As an insider in the industry I can tell you the digital news era is well and truly over. We are in the influencer age now. And this has all been part of a purposefully executed plan by the big web platforms to keep people on their sites and apps rather than have them leave and go to external domains. Any online publication that wants to survive will have to run with a skeleton team full of workaholics. And that will be just to break even and get by.
The way I see it, AI is a nifty tool, like a calculator. Who was disrupted by the calculator? It wasn't the peasants in the fields. It was the people with the ability to do mental sums on the fly. Such people went from having the king's ear to being parlor tricks on variety shows.
Same thing in the case of AI. We're about to see a lot of so-called 10x developers become commoditized.
Or that any telecommunication gets delegated to AI, so as long as your not in the same room with someone, chances are you're speaking to their AI assistant
> YC used to be for people who investors wouldn’t normally take a chance on…and imo, it still is.
It absolutely is not. The recently released Founders Directory[1] shows that YC is practically a big tech company now. Most alumni are from FAANG or Ivy League. This was an inevitable result when YC became the most prestigious accelerator in the West
I think this dissonance comes from most of YC's guiding literature being written by PG in the 2000s and early 2010s. Back in those days it was definitely possible to grab the attention of users and investors with janky prototypes. But now the reality is that prototypes are nothing and traction is king. The new YC partners probably have to make this shift in practice and out of politeness, they don't call out the guiding literature
At least on the consumer side of things it doesn't. The consumer-facing side of the internet is quite mature. You are fighting for consumers' attention with giant companies that have addiction down to a science. Furthermore there are entire categories of the internet that have people's attention on lock (social media, video, music, gaming, news, chat, e-commerce and gambling). Breaking through all that existing noise is super tough now, a valuable product won't cut it. If you look at the big consumer-facing successes post-2015 (TikTok, OpenAI, Fortnite, Disney+), they all spent obscene amounts of money to get where they are at now
With 62% of public companies nowadays being in the same loss-making predicament[1], the bigger question is: how much of the US economy is being propped up by the goodwill of investors?
There are a lot of talented people you can sell on the dream of working for less than their full market value in order to help vulnerable people not get scammed. It would be very fulfilling work for a lot of people
The lottery system would be bad for the image of the school, who probably want to be seen as meticulous pickers of talent. Though I wouldn't be shocked if there were some lottery mechanics being applied by school admins behind the scenes
Technically he's right. Land conflicts between large groups of people have typically been solved by violence throughout history. But good luck getting a population with strong passports and $50k GDP per capita to revolt. If this was any time before WW2 the drums of war would definitely have been beating though
Maybe some look good in high density cities in select areas of Europe which are helped by well preserved ancient architecture, but that's not replicable elsewhere. Go to more modern, large, genuine YIMBY cities where anything goes like Tokyo and Lagos and they are quite an eyesore
Also, aesthetically, you have to admit, most YIMBY cities are ugly AF compared to NIMBY cities. Aesthetics are very important to human beings; people love pretty things.
Sorry, but IOT is the only way to try and make hire purchase work in a lot of poor countries (speaking as a resident of a poor country). This model has already been explored succesfully by companies such as M-Kopa Solar. If the car companies don't do it themselves, there's definitely going to be an aftermarket for this type of thing with lenders in poorer countries.
Usually bad unit economics. The whole "make losses now to jack up prices later" thing does not work in reality. Usually the whole market just gets poisoned and the only way out is to leave richer investors holding the bag
Furthermore it's very few businesses that make it past 20 years and it's very hard to transition from one business to another. I am now in that tight spot as a successful businessman in year 14
It makes sense for other countries since they don't have global giants to pay absurd amounts. But Japan has it's fair share of these global entities, their salaries in theory should be competing with those of the US. Maybe it's the language barrier that gives their companies some leverage in negotiations?
Those are all before birth control and before the maturation of fields like sports, entertainment and computers where young men could command as much money and influence as old industrialists. That probably shifted cultural ideals.
Also those movies are from the days where only a handful of movies were made every year, so the lack of competition meant you could write anything and jam it down people's throats, rather than needing to follow demand.
Yes, but there are a lot of ad agencies that try to do Google ads on behalf of clients for huge fees. I'm sure part of Google sales people's jobs is to try and either drive such agencies out of business or get the agencies to spend more on Google.
That would mean giving away lots of prizes and you would have an addicted military very, very quickly. For most people, the losses are what stop them in their tracks