Facebook Co-Founder Speaks Publicly: What I Learned | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Co-Founder Speaks Publicly: What I Learned

cnbc.com

This is a very strangely organized article, though I guess it's because it's trying to use the movie as a hook? The outline is something like:

1. Watching a movie about me was quite interesting/surreal.

2. However, I don't really want to talk about the movie; whether it got things right or not isn't that important.

3. Instead, I'd like to talk about entrepreneurship and innovation, and won't mention the movie again, despite this article supposedly being about what I "Learned From Watching 'The Social Network'".

It struck me as he was trying to be very careful and diplomatic with the wording so as to not say anything too extreme or controversial. Similar to when a politician is asked to make a statement, they do so, then afterward you're left with the distinct impression that they didn't really say anything. This is not meant as a criticism of his piece, I think it's more of a compliment that he seemed to realize (a) it was just a movie, and (b) nothing positive would come from him saying anything negative anyway. I believe he eventually got bank from a settlement, and I'd imagine he'd like to stay on good terms, publicly, with Zuckerberg and other key investors.

Relatively young companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google are huge drivers within our economy and each rank in the top ten of all public companies in terms of market value, according to the 2010 Fortune 500. Remarkably, none of these companies even existed a mere thirty years ago.

Microsoft: 1975.

Apple: 1976.

The easiest way to feel old is to get excited about how new stuff is--and stay that way while it gets older.

So in fact, of the top 25 US companies by market capitalization, all but two (Google and Cisco) are at least 30 years old, and even Cisco was founded in 1984.

Indeed, having just looked at the list, it turns out that there are only two companies from the internet boom which have made it to the top fifty: Google and Amazon. Then you have ebay in 94th position and you're done with the top 100. GOOG is nothing but a massive outlier.

So not only is the quoted statement incorrect in its details, it's wrong in its entire thrust; there really aren't all that many companies which are big and new.

It's quite dated now, but someone in 1994 did a survey of the founding dates of the Fortune 500 companies as of that year, and found that new companies were quite uncommon: 39% were over 100 years old, and about 50% were founded between the 1880s and the 1920s, in the "second industrial revolution". Only 16% of F500 companies (as of 1994) were founded after 1950.

The authors speculate that the 1880s-1920s period dominates because it gave birth to the first large-scale corporations that could enter new markets, acquire new businesses, etc., through a mix of industrial and financial prowess. So while the Second Industrial Revolution gave rise to a bunch of F500 companies, the post-war Third Industrial Revolution based on chemicals, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, electronics, etc., hasn't given birth to as many new firms, because the older firms have been able to enter the market themselves, or buy up newcomers who do.

The exceptions they note: "companies such as Apple (1976), Compaq (1982) and McDonald's (1948), built new industries focusing especially on integrated-circuit technology and on franchising in the food and retailing sectors. Tellingly, the youngest member among the Fortune 500 is Office Depot (1986), one of the new breed of 'category killers' that have appeared in certain retail sectors. These category killers depend on sophisticated information technology for quick reporting of turnover figures and detailed data about their customers."

The article's here, but paywalled: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3117220

An histogram with the founding decades of the 2009 Fortune 500 is in this article: http://www.gathr.me/the-economic-future-just-happened.pdf (figure 2).

Wow, that is interesting. Huge peaks in the 1980s, 1900s and 1920s. Enormous trough during the 1950s.

It probably wouldn't be unfair to assign the first peak to the internal combustion engine plus electrification, and the second to the microprocessor.

This has the ring of a valedictorian delivering the graduation speech -- lot's of platitudes about innovation and some interesting bits, but nothing really memorable

Damn! The one time I actually wanted to read about the drama!

Why in God's name would I want to see Google's stock chart here on a hover-over?

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