[HN Gopher] We need more calm companies
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We need more calm companies
Author : kiyanwang
Score : 36 points
Date : 2024-04-12 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (justinjackson.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (justinjackson.ca)
| randfish wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. It's cool to be profitable, to grow slowly
| and with intention, to create a good experience for founders,
| employees, and customers, to build something that lasts.
|
| The grow-fast-or-die-trying approach that Silicon Valley (and
| YCombinator) promoted in tech world the last quarter century
| leads to millions of miserable folks (employees, customers, and
| founders) and a few very rich ones. After trying that approach
| for a long time, it just doesn't bring me motivation or joy.
| kenrose wrote:
| Fair enough, but the system isn't set up to optimize for the
| happiness of founders and employees. It's set up to maximize
| returns, which agreed ends up concentrated in a very few rich
| outcomes.
|
| (btw, big fan of Lost and Founder).
| bgun wrote:
| I don't disagree with the premise, but this would come off less
| self-serving if the author would provide examples of "calm
| companies" other than just their own.
| aconsult1 wrote:
| I see with completely different eyes here. This is a sort of
| manifesto that tells me where the heart of the founders is.
|
| It also inspired me to do better and look at my own company and
| myself as a fellow founder. I agree with almost everything he
| said and I'd like to see my company as being a "Calm Company"
| too. It's a great opportunity to measure my ideas against
| other's.
|
| I wish more entrepreneurs would post like that, even if it's
| not 100% selfless. I think the trade off of getting more eye
| balls for sharing his vision is totally fair.
|
| Time and again I keep seeing articles like this in HN and it's
| the reason I'm so addicted. It's such a good filter on all the
| chaotic crap it's out there.
| wy35 wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. This seems to be a general trend, too. I
| feel like half the blog posts I read on HN start off
| interesting but suddenly switch into an advertisement.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| _a sad reality of corporations optimizing for investor returns:_
|
| _the people who work on and buy the product suffer. Good
| employees are fired, and useful products are shut down._
|
| Speaking generally: Public companies live in a state of pressure
| to exploit everything possible to the benefit of shareholders and
| execs.
|
| It's increasingly difficult to see how benefiting this small
| group outweighs the massive and ceaseless costs to society as a
| whole.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Calm companies as defined in this article is difficult to pull
| off in markets with winner takes all dynamics
| randfish wrote:
| I think that's a very standard VC line I've encountered in the
| startup world, but the stats just don't bear it out.
|
| Pick any software business - productivity tools, marketing,
| data providers, security, UX, medical/healthcare - and the
| reality is always that 1-5 big companies dominate, while 100s
| or 1000s of smaller companies, many that fit with the ideas of
| the "calm company" philosophy, are profitable and even growing
| (albeit more slowly).
|
| The "winner take all" mentality isn't even true in the sectors
| where it's supposed to be a hard and fast rule. Social media
| platforms have a half dozen dominant players, and another 40-50
| businesses that are successful by the calm definition. Search
| engines - Google dominates, but another half dozen and a few
| hundred vertical search engines (in travel, B2B data, real
| estate, ecommerce of every kind, etc.) have 10s to 100s of
| millions in revenue.
|
| Until I see an economy-wide analysis of this "winner takes all"
| rule, with massive numbers of sectors where no small/calm
| companies are surviving, will I believe this is true. Seems to
| me like the "riches in the niches" saying is actually the rule,
| but it doesn't fit with the unicorn-or-bust returns model of
| large venture funds.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Ok, yeah you can niche down or specialize but then this
| article should make a stronger qualifying statement then.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Replace "calm" with "privately owned". Investors that aren't
| actually invested in the company for the long term are ruinous.
| kcsavvy wrote:
| Calm companies exist everywhere. In fact, calm companies probably
| outnumber "frenzied" companies 10x.
|
| They are the quiet, stable, regional, unsexy businesses that have
| been around for 40 years. I have a friend who is an SWE at a
| large regional insurance broker. Very calm work indeed.
|
| They just don't pay SV wages.
| nathants wrote:
| due to shareholder primacy, one can no longer seek investors.
| seek customers instead. this is fine.
| closeparen wrote:
| This is what private equity and hostile takeovers are about, no?
| Identifying companies where management has sacrificed efficiency
| for "calm" and either rigging them for better returns or
| returning their capital to the pool.
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