The Unauthorized Story of Andreessen Horowitz
newcomer.co
newcomer.co
Their podcasts are really good and cover a wide range of tech subjects at a medium-high level for those not familiar. Content is usually aggressively future looking and often brutally honest and this article makes me think that is all by design now. Also look at their portfolio[0], makes you realize how big of a hand they have in the startup pie.
Didn't realize they funded Coinbase. Explains a lot of their crypto-content. I've seen a lot of skepticism on HN about crypto, but the a16z podcasts have convinced me it will be a critical component of finance and the web going forward.
Is there a specific podcast you can recommend on the topic?
Lots of blockchain tech (defi) use various API's in their own ecosystems, some private, and some public like Chainlink's oracle system.
Anyway I think the general takeaway from the article is the degree to which VC culture has become media/influencer/entertainment dominated. I really had to laugh when I read his "build" article and the next thing I read was that he pumped countless of dollars into clubhouse, a digital nightclub. So much for building real stuff. I feel like at this point if you put all the VC people together they couldn't build a bus station.
Never been the biggest fan of Elon personally but in contrast to all the valley types he and his companies to me represent what technologists should actually do, build companies that actually manufacture things.
Fwiw it also isn't just silicon valley at this point, the funding patterns increasingly hold across much of north america.
Everyone has ideas for companies that can be worth millions. But the current orthodoxy around VC economics balk if your game plan is to be a 50M sale. Either you make the big time, or you can be a tax write off when you fail. A "moderate" success won't pay the Limited Partners back at the end of the 10 year vesting cycle the billions the put in at the start.
There is much less money for someone who wants to create a a dating site for people with food allergies.
- You are thought of as a leader - You get to invest in better companies because they know/want you - The better companies outperform, because they were better - You are increasingly thought of as a leader - You get to invest in better companies... etc.
The marketing angle is increasingly a way to get onto (and sustain your place on) this carousel.
VCs are not there, and probably never will be, but they dream of it, as some of their self-aggrandizing visionary guru posturing can attest.
(Unless they didn't actually do that work and just white-labelled some chips from another firm)
"We put out manuals that had just hundreds of pages of listings of code, descriptions of circuits, examples of boards that you would plug in—so that anyone could look at this and say, “Now I know how I would do my own.” They could type in the programs on their own Apple II and then see “that’s how that works” instantly, and know how to write their own programs.
Running cards was the most important thing. All these companies started up making cards that you could plug into your Apple II and write a little software (mostly games at first) on cassette tapes. You’d go to the store and they’d just have all this stuff that you could buy to enhance the Apple II.
So one of our big keys to success was that we were very open. There’s a big world out there for other people to come and join us."
Steve Wozniak in "Founders at Work" by Jessica Livingston.
Anything that Apple approves of allowing you to do.
There are ample sources, and lawsuits, disagreeing with your argument.
"Josh Begley, a graduate student at New York University, developed Drones+ to provide up-to-date information on strikes, using reports collated by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism – an organisation that tracks the use of unmanned CIA aircrafts. But repeated attempts to get Apple to offer the software at its app store have been fruitless. At first, Begley was informed that the program – which he hoped would raise awareness of the growing death toll from drone strikes – was "not useful" enough and did not appeal to a "broad enough audience".
The company position has since shifted, but only in the reasoning behind its refusal to stock Drones+. In the latest rejection email, Apple reportedly informed him: "We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable, which is not in compliance with the app store review guidelines.""
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/31/the-prob...
And let's not forget the anti-repair, closed hardware.
[1] Right-to-Repair Groups Don't Buy Apple’s Answers to Congress https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-apple-answers-co...
[2] "Apple even created a special screw specifically to make it hard to repair the iPhone". https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/Intro
I too miss the days when the computer was something you could just hack around on for hours, plug various things in and make a business out of it.
Unfortunately we're a long way away from those days.
That Apple ][ was never going to get the market penetration of an iPhone or an iPad. And that Market is what Apple is chasing today and where their focus is.
The market that the Apple ][ played in is basically the same as the one for the Raspberry Pi today. If you're looking for that experience, that's where you'll find it.
Apple sells products with the edges filed off (both literally and metaphorically) for the masses.
Oh yes! "In the famous Apple v. Samsung lawsuit, Apple even claimed ownership of geometric shapes such as rectangles with rounded corners", Ugo Pagano
That's trivially verified by watching which of their competitors is licensing just as good custom silicon from the same firm, achieving similar performance/Wh. And it's nobody AFAIK.
I must say though that I don't love the a16z podcasts. The couple that I listened to were fairly bland. They need more personality/charisma etc. I find the TWIST podcast by Jason Calacanis much more interesting mainly because of his engagement/personality/authenticity etc.
I actually think I could do better with a bit a practice. @wennmachers ... hit me if you want to chat! (I figured I "go direct" here! :-)
Hmm... the only podcasts I seem to find online by Calacanis are All-In and Angel. Which one do you recommend (or both)?
"I talked to Wennmachers for over an hour for this story on the condition that I wouldn’t quote her. She asked me to write that she strenuously disagreed with many of this story’s characterizations and facts."
As much as the collective "we" rails against cancel culture it seems to me he was cancelled. I mean a regulatory fine would be expected... and others have done worse.
It's all the capitalists realising that to make software you don't need no factories anymore, which means much lower initial investment. So the marketing machine had to start and created this bizarre ecosystem of hyper growth, fuelled in kinda' pyramid fashion (all the money that is pumped into startups is spent on services provided by other startups they've financed).
The whole system attracts money hungry teenagers, which can be convinced that ethics are an obstacle to be overcome, and we end up with what we have today.
Growing slowly without raising large amounts of capital might mean "some" success, but you might eventually be eaten up by a well-funded competitor.
Pick your poison, they say.
Personally, I think that owner of a bakery on a corner of my street that is visited by all the locals is successful. Is that a success as measured by the VCs? Probably not. Pinboard is an example of that in tech.
Also, yeah raising capital is helpful if you can do it in a smart way, and use that as a leverage to continue what you are doing. That usually means not listening to the VCs, as their goal is for you to grow as fast as you can and keep raising bigger rounds, so they can report how great of investors they are, not for you to build a sustainable (successful) business. You can see that replayed over and over.
Is Whatsapp successful? It was definitely raising quite a bit of capital, but still ended up being eaten by a well-funded competitor. I'd say that when you have VCs on your board who will actively push you to sell, so they can register profit, it increases chances of you being swallowed, by someone bigger. Unless you're saying that being eaten up, means outcompeted and pushed towards bankruptcy.