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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

I think that relatively few startups would get started if they all had to be 'default alive' - founding a startup would be limited to folks who were already independently wealthy. The point of the article, I think, is that if you're 'default dead', you should know that you're default dead, and your attention should be focused on getting to a state where you're 'default alive'.

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On the other hand, Facebook and Google were both founded as "default alive" - the startup part didn't happen until the founders were certain they had something so good they should drop out of school to do it.

They also didn't have much in the way of worthy competition. That really helped them out a lot. It's different now. So much saturation in many areas things have moved from the era of bold ideas to the era of carving out niches.

Didn't google enter search market when it was considered full and pretty boring already?

From Bessemer's anti-portfolio: Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

Facebook (launch Feb 2004) was founded after Myspace (launch Aug 2003), which was founded after Friendster (2002). So there was certainly competition.

Was it 'worthy competition'? Hard to say without hindsight bias (only the winners 10 years later were 'worthy'), but I doubt Mark Zuckerberg or the Google founders felt there was no worthy competition. It seems fairly clear to me that Facebook (and Google) succeeded because they made better decisions (on average) at a gazillion small decision points, not because they had some great idea that no-one else had thought of.

Oddly enough, Facebook was founded at almost exactly the same time as a fast-growing social networking site backed by a famous company with global reach. That was Google's Orkut.

I remember seeing a talk by Zuckerberg (or another early Facebook person) where they talked about clones of Facebook, and how they were racing to win over different colleges / universities before other social networks did.

I remember one particular college-targeted social media site (besides Facebook) at the time called CollegeClub. Met a couple women through that. It didn't have anywhere near the reach that Facebook did a couple years later, though.

Wrong on both counts. Both companies entered markets considered completely saturated.

Friendster and Myspace were the big players for Facebook, Lycos, AltaVista, and HotBot were competitors for Google. A new social network or search engine didn't get noticed back then.

Google was founded 'default dead' (they only changed that when they got into advertising), Youtube was default dead for many years even after being acquired.

This is absolutely wrong.

Facebook was founded in 2004 and didn't start showing ads until 2012[1]. Until then they were making losses (default dead).

Google is more complicated, but they were so desperate for money at one point they tried to sell to Lycos.

[1] http://www.thewire.com/technology/2012/12/2012-year-facebook...

Absolutely. My point in making the analogy is that 'default alive' is _very_ expensive, and a lot of work. It's probably not worth it in an early stage startup. The stakes just aren't that high.

I think it heavily depends on your product. If you have something that can be used by a single person (or small group) without a million others to use it, too, than you're IMHO default alive (Slack, Trello, ...). I think as a rule of thumb if you have to first get traction and then be able to monetize than you're default dead. Instagram's social component was default dead but the feature where you can alter your photos was default alive and that pulled them through.

> founding a startup would be limited to folks who were already independently wealthy

Isn't that already mostly true (with a few outlier counter-examples)?

What do you count as independently wealthy? Middle class (1-3 years savings, good education, professional job prospects) to successful startup founder is not uncommon enough to call an outlier - I personally know at least half a dozen people with that background and story. It's not exactly easy, but people can do it.

It is much harder for working-class folks (no savings, no college degree, no unique skills) to make the jump.

Pretty much by definition, yea. If you can actually afford to leave your job (in other words are independent of it) for 1-3 years and go off and start something that might not even make money, you're pretty wealthy.

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