Alan Kay at Startup School [video]
startupschool.org
startupschool.org
I would recommend watching the last 18 seconds of this version (starting at https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3452), internalizing the Gretzky Game slide on the screen, backing it up and watching the fuller explanation in the preceding ~3 minutes (starting at 54:18, https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3258), and then finally watching a different, more expansive version of the talk like this one, given at Qualcomm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs.
Oddly specific advice, I know, but hopefully helpful to somebody.
The diagram comes from the book "The Act of Creation"[1], where Arthur Koestler discusses the common themes in creative acts, including the idea of juxtaposition.
In research, you start with a baseline level of knowledge and do a random walk until you encounter a (not necessarily) totally orthogonal set of ideas. Once you combine the two, boom! Something new is created. A lovely book, that I'd recommend to anyone.
[0] http://www.vpri.org [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Creation
For example, in the not-to-distant future, we won't need parking spaces. You'll just hail the self-driving car (or similar) using your phone. People won't own their own cars.
So if your startup is designed to help people get parking spaces, how much potential is it really going to have? Probably not much.
Similarly, the internet is transforming education. Information is everywhere. A startup focused on helping kids get into college feels a little shortsighted to me. It might provide a useful service to some people today in the context of present challenges, but there's no way it's going to turn into a unicorn.
Anything related to helping people find jobs is also probably a non-starter. Do you imagine a future in which we need everyone to contribute to the extent that it's worth paying them what today we would consider a "fair salary" for their labor? I certainly don't.
Take the salary part out of the job and maybe you have something. What about a platform for helping people find interesting ways to spend their time?
Take the college part out of education and all kinds of possibilities open up. For that matter, take the job training part out too. I've become pretty disgusted as Udacity, Coursera, and edX have gradually shifted toward teaching people "career skills." There are still some good MOOCs out there, but you have to wade through all the "learn these skills to make more money in your career" crap.
What about a platform to foster pure intellectual curiosity? That's what I was hoping these MOOCs would be.
You are right about the philosophy. But a thought regarding your specific example: even if self-driving tech were to be available tomorrow, it will take many years for all the cars (the "fleet") to be self-driving. There are about 2B cars on the road, and every year about 100M new ones are made. It would take 20 years to replace the fleet. So the "parking problem" isn't made immediately redundant with the invention of self-driving tech. There is still room (and in my opinion) worthwhile for a startup to solve the parking problem (however they attempt to solve it). Just saying that I wouldn't discourage anyone from attempting this :)
It's not just self-driving tech. It's the ride-hailing paradigm in general, which the self-driving tech makes incredibly cheap. As soon as it becomes more cost effective to use ride hailing services than to own your own car, those 2 billion cars will all leave the road basically overnight.
We're not going to have to wait for the old cars to die.
If you factor driver salary and depreciation on existing vehicles against cost of self driving car I'd expect a boom in self driving.
Most drivers of small vans earn more than their vehicle costs a year after all.
Why won't people want to own cars? What if people want to drive for the fun of it, or do not care to use self-driving cars? what of motorbikes or even regular bicycles?
In the future people could lounge at the pool all day and have everything done for them by robots.
Some people will undoubtedly want to pay extra to drive their own car for fun. I imagine that having a driver's license will be like having a pilot's license today.
> what of motorbikes or even regular bicycles?
A bicycle is a lot cheaper than a car, so I imagine that more people will be riding their own bikes than driving their own cars.
> In the future people could lounge at the pool all day and have everything done for them by robots.
Yup. Except for the stuff they want to do themselves.
1. Live in the future: If you live in the present your ideas are going to derived from the present, and therefore will be incremental. Paul graham points to a similar idea in his essay here http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
2. Learn the rules and break them like pro: An important idea that says learn deeply about a field (industry or language or medium - whatever) before you go about breaking its rules. This is something that should be discussed more. On one hand, this implies that rules need to be broken carefully by understanding something very well. On the other hand, a certain "naivete" also has been proven to be successful (As he himself says in another portion of this talk). Requires more thinking... I have to say that I have worked with two geniuses who changed industries (caused a "Disruption"), but while they were "outsiders" they understood the industry they were changing very deeply, and could point to very specific flaws in them (legacy rules) that were ready to be broken.
3. Scientists and engineers working together: I love this specific idea. He points to the Manhattan project and the Radar project as successful examples (and ofcourse, Xerox PARC itself). I also understand why OpenAI is organized the way it is -- they must have taken inspiration from Alan's ideas.
4. Progress is the only important thing: This is very similar to YC's idea of have a metric and grow it by X% week over week. One of the big things (IMHO) that YC cracked was to find way to fund hard tech problems, using this very specific idea that worked very well in software. Break a big problem into small parts and show progress on it every week/month/quarter etc. It is a simple and elegant way to think (and work).
5. Advance something very important: This idea is dedicating your life to an important goal / problem. This idea stirred me the most (for personal reasons). This especially rings true for me, esp when I meet someon who found "overnight success" after toiling aways at something for 10-15 years. This idea requires a lot of reflection. Alan says: "Fix big human problems"
6. Argue for clarity, not to win: An amazingly simple yet powerful message. So much of our interactions would be better if we (if I) did more of this.
3 Sidenotes:
a) I wish he had answered the question about "What caused the regression?" that someone asks (I think Sam) after watching a demo of an early "iPad" from the 1960s. It is really important to understand this. Elon Musk often says that tech advancements don't just happen automatically, some group of smart people need to work together to make it happen. I think something happens that governments, VCs, technologists stop working on advancing tech in some areas. Some of it is explained by lack of a "great adversary" (WW II, Cold War etc), but still it would be great to understand this very deeply. Thiel's famous book also talks about regression in tech, without fully explaining it. It is an important observation, that merits a deep discussion. I would be curious to hear what Alan says. Maybe @Sama can fill in (?)]
b) Special mentions to two ideas, not because of the ideas, but because how he puts them. a) "Fund people not projects" (basically how early stage funding works) - but Alan says, these are "artists are people who do their art because they must". And b) While talking about "build your own tools if you have the chops" he says "...Otherwise you are working the past on some vendor's bad idea of what computing is about". I love how he puts these thoughts across.
c) I recommend the video @_pius links to in the comments: it is called "the power of simplicity". One of the great Alan Kay talks.
For me, the theme that runs through his work and talks is this: (Constantly ask) How to make use of computers to learn and create in ways better than we do currently?
Now yes, the above sentence seems like incremental and not so far out but lot of what he and some of the people he has worked with is trying to answer this.
And I completely agree with him that we haven't fully explored this new digital interface and in some ways have regressed.
His words are truly inspirational and at the same time it is slightly disheartening that I am not working on something great.
A batting average of .333 (you hit one ball for every three throws) is considered very good. But you're missing two out of three. In golf, one wrong swing can ruin you.
The point is, when you're doing new things you should be failing often. If you're not you're playing the wrong game.
(I watch many more Alan Kay videos than I do sports, so I hope I'm describing baseball and golf accurately.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_...
In the non-baseball use of the terms, a "failure" would be interpreted as a bad outcome, but in baseball as in research, "failure" is inherent to the game and should not be seen as an embarrassment or a negative outcome. A very good baseball player gets on base only 33% of the time. A very good researcher may fail dozens of times for any eventual success.
Conversely an "error" is when you fail to do something that is technically feasible but you fail to achieve it because of a personal mistake. In baseball an "error" would be an outfielder who misses catching a fly ball. Fly balls are caught 98-99% of the time by professional players, and it's expected that they can catch one anywhere in their area of coverage. A researcher should be able to achieve any outcome which is "technically feasible", such as creating a new software language, creating a new operating system, or creating a new hardware integrated circuit if necessary.
To sum up his statements; Failures in research should be expected, embraced, and motivating. Errors are the real problem, and point to an inability to achieve outcomes which are feasible. And if you are achieving ALL your research goals without any failures then your goals are not big and challenging enough.
This is because you're doing something easier, catching a ball. Hitting one though, is very difficult (~20-30% is where most professional players are).
He says the design task is much more difficult, and failure should be seen as overhead for part of the process (i.e. R&D process should be failing often, engineering & delivery process should be succeeding in making software ~98.5% of the time).
To make trillions the big companies of the world (Apple etc..) have to spend money on big ideas and invent whole new industries.
Apple is sitting on billions of dollars in cash overseas.
You never know what's going to come along in the future, and having a sizeable cash position allows them to act and perhaps hedge against any unforeseen situations. It is really just being financially responsible. Hypothetically what if Apple is planning something huge, something in the healthcare space or transportation... We as outsiders have no idea.
To call it hypercritical of apple isn't exactly accurate. It's simply reality. Apple may even be acting more effectively than most by keeping the cash in reserve. You might imagine they're waiting to spend it intelligently and effectively rather than on a slow-moving corporate machine.
As a shareholder I'd approve of such a strategy 100%.