Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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This comment got 6+ responses, but none that actually attempted to answer the question. My goal of Socratically prompting contrarian thinking, without being explicitly contrarian myself, apparently failed. So here is my version:

Most startups are gimmicky and derivative, even or especially the ones that get funded.
Working for a startup is like buying a lottery ticket: a small chance of a big payoff. But since humans are by nature risk-averse, this is a bad strategy from a utility standpoint.
Startups typically do not create new technology; instead they create new technology-dependent business models.
Even if startups are a good idea in theory, currently they are massively overhyped, so on the margin people should be encouraged to avoid them.
Early startup employees (not founders) don't make more than large company employees.
The vast majority of value from startups comes from the top 1% of firms, like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. All of those firms were founded by young white males in their early 20s. VCs are driven by the goal of funding the next Facebook, and they know about the demographic skew, even if they don't talk about it. So if you don't fit the profile of a megahit founder, you probably won't get much attention from the VC world.
There is a group of people (called VCs) whose livelihood depends on having a supply of bright young people who want to jump into the startup world. These people act as professional activists in favor of startup culture. This would be fine, except there is no countervailing force of professional critics. This creates a bias in our collective evaluation of the culture.

You never explained what you mean by "startup culture," nor "good."

One can infer something from your arguments. But different arguments definitely appeal to different definitions of "good." In particular: good for the founder, good for the startup employee, good for the VC, and good for society.

There is no reason to believe that it should be good for all of them. In particular, a belief that equity is valuable to startup employees is good for founders and VCs, but if it is false, it is bad for startup employees. If startups ... (read more)

1ChristianKl10y

Likely because the answers called for a ITT but provided no questions for the ITT. [...] Both of those seem to me like failing the Intellectual Turing Test. I would have a hard time thinking that the average person who works at a big company would make those arguments.

4Manfred10y

Argument thread! You should probably stay at your big company job because the people who are currently startup founders are self-selected for, on average, different things than you're selecting yourself for by trying to jump on a popular trend, and so their success is only a weak predictor of your success. Startups often cash out by generating hype and getting bought for ridiculous amounts of money by a big company. But they are very, very often, in more sober analysis, not worth this money. From a societal perspective this is bad because it's not properly aligning incentives with wealth creation, and from a new-entrant perspective this is bad because you likely fail if the bubble pops before you can sell.

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Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016

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Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016

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