Don't change the world

by michokest • 15 years ago

39 16 15 years ago

repos• 15 years ago

Some of the points are valid, but you shouldn't generalize the situation. Very few people in the 90's woke up with the idea that they needed to be connected with someone on the other side of the world. But they eventually realized they did when they were shown the internet.

Yeah sometimes you don't need to be "disruptive", but sometimes you do. And it's especially hard to realize which is appropriate when you are building for a profit, a bit easier when you are building for change.

spullara• 15 years ago

His point is that the ones that made the disruptive change like Netscape are not necessarily the ones that made the most money for the least effort. The people that saw the trend and momentum and went with it had an easier time and made more money more efficiently then the ones that actually changed the world. So even though there are counter examples you can't say they had an easy time of it or took the simplest path to success.

All that said, I don't find the kinds of startups he is encouraging as interesting.

michokest• 15 years ago

Great example at Netscape! That was exactly my point. Major disruptions have already been started by others, and it's easier to ride that wave than starting a new one.

richardburton• 15 years ago

I have two main problems with this blog post:

1.) The example used - The increasing consumption of bottled water is observable and the options available to those entrepreneurs are reasonable. However the real question is this: who was the first successful entrepreneur to capitalise on the idea of bottling water? That person definitely changed the world.

2.) The repeated confusion between cause and effect - When Apple brought out their affordable personal computer it helped to kickstart the trend of personal computing. If that is not changing the world then what is?

uiri• 15 years ago

I think the distinction isn't whether one changes the world and the other doesn't, it is whether one changes people and the other doesn't. Jake didn't change his customers. He predicted what they would do next. The demand for his product would exist whether it was him or someone else who was providing it. If no one else imported the new brand of water, the demand for Frank's product wouldn't exist. They'd be fine with their inferior quality bottled water. Frank experienced such resistance because he had to change his customers instead of anticipating what his customers would do anyways.

Saying that the change from tap to bottled water at home doesn't change the world seems kind of silly since it means that municipal water becomes less profitable. All the empty bottles which are thrown out and which go to landfills have an affect on the world outside of people. Whether people by brand A or brand B doesn't have much of an affect on the outside world. If anything, the post should be "Do change the world, don't change people".

thaumaturgy• 15 years ago

Follow the advice in this post if you're looking for short-term profits and long-term mediocrity.

If you're in business just for the money, then the points in this post are valid. But, then you should probably also be concentrating your efforts somewhere else entirely. Give up software and become a loan shark or a banker or something.

If you're in business because the idea of doing anything else is boring and distasteful, if you admire people who set out to write a page of human history and accomplished it, then there is nothing of value at all in this blog post.

philwelch• 15 years ago

I think worldchanging vs. just making money is completely orthogonal to software vs. banking. For instance, microlenders like Kiva probably "change the world" orders of magnitude more than the typical internet startup.

Of all the businesses that add real value to my life, the number of them that "changed the world" can fit on one hand. The others are just honest business, and there's nothing wrong with that.

jtheory2• 15 years ago

Kiva isn't a good counter-example -- the reason they're "changing the world" isn't because they're doing banking as usual with good foresight into where the current customers want to go next; they've turned normal banking practice on its head (both in the source of the capital, in who borrows it, and how much they borrow), and that's precisely why they're important.

Though personally, I won't even argue that a startup needs to be "world-changing" to change the world. For example, a startup that simply makes it easier to get bottled water delivered directly homes in such a way that soon a huge population is drinking only bottled water...

...and no one (immediately) needs to fund the incredible environmental cost of trucking water everywhere to everyone even though they already have perfectly safe, good-tasting water available from their tap...

...so yes, that changes the world.

This is why I personally found this article depressing (for @#$%s sake, why not sell people water purifiers if they don't like the taste of their tap water??)

Every business changes the world -- mostly in a small way, though that's nothing to be ashamed of. Some in a big way. But all of them in some way.

It's really, really worth putting at least 10 minutes thought into whether your startup, especially if it's gloriously successful, will make the world a generally better place (even if just "people generally doing good things will have an easier time of it"), or will it make the world a generally worse place ("we found a way to stop people from returning merchandise they don't want", or maybe "we make wasting time more addictive").

The OP doesn't even seem to consider putting 10 seconds into this aspect of choosing a business -- into which you'll invest many years of your life. Ugh.

lenka-penka• 15 years ago

hmmm...interesting points

shadowfiend• 15 years ago

The real issue here is that there are (at least) two ways to go about starting a startup. You can go for changing the world, and in that case you must face the fact that you could fail and end up with a niche business. You can also go for maximizing profits. The latter may not result in a world change, or it may. It simply changes your focus. Failure is still out there—both of these approaches can lead a completely nuked business. Hell, both can lead to a niche business if you don't do them right.

peter_l_downs• 15 years ago

> Consistently over time, the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve seen weren’t fighting the world – they were merely building the best sails to move faster than anybody else.

What causes the winds to change? There must be some new innovation for people to want sails in the first place (to butcher your analogy).

> That’s why Groupon clones are making millions a month with unoriginal ideas. The business model is already well understood and customers are familiar with it. The Groupon model is a trend that extends well beyond the company.

This is all true but ignores the fact that until Groupon started the social coupon trend, no companies made any money with this business model (because there were none, or none popular enough to matter).

> Those who built great iPhone apps at the time also know about these trends. Their success had more to do with a “force of nature” (millions of users thirsty for apps) than with their talent designing apps.

Again, yes, but no one wanted any apps (or even knew what an "app" was) before Apple decided to invent the iPhone.

SatvikBeri• 15 years ago

Nobody likes "Don't change the world", but a lot of people love "Find and solve a customer's existing, urgent problem".

jtheory2• 15 years ago

The distinction here is pretty dramatic with the example of bottled water.

Assuming that this business scenario is playing out in some country that has high-quality, well-monitored tap water, both of those entrepreneurs are in the business of convincing people to "solve a need" they don't actually have.

In this case, "don't change the world" means "notice that people are easily suckered into buying bottled water, and do that better".

Whereas "find and solve a customer's existing, urgent problem" could possible involve selling efficient and low-cost water purifiers (if people in some areas would prefer better-tasting tap water, I guess? I like mine), or more likely have nothing to do with drinking water whatsoever.

mcantor• 15 years ago

All this post says is that it's easy to do something predictable and hard to do something novel.

guard-of-terra• 15 years ago

Bottled water business is a fraud.

I routinely see a plastic bottle of water costing 1.5x more than a glass bottle of fine lemonade at the same shop.

It goes like this: people drink a lot of bottled water -> big market -> two big bottled water brand nuke the marker with advertising -> shops begin to carry branded bottled water and drop unbranded bottled water, which costs 2x more -> a lot of people buy a half liter of advertising daily.

The problem is: They siphon money from peoples' pockets to the advertisers. They spend those to increase the level of noise.

And I believe the water quality is dismal, i.e. it's the same tap water and much worse than reverse osmosis filtered water from my tap filter.

I think it should actually be regulated and illegal. Then we'll get less noisy adds in our lives and two times cheaper bottled water from a variety of vendors, with its quality up.

billpatrianakos• 15 years ago

No no no no no! This kind of thinking is for those in it for the money. If you're in anything for the money you won't get very far. It's not that this is wrong advice. Things do work the way he says but no one should be following this advice. Would you encourage your child to grow up to be mediocre or encourage the kid to be the best.

If selling a mediocre product is what you're passionate about then by all means go for it but do not look for the easy buck by doing so because it's just not there. Time and time again we're reminded as consumers that we don't know what we want until someone shows it to us. You can give the people what they want in a way that changes the world.

This whole thing is just wrong. It's hard to argue because it's right in a sense but at the same time no one should be approaching things in such a cynical way. Let's all just forget this was ever written and hope no one listens.

Don't change the world

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