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Comment by replicatorblog | Hacker News Reader

Half of the top food companies in the world were formed in the 19th century. There were 614 food and drink companies acquired in 2016.

More leading pharma companies were founded prior to 1780 than after 1980 and seven of the ten biggest companies are over a hundred years old. In 2014-15 there were over 100 biotech IPOs that yielded $10B in proceeds.

Tech is going through the same consolidation process that cars, drugs, oil companies, packaged food concerns, and most other industries have. The chances of building a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars is lower. The chance of building a $10-100M business has never been higher.

The founders of tbh made more money that All-Star NBA Champion Stephen Curry did last year. Is that a sign of a weakening startup ecosystem or a strengthening one?

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tbh was bought for "under $100M", divided among all the shareholders including 4 co-founders.

steph made $35M in endorsement income last year, plus $12.1m salary. he got a raise this year, from $12M salary to $36M salary (plus whatever endorsements). And steph gets paid his millions every year he works, not just a single buyout year.

When you put it like that, it's actually crazy how much money he's making...

It’s supply and demand. There aren’t many people on the planet that can do what he does.

He's only making that money starting this year.

Before, he was only making 44 million over 4 years, making arguably the most underpaid player in the NBA while making them hundreds of millions of dollars. [0]

Also, he only gets to take home half that pay - it's still a lot, but he doesn't quite have the contacts to do the crazy financial structuring that business tycoons and large publicly traded companies do to avoid income taxes. Famously Warren Buffet says that he is paying a lower tax rate than his secretary.

In all honesty, he's worth it, and probably underpaid. The Warriors' management and his endorsement partners pay without a peep. If his value were even marginally close to what they were paying him, there would be a lot of haggling going on.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/vincentfrank/2017/06/06/nba-fin... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-curry-salary-taxes-nb... [2] http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secreta...

Right, assume it was $80M like Ben Thompson suggested based on disclosure rules. They raised a seed round, assume that took 20%. I'm guessing there wasn't much of an ESOP so $15M/founder is in the neighborhood.

And yes, Steph Curry made a fortune in ancillary revenue streams. I'd also wager that the founders who split this windfall will make additional money investing the proceeds in other startups.

I don't know how true it is, but I've read a major fraction (most?) of the companies in the S&P100 have been bailed out and saved by the government at one time or another.

You could, you know find out if it was true instead of dropping unsubstantiated information in here.

I still have faith in our ability to escape the ill effects of capitalism that are slowly destroying our industry. See Bitcoin & Ethereum.

Wait, you think bitcoin etc is going to reduce the harmful effects of capitalism?

I always wonder what a better solution than capitalism is. It's not perfect, and it's pretty broken when politics and corporate interests are in bed together. However, we're seeing the ill effects of socialism (Venezuela) like starvation and I prefer the former. Furthermore, the crypto economy might be the closest example we have to "Free Market" capitalism.

Capitalism and regulatory capture aren’t the same thing. Hell, even Adam Smith sternly warned against an environment with too much power imbalance.

The latter is just good old corruption, and it pays no respect to the form of your economy.

I was always intrigued by Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) but idk if it would really work in 21st century.

Georgism is a very interesting idea -- however, in its purest form, what is the incentive to invest in land? E.g. to build tall buildings, factories, invest in better farming practices/technology, etc.

Would it not be better to have full property rights, except with externalities captured?

What do Bitcoin and Ethereum have to do with escaping capitalism? Capitalism is an economic system oriented around private ownership[0]. If anything, they epitomize the libertarian/capitalist ideal by providing an alternative to fiat currency, the latter being a statist construct.

[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism

Maybe, as part of an overall, integrated strategy.

Cryptocurrencies needs pervasive/critical mass deployment and price/scarcity stability in order to be everyday useful.

I think the greater issue is the "Russian roulette," billionaire-media-legislative corruption complex that has infected many countries to the point of gross inequality (which may lead to a similar repeat of the French Revolution) and ecological collapse (eg Holocene extinction).

"Shaq is rich," he said, referring to the Los Angeles Lakers' Shaquille O'Neal, "but the white man who signs his check is wealthy. Oprah is rich, but Bill Gates is wealthy. If Bill Gates suddenly woke up with Oprah's money, he'd slit his throat."

How much did Oprah have when he said that?

source: http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/tony-norman/2004/05/21/T...

Authored in 2004, at which point Oprah had $1.1Bn[1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/maserati/billionaires2004/LIRO0ZT.htm...

Edit: nvm, the article talks about a Chris Rock quote from the previous year (2003) at which point Oprah doesn't show up on the Forbes website.

Does it matter? The answer is still, “at least an order of magnitude less than Bill...”

3.1 billion is wealthy.

An order of magnitude less than Bill Gates is still outrageously wealthy.

Forbes says there are 1940 billionaires in the world today, that puts anyone over $1 billion in the top 0.0001 percent.

Yep, inequality is not great. The fact that a guy can make $15M in a year by building a social network in the era of FB/Snap/WhatsApp/Instagram is pretty great.

Not trying to take away from your point but I think the company that made TBH were trying to make a hit app since 2013 when they did their seed round:

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tbh

It took nearly 4 years of probably not making much before they hit pay dirt with TBH.

Totally fair point!

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