feel ya! I'd love to chat more if you're interested (e-mail on my HN profile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Thanks Sam, I needed this reminder.

</comment><comment><USER85> Is Sam trying to write like PG?

</comment><comment><USER86> Translation: the only startups willing to play YC's sweatshop game are fruit flies; they want meatier deal flow. I doubt the founders of hard startups are that stupid.

</comment><comment><USER87> > If you want to start a company working on a better way to build homes, gene > editing, artificial general intelligence, a new education system, or carbon > sequestration, you may actually be able to get it funded

One of those is not like the others.

</comment><comment><USER88> > The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it's often easier to > succeed with a hard startup than an easy one.

For white male founders, yes. For a lot of others, they don't believe you can do something hard. Speaking from numerous fundraising experiences in which I got continually asked crappy "how do I believe you can do this" and even "what would you do if I do [bad thing]" type questions instead of growth questions.

I realize I'll probably get downvoted not just on Sand Hill road but on HN as well, but I believe this does need to be said.

<comment><USER89> Do you seriously think white male founders don't get asked these questions?</comment></comment>


The Ghost marketplace runs WordPress - <AUTHOR> http://marketplace.ghost.org/wp-login.php

<comment><USER2> Those who work on Ghost have always maintained that WordPress has become too focused on being a CMS instead of a blogging engine, so it would make sense that they would use it when they need a CMS.</comment>


'How to destroy surveillance capitalism,' a book-length rebuttal to S. Zuboff - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 <comment><USER2> The article ignores one of the biggest drivers of tech concentration, network effects. This is where 'tech exceptionalism' really stems from.

Facebook got big, not just from the failures of competitors or from acquiring them, but because the platform became more useful as more people joined. Network effects took over once Facebook hit a critical mass of users.

This happens with most social platforms, they either wither and slowly die or they hit a critical mass and grow towards monopolies. There is a reason everyone in a society speaks the same language. There is a reason why we only have a few operating systems. There is a reason everyone gravitated towards a few social platforms.

Enforcing antitrust laws is only a temporary fix. Unless everyone moves onto free and open source platforms where network effects can't hand control over to a central authority, this story will just repeat itself again and again with a new boogeyman each time.

This trend was identified 25 years ago. Before the internet took over business and before Facebook and Google were founded. [https://hbr.org/1996/07/increasing-returns-and-the-new- world...](https://hbr.org/1996/07/increasing-returns-and-the-new-world-of- business)

<comment><USER3> The question isn't how a network grows, but how it maintains it's dominance.

How did Facebook, for instance, avoid the fate of every prior social network? Its pivots (Instagram, WhatsApp, newsfeed, etc) were uniquely successful.

Why? How?

<comment><USER4> > How did Facebook, for instance, avoid the fate of every prior social > network?

By buying its competitors.

The complete lack of anti-trust enforcement is a big deal.

If Facebook couldn't buy its competitors, now it has to use money and development to compete. And it may or may not be successful.

<comment><USER2> Antitrust would help, maybe even a lot, but would the world be that different if Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp were independent companies? Things might be a bit better but we'd still be stuck with the same handful of platforms we already have.

Facebook is just the final form of the monster that silicon valley continually creates. Every unicorn software startup has the same strategy: create a competitive app, get VC backing, blitzscale until you are dominant, then abuse your power to monetize the platform.

The only difference is how far along a market is in the cycle. Desktop operating systems went through this in the 1990s, eCommerce went through this in the 2000s, smartphone operating systems went through this in the late 2000s, social media went through this in the 2010s, ridesharing is going through it now, autonomous vehicles will go through it soon, and AI platforms will go through it when they arrive.

It's the same story everywhere you look and the process begins at the startup stage. Attacking companies that reach the end of the cycle won't stop the cycle from happening.

I would love to see Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Google broken up. I would cheer it. But it won't save us. It will only change who owns the leash we're controlled by.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't care whether I'm being controlled by a millionaire, a billionaire, or a trillionaire. I just care that I'm being controlled. The only way to escape is to own digital infrastructure that you rely on and that possibility only exists with free and open source software.

<comment><USER4> > but would the world be that different if Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and > WhatsApp were independent companies?

I think it would.

If YouTube were independent, Google would have to try to invent it and then compete against YouTube. Or, perhaps, YouTube would be simply unsustainable without the infinite coffers of Google to support it. At which point we might get a smattering of paid video services that were actually viable.

If a business couldn't automatically get sold to a FAANG, you might actually have to make decisions to run it rather than lottery out. If you are running the business, you might actually eclipse one of the established companies.

Google is not in some inherently unassailable position.

Google has a _TERRIBLE_ customer service record and pisses people off immensely. Google Cloud could be completely displaced by a competitor--if it weren't backed up by Google's immense amount of cash from other divisions. Gmail is a commodity and could certainly be displaced if it had to operate independently. etc.

> The only way to escape is to own digital infrastructure that you rely on and > that possibility only exists with free and open source software.

While I agree, if we don't get the common people on board, the end result will be service too expensive for most of us (current example: running fiber to your house).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am 3/4 of the way through Zuboff's wonderful book on surveillance capitalism and I am half way into this article. I think Corey makes some good points on which parts of surveillance capitalism are most dangerous and deserve the hardest push-back but Zuboff's book is still important and I hope sincerely that this article's critique does not dissuade people from reading the book.

<comment><USER3> I've been struggling with Doctorow's tech exceptionalism thesis for a while. (One of my geek brothers is a huge fan, so I get plenty of opportunity to founder.) It seems like we're directionally similar, so I really want to be in alliance.

But I just can't figure out what he's talking about.

It's the same feeling of unease I get trying to grok Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Greg Palast, and other curmudgeons.

"Okay! Stop! You've convinced me! Stop! Just tell me what you want me to do! I need action steps!"

I imagine my reaction to Doctorow is how most people react to me.

\--

That said.

I reject the dichotomy of idealism vs materialism.

My own thesis is still poorly formed. But the nugget is the growing evidence that belief systems are about identity. And that much of today's social pathologies, of most concern to me, are the stimulus which most effectively activate identity.

In other words, using Doctorow's first example of flat earthers, the proclaimed beliefs of those adherents has nothing to do with ideologies, facts, persuasion, whatever. It's only about identity and therefore acceptance by that social group.

Most simply: Cults.

The toxic part is the automated isolation and amplification of those identities. Those machine learning algorithms (aka newsfeed) that finds the difference that makes the difference and ruthlessly exploits that delta for profit.

\--

Skipping the big section about intellectual property...

(But I will say that I've become a fan of the "information wants to be expensive" school of thought.)

\--

 _" We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend their monopoly profits on governance. But we can't do both. We have to choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to behave themselves."_

There's a lot of daylight between repeated radical cashectomies, which I support, and nationalizing these platforms as utilities, which I also support.

One crazy notion would be to simply treat digital markets like physical markets. Rule of law, consumer protection, right to appeal... You know, the usual stuff found in modern civil society.

Another crazy notion is to identify the undesired feedback loops, then break or bend them. Freemium and targeted advertising seem like two pretty good candidates for the chopping block.

Edit: Sorry, should have included my original radical, and therefore obviously correct, proposal. Extend property rights to personal data. If someone's making a buck off my data, I want my cut.

<comment><USER6> Well put.

AI algorithms (recommendations and ranking):

\- help and amplify cults

\- optimise advertising revenue

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

Doctorow's article prompted me to revisit Zuboff's thesis.

I now think both Doctorow and myself, in different ways, are completely wide of the mark.

Zuboff's analysis is far more potent than I've been able to grasp or articulate. For instance, she moots the "paradox of privacy" by getting back to first principles of market design and choice theory.

I really wish I was better prepared on this topic. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr:

But what if their voracious appetite for data is because the advertising format they are selling is the worst ever rubbish in history?

</comment><comment><USER8> I recall listening to her on EconTalk and being struck by how baseless and unconvincing she sounded - as though she was just stringing together hysteria and buzzwords without any reasoning.

Russ is a very skilled interviewer, and she seemed unable to answer basic questions, seemed like you really only needed to take a second to reflect on what she said and push her a bit on the logic, etc. and it fell apart. Just a constant stream of vague flowing speech.

[https://www.econtalk.org/shoshana-zuboff-on-surveillance- cap...](https://www.econtalk.org/shoshana-zuboff-on-surveillance-capitalism/)

<comment><USER9> Try the book. When writing, you can go back in time and change your words until you've expressed yourself adequately, and can add references.</comment></comment>


IPhone 5, new iPod touch, and iPod nano leaked through Apple search results - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2012/09/12/whoops-iphone-5-name-seems-to-be-confirmed-by-apple-coms-search-engine/

<comment><USER2> this...changes...EVERYTHING

<comment><USER3> New iTunes actually does.</comment></comment>


The world's two worst variable names  - <AUTHOR> http://petdance.com/2012/04/the-worlds-two-worst-variable-names/

<comment><USER2> You can't talk about sensible naming without also talking about scope.

When a variable is only in scope for five lines, it's perfectly reasonable to give it a really short name.

<comment><USER3> Nobody said anything against really short names.

<comment><USER4> You don't consider "data".length() == 4 to be short?

<comment><USER5> Nobody said anything against really short names, the article argues against non-descriptive variable names, whether short or long.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, provided you know the problem domain, the most descriptive name (xs, x_rms) is almost always far shorter than the literal alternative (horizontal_positions, quadratic_mean_of_horizontal_positions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For every rule an exception - data is a perfectly fine name for the scenario where we don't _know_ what data the variable represents. For example in a logging framework that has to loop over the contents of a collection and dump it to the console then data or entry or something similarly vague would be a perfectly reasonable variable name.

Then data2 might be a reasonable name in a unit test that checks to see if a function can handle the traditional "1, 2, many" categories of failure.

Which is not to say that data and data2 are not, often, horrible names. But the circumstances dictate (or excuse) all.

<comment><USER8> You could name it after the source of the data. The point the author was making is it makes your code much more readable when you see the variable turn up and you don't need to go back and see where it comes from to determine what it is (ie you come accross a 'data.parameter < constant' condition or some such). Even calling it log-data would be an improvement, as its source is immediately obvious from the name.

<comment><USER9> Even the source is not always obvious. Cocoa has a class called NSData, which is a container for arbitrary binary data (e.g. it basically holds a char* , a length, and a bunch of methods for looking at this stuff). If I write a function that needs to operate on an NSData instance, then I'm perfectly justified in calling the variable 'data'. For example,

      NSData *calculateHash(NSData *data) {
          char result[CC_SHA1_DIGEST_LENGTH];
          CC_SHA1([data bytes], [data length], result);
          return [NSData dataWithBytes:result length:CC_SHA1_DIGEST_LENGTH];
      }

<comment><USER8> That's a good point. If in the scope of the variable, you're only concerned with calculating its hash (or some similar function that is qualitatively indifferent to it), and not testing or parsing it or making any specific use out of it, then 'data' makes sense (though I'm guessing 'file' is arguably a better descriptor of the data in this example, if indeed that's what you're hoping to find in NSData, I get your point, and 'foo' might do just as well). That has to be a fairly unusual case, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are older blogs being regurgitated? In the past days I've read articles that I'm sure are 90+% similar to ones I've read one or two years ago.

I'm on my phone currently so I can't really be bothered to find links to support my case. Mostly curious whether others have got the same feeling.

<comment><USER11> Same guy, 8 years ago; [http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/03/the_worlds_two...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/03/the_worlds_two_worst_variable.html)

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but that guy also linked back to the original and said it was a modification of the previous post.

<comment><USER11> That guy put the reference to the original far enough down that people who enjoyed the article the first time around may have had a strong enough feeling of deja vu that they stopped reading before reaching it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought this was going to be about lParam and wParam.

<comment><USER13> How about "BURGERMASTER", the name of the root memory segment in Windows 1.0 memory manager, or "BOZOSLIVEHERE", the name of the winproc for the edit control?

<http://www.kraigbrockschmidt.com/mm/Chapter06.htm#_ftn1>

[https://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/5529...](https://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Grep says the variable name "data" occurs about 80 times in the program I'm working on.

I used to prefer descriptiveVariableNames, but as my programs have gotten shorter, my variable names have gotten much shorter. I found that longVariableNames were starting to overwhelm everything else and obscure the shape of the code. They were still communicating theIntentOfTheVariable like they always did, but in a way that felt less helpful and more like lexical noise.

Code shape communicates meaning through a different channel than variable names do. As code gets less verbose, its shape emerges more and more, that channel becomes more and more informative, and one begins to use shorter names so as not to drown it out.

This is very different than verbose programs written in verbose languages. There, descriptiveVariableNames don't take up an unseemly amount of space relative to everything else. The shape of the code is less meaningful because you can't see the forest for the trees. And you're far more dependent on intentionClarifyingNames to orient yourself in that forest.

This is why programs written in concise languages look absurdly cryptic to people who haven't spent time in that language's world. The markers of meaning they're used to relying on are missing, and their eyes haven't adjusted to the meaning that is there. The program may have been crafted to maximize overall meaning across several channels, but one needs time and practice to get what those channels are. And the tradeoffs are probably different in each language.

</comment><comment><USER15> I sometimes use data, but normally that's for a specific purpose - when I have a function that takes a void* in order to fit to a generic function template, which I then cast to something in every function of that type.

e.g.

      typedef void (*function_t)( void* );

      void someFunction( void* data ) {
        myStruct_s* myStruct = data;

        // do something with myStruct

      }

<comment><USER13> I would write something like:

      void someFunction( void* pvMyStruct ) {
        myStruct_s* myStruct = pvMyStruct;

<comment><USER16> Please explain why this is better.

<comment><USER13> The name "pvMyStruct" implies intention and suggests to the reader that the function parameter is a MyStruct pointer disguised as a void pointer. The name "data" does not provide any hints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think I agree with the general tone of the article, but his ordering is upside down: "data" is bad, but "data2" is worse, not better.

</comment><comment><USER18>
      $conn = mysql_connect(...);
      $res = mysql_query($conn);
      while($row = mysql_fetch_array($res)){...}

I think these are by far the three most common name conventions, _at least_ for beginners in PHP.

</comment><comment><USER19> Personally the worst variable name I have seen was in the line:

boolean alanIsABastard = true;

Where I am the Alan in question and this was written by someone who worked for me. :-)

<comment><USER20> I am curious on the usage of this variable or was it never referenced afterwards?

Perhaps the author sets it to false later symbolizing some sort of transformation you went through or at least a change in his perception of you.

Perhaps it was in a "bipolar" loop:

       while (true):
          sleep(1000 * 60 * 24)
          alanIsABastard = !alanIsABastard

<comment><USER19> I must admit that I never considered this point in any great depth.

Perhaps it should have been a constant (and it was Java):

         public static final boolean ALAN_IS_A_BASTARD = true;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can do much worse than "data" for a variable name. A name that gives no clue as to what the variable is isn't nearly as bad as one which gives a misleading impression.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sorry, but my vote is for $foo and $bar, by far.

<comment><USER23> but those are filler names. i believe they are rarely used in production.

<comment><USER24> Not likely: [https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%24foo&re...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%24foo&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1&type=Code&language=)

<comment><USER23> Most of them are tests, unit tests or examples.. very few are actually being used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25>
        > Of course it's data! That's what variables contain! That's all they ever contain. It's like if you were packing up your belongings in moving boxes, and on the side you labeled the box "matter."

Nope, if he goes with that analogy that data contains data, the box should be labeled with box, imho.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have boxes in the garage labeled junk, and that is exactly what it is. I agree a more meaningful name could be given, but its accurate. Same so with data or other such nonsense variable names. I could give a better name, but i'm busy trying to get my first prototype done!

</comment><comment><USER25> Site is down for me, google cache link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://petdance.com/2012/04/the- worlds-two-worst-variable-names/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I think I've seen far worse. For example, I saw some code where the variables were a, b, c, d, e, f... z, a1, b1, c1...z1, etc.

Never underestimate the willingness of programmers to obfuscate in the name of (supposed) job security.

<comment><USER23> maybe it was from some kind of code minimizer? like gwt renames variable names to reduce file size when pushing for production.

<comment><USER27> That would be a valid excuse. It was not the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> $data is fine for the name of the data variable of a generic container.

Again, using $data2 to represent the square of $data is fine too.

I understand your point, but there are definitely exceptions.

</comment><comment><USER29> Huh, I've used nearly this example for years, except my two worst are "var" and "var3" - with no var2, leaving the reader to wonder what happened to it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Negatively named bools bother me. e.g.:

      while notDone: { if condition() notDone = false; };

</comment><comment><USER31> In PHP, I sometimes giggle when I see $hit as a variable name, or when people catch exceptions as $ex.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My personal favorite was always $hold, and its cousins, $hold1, $hold2 ... $holdn

</comment><comment><USER32> "Metadata" can also be painful. One abstraction's metadata is another's "data data".

For example, there was a structured store where each entity was a byte array ("blob") with certain searchable, indexed "metadata". (The "data data" was the blob itself.) However, demands on the structure required certain additional fields regarding the content of that "metadata" that were allowed to break the contract of the original "metadata" and were therefore metadata on the metadata.

I fell out of my chair, hoping the "kick" would bring me up a level. It didn't. I wasn't dreaming.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've seen one much worse: $stuff

</comment><comment><USER34> char mander;

It intrigues me why this is not on the article</comment>


Thanks HN: For reviewing my site. Now, some light into the app. - <AUTHOR>

Thank you to all you guys who visited the app, and to those who commented.
What I did not want to state and affect your judgment is that unlike most of HN readers I am not a programmer. Wait, I did code the application. But I am not the average HN user. I am the marketing guy.
I have been hanging out here for quite some time. That business guy who partners with others who build stuff while he does the business stuff: that's me.
But I know that no matter how good you are at marketing or business "stuff" it is extremely hard to have a startup without knowing how to code, or at least understand programming.
So 3 weeks ago, I said "Fuck It, I am going to learn how to program". Now, I fully understand I am not going to be an engineer, but I still thought it will be good for me to learn. I had zero programming experience, so I started with php for the simple reason that most engineers I could rely on for feedback are php/java developers.
At the end of Day 11, after 23 hours of learning, Doxela came out as my very first app, but it will not be the last. Simple simple humble start, and let's see what I will be able to do in 12 months. Meanwhile I would like to push a simple app as often as possible.
So there it is. I am not making excuses for Doxela.com. I will definitely improve it based on my learning and the feedback I am receiving.
Thanks again for all the feedback. HN is a great community, and I am glad I am part of it.
PS: If you are that business guy who cannot code, let's make it a challenge to learn and build stuff. We may never be engineers, but we can certainly appreciate more our co-founders. <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool man, congratulations.

Learning the basics of programming is no easy task, so it's great to see that you're diving into it, giving it a try, and putting something out there. That takes a ton of work, but also guts. Way to go.

Good luck as you move forward, and enjoy the ride!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Cscotta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Woah, you took the time to learn how to code??? I wouldn't expect that of a lot of marketing guys. Congratulations.

I like the really simple, minimalist design of your site. You may want to use a higher resolution image for the background though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for motivation.

I will definitely fix that design. Actually the background will give place to something different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't work for a pdf I uploaded

<http://doxela.com/view/1214130930.php>

Good start, though it's not working quite right yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just tried your link and saw the document: The linear Algebra. Can you explain how you were expecting it to work?

<comment><USER5> I just get a white box on the page and it spins forever spewing out JS errors. The status bar says "completed 4 out of 5 items"

Web inspector in safari 4 shows:

Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL <http://doxela.com/view/1214130930.php> from frame with URL [https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely...](https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fviewer%3Furl%3Ddoxela.com%2Fupload%2Ffile%2F429388423.pdf%26embedded%3Dtrue&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fviewer%3Furl%3Ddoxela.com%2Fupload%2Ffile%2F429388423.pdf%26embedded%3Dtrue). Domains, protocols and ports must match.

You are trying to do XSS?

This brings up another tip that every developer should know: Make it easy for users to report bugs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the report.

That is related to the embed code I am using.

Will try and fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well done my friend, you made a really good job. As for me, although I am an engineer and can program (however my skills are far below the average ones on HN) and have ideas I would like to get into, I'm just too lazy to start. It looks like a deep fear inside me (failure ? "give-up-ness" ?) prevents me to try.

PS : sorry for my english, french I am

</comment><comment><USER7> Your site is still ugly. If you're interested, I can make it prettier, NSA. I want to try working on my graphic design skillz. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know a programming language but want to learn. I have a specific goal (write a simulation) but it seems overwhelmingly ambitious/broad. Can you share more about the _process_ you went through to go from nothing to a minimal viable app in 11 days and 23 hours of learning?

<comment><USER9> What sort of simulation?

<comment><USER8> I want to create a simulation for my health site to more effectively share the mental model and process for how I have gotten myself well when doctors (and most of the rest of the world) don't think it can be done. I have a compromised immune system and I have made drastic dietary and lifestyle changes over the course of the last 8 1/2 years. I routinely get strong negative reactions when I try to share that information on email lists and forums for other people with my diagnosis. Many people react like I am a loon, a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, suffering from Munchausen...etc. Even those people who feel it makes sense have difficulty implementing the ideas I present. The written word is just not information-dense enough to convey the necessary paradigm shift and level of detail. So, earlier this year, I concluded that I needed to be able to walk people through a virtual experience of the process.

My sons have suggested I need to make a rogue-like. I would want to present the normal obstacles of an ordinary day and track information about germ load, PH, and probably a few other things (to be added later).</comment></comment></comment>