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Comment by poorjohnmacafee | Hacker News Reader

While of course there are startups that engineer novel and industrially relevant products, I have to agree that "startup culture" is indeed largely synonymous with "apps" (web, mobile, b2b, saas, marketplace etc.) and that this is, as he calls it, "narrow entrepreneurism".

"Narrow" given there is a vast global economy in need of hard engineering innovations - agriculture, mining, construction, energy, chemicals, biotech, manufacturing, machinery, vehicles, aerospace, science/discovery, environment/planet, telecomm, computer hardware, robotics. On the other hand apps, marketplaces, SaaS, AI, blockchain, RPA, most of the world doesn't really care about it and perhaps they shouldn't...

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> "Narrow" given there is a vast global economy in need of hard engineering innovations - agriculture, mining, construction, energy, chemicals, biotech, manufacturing, machinery, vehicles, aerospace, science/discovery, environment/planet, telecomm, computer hardware, robotics

I think he makes a very important point about the role of the state. These hardcore engineering innovations and definitely cool and are interesting problems to work on, but I don't think the economics of it work out for startup companies given the amount of R&D it requires and probably lack of clear path of monetization. It reminds me of a fact I recently saw, the largest patent holder in China isn't Huawei or Tencent or any of the large tech companies, its the State National Grid or something like that, a state entity.

That being said, I don't think its necessarily good or bad, its just the way the ecosystem works. Even with the hard engineering innovations, in my opinion oftentimes the application/monetization of it into the form of a working product is still non-trivial, and that's the value captured by startups, so both are necessary in my view

> “..I don't think its necessarily good or bad, its just the way the ecosystem works.”

Are you not referring to the “market” ecosystem?

You are flipping my lid, because in the earlier paragraph I read your comment about the largest patent holder in China being the state.

Is the conclusion not: the government of China funds R&D for those projects which the market is not an effective driver, but the project is determined to be important to the government (ideally, ‘the people’)

That sounds like what government is nominally intended to do. If that’s not the case in the US, and our best and brightest are maximizing hamburger delivery apps—-hot, fresh, cheap and profitable for all—-is this not a patently bad thing?

"Narrow entrepreneurism" could also be mom-and-pop stores that provide a need to a local community. A lot of apps fall into this category: the might be perfect for a small number of people, whether concentrated locally in one city or country or dispersed across the globe. As with a mom-and-pop store, such apps might generate a comfortable income for a small team working full time, but won't make you a billionaire or even a multi-millionaire. And you don't need to care about changing the world, just focus on providing a good service that makes a small number of people happy.

Unfortunately winner-takes-all seems to be the dominant Internet business model, whether that's due to nefarious monopolistic actions on the part of the big players or just the natural course given the underlying technology and economics.

I think focusing on apps alone misses the point. Startups like Uber or Peloton or Affirm are not just apps they all solve business problems like logistics, hardware, or access to financing. Yes they use software, but doesn't everybody?

I don't see Uber or Peloton as solving any particular problem but more like fairly sophisticated mechanisms to make money off regulatory or leasehold arbitrage.

Peloton hasn't really solved any social problem. The bike works just as well for burning calories as any other, what they managed to accomplish is sell people licenses for something they used to own at twice the price with a subscription on top and make them feel good about themselves instead of feeling like they're being robbed. That's the real innovation.

Uber hasn't solved any material transportation problem either. We're not suddenly able to 10x our urban transport capacity because of it. Probably the opposite, if anything it's induced congestion and draws resources from the modes of transport that actually solve those problems. The innovation here is that it's managed to do this while pretending not to be an employer.

I don’t understand how people say Uber isn’t innovative. You can pull out your phone and order on-demand transport in seconds. If you were around before it took off and had to use a cab, Uber is literally 1000% better than the previous solution.

Which part is innovative? The business model of random people using their own vehicle and taxiing others or the app to coordinate dispatching?

I wholeheartedly agree the system wasn't great in many cities before Uber, but it's just a sleek version of what was obvious at the time--it just hadn't been built and the incentives weren't there.

I think you can look at bus/train systems as a comparison. In many cities you can download their app, set a destination, and it shows you what tickets you need to buy. You wave your phone to prove you bought your ticket. In many cities you can see the actual buses live on a map. Many bus stops show when the next bus arrives live. Uber was founded in 2009 and iPhone released in 2007. Google Maps was released in 2005, added traffic info in 2007, and Google Maps shipped with the first iPhone. It wasn't hard to see these pieces coming together--it just needed a lot of work, coordination, and a few generations of hardware and software improvements.

I do think they were the first and were innovative in a lot of aspects. I think their impact on the business of taxiing is way more "innovative" than the app and tech--but innovative doesn't necessarily mean "good" or a great use of resources.

To me, design and ease of use counts as innovative. Whether it was inevitable or not isn't particularly relevant.

As I said, if you had to regularly use cabs prior to ±2009, they were a nightmare. Uber is a massive improvement.

I wish people who dislike Uber as a service lived in places with bad cabs and bad public transit. Uber is a blessing for the user in such areas. Pricewise it is sketchy and likely unethical but on the service level it is 10x and well worth of existing. I am not saying that Uber as employer is good, but damn the service level blew me off first time I went to another city that had Uber.

Uber is far from perfect, but when they first started it was a very welcomed approach in contrast to the taxi cartels with their rude drivers who would readily decline your trips if it wasn't at their convenience.

sadly uber has declined quite a bit since- but it was a good kick in the butt to the taxi industries to step up their game.

Not that it disproves your point, but Edinburgh taxi service has always been in a league of its own. I have seldom seen one take more than 2 minutes to arrive, even in the days when you had to gasp telephone. I think there's some clever organization on the backend. Whatever makes Uber work, the whole regulatory-end-run driver-exploitation angle is not essential to it.

Yea, I can remember calling a cab to go out in LA, and then you would sit at the house with your friends for a half hour and hope it came.

Or in San Francisco, the cab would ask you where you are going. And if you said Inner Sunset, not even Outer Sunset, they would just leave.

In NYC though, you just walk out of your building, stick your hand out, and the cab would be there.

It is 1000% better in most places.

It depends where you are.

I've travelled in Europe and had good service just googling the number of a local taxi firm, and speaking to them.

I used Uber once, and they decided not to take my fare; they never showed up.

Uber is a glorified ride haling app, Taxi providers has similar stuff before that. Without exploiting their drives to the extent Uber does. Logistics is a well understood problem, the only company I could think of that made a impact in logistics is Flexport. And they didn't solve any real problem, they managed to build the latest global freight forwarder. Very impressive, but at the core this is nothing revolutionary.

We tried using Flexport a couple years ago and my impression was that they were a mediocre freight forwarder with a nice web app. They were also considerably more expensive. I have no idea how they are now; maybe we'll try again in a year or two.

perfect examples of parasitic products that have no real reason to exist.

Uber serves millions of customers around the world by providing lower prices and better service, something that is not matched by taxi cabs or any similar services. Calling businesses that create so much value parasitic is a way of comparison.

Anecdotally, I have taken a trip from London to Heathrow airport 2 times, one time with a taxi cab and the other time with Uber. Uber cost two times less, and the service was on the same level or better.

Selling a dollar for 90 cents isn't revolutionary. Anyone can serve millions of customers when you operate out of the bounds of what's normally required for a business.

The main selling point of Uber/Lyft are the network effects (same app working everywhere) and the ability to judge drivers by their rating. Price IMO is not that important because people who are price-conscious drive their own vehicles. Cab companies are too fragmented to get something like such a system running.

This ironically shows how size matters a lot. Be it state investment or huge VC, more cash, more power and more centralization means better service (if the megamoney was spent well).

I agree that Uber's way of underpaying drivers is not scalable (basic mathematics) and price hikes should happen to make the numbers work out. However the service level now people expect is very much innovative.

This is the same reductionist nonsense Chomsky engages in.

What "real reason" is there for anything to "exist" and what do those terms mean? There's no real reason for corn in a can to exist, you have corn on the cob!

It's a subsidy whenever any product was developed based on parts of a project the people in a state created, because the state was paying them. Well, then I guess I exist because of state subsidies. The state reimburses and sets standards for medical procedures and I had open heart surgery at 2. Hell, is Steve Jobs' Apple the result of state subsidy because he formed a company that's state sponsored, when he should have struck out on his own to be a fingerpaint artist from his own materials and talent?

These arguments feel like ridiculously cherry picked characterizations that have no weight and contribute nothing.

The important thing about apps is that because they run on cell-phones, they are all basically communications technology.

Anything you do can be done better when multiple people can collaborate on it and get accurate instrumentation about it. And anything can be done cheaper when it can be automated, and that's what apps provide too.

I agree he makes a couple important points and misses a couple important points as always but Im more struck by his general affect. I used to find Chomsky refreshing and motivating but something seems to have changed in the last couple years since the last time I was listening to him regularly...

There's money in marketing 'startup culture' to those who'll build narrow apps atop your platform (e.g android, google, web services etc.)

There isn't much money in such in the 'hard engineering innovation' domains you mention.

Of course there are more startups in places that are easier to start something.

However, anybody looking at things like Space industry or the battery industry and claims that there are no start ups is crazy. There are large numbers of start ups some that get 100s of millions or billions of investment to solve complex problems.

The amount of new space launchers is frankly absurd. There are not to few, but to objectively to many startups trying to do the same thing.

The people who are building photo apps wouldn’t have anything to contribute to mining tech, so I’m not sure there’s much of a loss here.

To do anything software dev you need some basic level of smarts. People who have them can also be trained/educated in any other scientific disciplines and create value there. Talent is a zero sum game. If one works on photo apps then that same person does not work on mining tech.

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