> Tech startups are the future of the country and the world. That’s how much of the wealth has been built in this country for the past few decades.
That’s certainly how founders and VCs like to justify siphoning so much money into their pockets but it’s important not to confuse share price with value. Most of the big hits were companies like Uber or DoorDash whose greatest success was reinventing old ideas with enough backing to evade law enforcement, and while they’ve made their management wealthy the positive impact on society is pretty mixed: marginal but expensive improvements in convenience with worse conditions for workers and large downsides for everyone else (e.g. Uber made traffic and pollution significantly worse and cut into transit ridership), and they’re the one in a hundred successes.
I don’t think startups are terrible but let’s not lose track of just how much money was poured into concepts which were clearly incapable of turning into a successful product (e.g. the billions spent pushing blockchains for things they’re bad at) or, especially, the ideas which might have gone somewhere if people were running lean instead of trying to cash out in the VC lottery.
> Uber made traffic and pollution significantly worse and cut into transit ridership
Depends where, really.
In Austin (for example - but this applies to a lot of the US I suspect), it had no impact on transit because there was no worthwhile transit to have an impact upon. Instead it made drunk-driving rates plummet.
The problem is this accounting change brings no additional dollars to the government coffers.
All it does is frontloads the money. So if your company lasts beyond 3 years you’re in basically the same position. But those first 3 years you’re far worse off. And the government makes no additional money either because the same amount is deducted, just over 3 years instead of 1.
That’s certainly how founders and VCs like to justify siphoning so much money into their pockets but it’s important not to confuse share price with value. Most of the big hits were companies like Uber or DoorDash whose greatest success was reinventing old ideas with enough backing to evade law enforcement, and while they’ve made their management wealthy the positive impact on society is pretty mixed: marginal but expensive improvements in convenience with worse conditions for workers and large downsides for everyone else (e.g. Uber made traffic and pollution significantly worse and cut into transit ridership), and they’re the one in a hundred successes.
I don’t think startups are terrible but let’s not lose track of just how much money was poured into concepts which were clearly incapable of turning into a successful product (e.g. the billions spent pushing blockchains for things they’re bad at) or, especially, the ideas which might have gone somewhere if people were running lean instead of trying to cash out in the VC lottery.