Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

https://anu.substack.com/p/the-generational-business-trap

by anaayelist • 3 years ago

96 119 3 years ago

anu.substack.com

walleeee3• 3 years ago

it's a compelling idea imo, if one considers the many ills wrought by organizations which outlive their usefulness and turn to parasitism

but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating

a similar concept could be fruitful in material technology as well, where ephemeral doesn't mean "obsolete in 2 years so we can sell you a new one", but rather "can be dis/reassembled into something else when one chooses, or, if disposed of, will biodegrade into ecologically benign constituents"

vasco• 3 years ago

but we must also heavily penalize hollow businesses, which exist mainly to funnel preexisting wealth to founders/employees before evaporating

What does this mean? Isn't all wealth that can be used to purchase goods or services "pre-existing" and by definition going to the owners of companies if they manage to make a profit? I might be missing something because it seems you just described all businesses so I wouldn't know who you're advocating to penalize or how we'd distinguish them from the businesses that aren't "hollow".

I can come up with some scenarios that maybe you'd have a problem with, but it's not clear which ones, or why?

pixodaros2• 3 years ago

One of the names for this is 'control fraud' and its very common. To pick an exotic example, people in the United States create software companies to impress rich fools, borrow their money on promises that it will get really big, and pay themselves and their friends generous wages which they keep even if the company collapses. People who run this scam often spend money very fast (they call it a 'burn rate') to impress investors about how big they will be one day even if it hurts their ability to create a proffitable business within the next five to ten years! Foreigners and their wacky scams!

walleeee3• 3 years ago

on one side of the spectrum you have Theranos, all manner of predatory financial instruments, need I go on? while on the other extreme you have a cabbage in your garden, which we call a "primary producer" for good reason: it's a fully automated business which for a bit of tending will yield you dinner

sure, we're surfing an energy gradient, all of us children of the sun's benevolent surfeit, wealth already exists, fine. is there a definitive, one-size-fits-all criterion here? no, but you get the picture

ilyt• 3 years ago

but rather "can be dis/reassembled into something else when one chooses,

That doesn't happen often enough to matter. Not everyone is/want to be a maker. or would even bother even if it is simple

or, if disposed of, will biodegrade into ecologically benign constituents"

That should already be a thing. Hell, add the utilization to product price that then can be paid to recycling company on utilization. That way products actually cheap/easy to recycle would also be cheaper

b2c04122• 3 years ago

"outlive their usefulness and turn to parasitism" or to become shell companies that keep promising a future or self-deluding that there will be one

Zetice• 3 years ago

Here's a link to the poem [0].

It's an interesting thought, but I wonder if "poem" back in the before times just meant "blog post" before they had those words.

[0] https://motivateus.com/stories/reason-season-lifetime.htm

RajT885• 3 years ago

If you get back down to basics, as business is an equitable arrangement where you offer to solve a problem, in exchange for making a profit in the process.

At some point, the problem may no longer exist, or you may not be able to continue to make a profit. That's OK! You can pivot, or move on to another business.

What I would love to see represented is some thinking around what should happen as a matter of best practice when you decide to fold the business. There's likely paying customers left behind - to use an extreme example, let's consider the case of artificial vision where people are left with implants that often no longer work, that nobody will remove:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60416058

The right thing for customers of course would be to open source the technology so they can pursue other avenues. The friction with this idea is that, maintaining ownership of the IP might be valuable later (someone may want to buy it, some new opportunity to build on the tech may arise). It would be great if there was a government institution which would compensate such businesses for their tech to open source it.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

It would be great if there was a government institution which would compensate such businesses for their tech to open source it.

Wouldn't that just incentivise more negative behaviour from businesses, since investors would know should they go bust, the government will buy all their IP?

It seems potentially more sensible to pass a law that the IP of any business that fails becomes public domain.

carlosjobim4• 3 years ago

Wouldn't that just incentivise more negative behaviour from businesses, since investors would know should they go bust, the government will buy all their IP?

All businesses who would use such a scheme would be started by friends of politicians and public servants, with the sole goal of getting this tax payer buy-out for worthless IP.

c54• 3 years ago

I could imagine something like the Consumer Product Safety Commission tasked with recovering and open sourcing IP from shut down companies with products in people’s hands.

drstewart• 3 years ago

At some point, the problem may no longer exist, or you may not be able to continue to make a profit. That's OK! You can pivot, or move on to another business.

Does your landlord take pivots as currency?

Anyway, I agree but for people complaining about layoffs. At some point, your job may no longer exist, or you may not be able to continue to take a salary. That's OK! You can pivot, or move on to another career.

hgsgm• 3 years ago

Movies and theater productions are ephemeral businesses. As are popup stores.

RajT885• 3 years ago

Garage/Estate/Yard sales as well.

Movie and Theater is sort of both ephemeral and not - there's theaters, production companies, theater troops, etc. which are more permanent, but assembling them into a project is like building a working city from ready-made components, and then disassembling it once you're done.

saltcured• 3 years ago

Right, I was looking to see if anybody made this comment. It also seems common for real estate developers. See also "joint ventures" and other subsidiary structures of large companies which may encapsulate certain activities and their corresponding risks and liabilities.

nologic013• 3 years ago

No we shouldn't. In fact we should denormalize a lot of dysfunctional business models, the transactional, excessively financialised, dehumanised business that has become the norm.

A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village. We dont want ephemeral families, we dont want ephemeral communities.

What we have is not working (pun). The overall drift of the last decades has led to an ephemeral society, made us unhappy, insecure, unstable. We need to go back to more grounded forms.

amflare• 3 years ago

Businesses, Families, and Villages are fundamentally different creations. Unless you are going with the "company town" idea of a business. A business has a many to one relationship in regards to effort and goals. A Village has a many to many relationship. And a Family has a one to many relationship (though admittedly, at a certain scale, villages and families becomes very similar, but I think that's because a family naturally grows into a village given enough time). If a business has a one/many to many relationship, then it would be aimless and probably be a terrible business (as such things are determined).

There is a reason society has created these as distinct types of entity, because each has a strength that it serves and they are not interchangeable. So while I agree that ephemeral families and communities are not good, that doesn't impact the value of ephemeral businesses.

For the record, I'm undecided on ephemeral businesses, but I think its a valid conversation to have and might yield interesting insights.

sigstoat2• 3 years ago

A business is group of people building things together. Its a family. Its a village.

you'll be happier when you stop looking for family at work.

vkou3• 3 years ago

I suspect that the parent poster will be happier when the entirety of their public life isn't a hop from one precarious perch to another.

Why do you think social cohesion and mental health is in the dumps in the developed world?

nologic013• 3 years ago

I think we all will be happier if we stop treating the vast majority of our life as a monetary transaction. If you accept being a disposable cog, you become a disposable cog.

"Family" is an exaggeration, but work as a meaningful, socially and emotionally enriching activity is not a luxury. Its what most people would be more comfortable with.

There is nothing inevitable in the current shape of businesses. They are, ahem, ephemeral optimizations, based on very specific contractual arrangements.

ianburrell• 3 years ago

There are plenty of ephemeral communities that work. There are conferences, conventions, festivals, and sporting events. Lots of them are run by permanent organizations, but many are run by temporary organizations for each event.

A good example is science fiction Worldcon where there is permanent org that does selection of place for each year and each con is run by local non-profit.

A historical example was trading expeditions where each trip of sailing vessel was financed separately.

jaclaz• 3 years ago

And attending people travel on foot, sleep in tents, hunt and gather their food while the conventions are held outside in a clearing of the woods or you need something non-ephemeral such as hotels, restaurants, roads, etc.?

The vessel was also (hopefully) non-ephemeral and lasted for many expeditions, but needed repairs, maintenance, etc. and likely its captain and crew were capable of sailing because of the years of experience.

While organizing a convention or a trading expedition can be ephemeral, it is only possible because all the other non-ephemeral and needed businesses exist.

tenebrisalietum2• 3 years ago

A business is group of people building things together.

Disagree. A business is an operation meant to make money for investors. Things that call themselves businesses and don't do that over a period of X are failing, as businesses, for the duration X.

A business is an organization, and organizations don't have to be businesses, even if they share some of the same attributes such as concern for expenses, desire to gather extra resources to protect against uncertain events, etc.

Some organizations that are businesses maybe shouldn't be businesses, but they'd be OK as organizations.

Stable organizations would be great. The name for ones that stick around a long time is "institutions." They need stable physical places and surroundings, which is hard when land and real estate is considered an investment vehicle and the value is constantly increasing.

nologic013• 3 years ago

A business is an operation meant to make money for investors.

please stop repeating Friedmannite vacuities as if they are laws of nature. What exactly is a business is defined by contractual arrangements that have nothing inevitable about them. Nothing.

Money did not exist before it was invented. Its a social construct and actually idiotically simple. "Investors" did not exist before the invention of the corporation and the countless legalities, contracts, incentives and behaviors that shape it.

A business is fundamentally a group of (non-related) people building something together (a service, a product, something desirable by others). Obviously some quid-pro-quo is required for them to be incentivized. Everything else in how the business is structured is up for grabs. The employees can be owners. The business can be non-profit. The extent of liability of members varies. The expected lifespan may be "eternal" or "ephemeral". Etc.

I think if/when we start looking at our organizational arrangements with a critical eye instead of being dazed and confused we'll enter a better period of social and economic development. The prime objective is to have as many people be as happy, as productive, as creative as possible, for the longest periods of their lives. We are very far from that.

FredPret• 3 years ago

What we have is not working (pun).

Businesses exist to create profit for the owners, end of story. We have more money than ever before.

Happiness, stability, and security are best found in real families & friends, or elsewhere

thebooktocome• 3 years ago

Edging every closer to Stross’ vision in Accelerando.

st3ve445678• 3 years ago

Some businesses last for decades, some only for a few short years. The reasons are varied. Nothing that really needs to be normalized here. It is what it is, don't overthink it.

jeffreyrogers4• 3 years ago

Starting a business is really challenging, as anyone who has tried it knows. Trying to make the finances work in something ephemeral is likely even more challenging. In any case, most businesses fail so ephemeral business is sort of the default unless you succeed.

There are individual businessmen who ride different business waves (like getting into frozen yogurt a little over a decade ago). But the skill those people have is in marketing and raising money and that transfers pretty well to different business types. There's also a whole world of business outside of tech that most of HN is not familiar with, and many of those people do extremely well for themselves. They also tend to be less idealistic and more focused on the money, which probably helps with adapting the business over time and figuring out what product/service the market actually values.

Swizec3• 3 years ago

There's also a whole world of business outside of tech that most of HN is not familiar with

I once read that the most reliably money-making business in America is a car wash. Comes with a built-in monopoly because people will only drive so far to wash their car and reliably generates low 7 figures in sales. Plenty of repeat customers and low churn if you meet a quality bar.

But who wants a 70% chance at being a millionaire, when there's 0.01% chance at being a billionaire on offer? We on HN know what we want. (numbers for thought experiment purposefully chosen to have a similar expected value)

faxmeyourcode• 3 years ago

One community focusing on this is r/sweatystartups - which often discusses how to start a pressure washing business, or how to scale their lawn care service.

bluGill2• 3 years ago

Unfortunately things like car washes are zero sum games - if there already is one "in town" and you open a second all your business at best comes from what the other already had, and in the worst case it starts a price war and make far less.

Sure I won't go to the next town for my car washes, but just on my short route to the office I pass 3, and I know of a couple more that would be an insignificant detour. I think this is pretty typical for most city dwellers. (not to mention I work from home most days)

vkou3• 3 years ago

But who wants a 70% chance at being a millionaire, when there's 0.01% chance at being a billionaire on offer?

Literally anyone in the world will take the first deal.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

A single car wash isn't making most people a millionaire.

After a low 7 figures in sales, you've got to subtract costs and wages, and the money left over will hopefully cover your family's living expenses. Being able to save up a million is going to be tough. And starting a car wash from scratch probably isn't going to wind up being worth close to a million either, in most locations, in terms of being able to sell the business.

If you run a network of 10 car washes then sure, but good luck with that. The market is already pretty saturated so building up a profitable network is going to be tough.

gourdo• 3 years ago

Starting a VC backed startup is hard.

Starting a trade business is orders of magnitude easier, especially right now with a shortage.

I helped a friend lease a floor sander and they make almost what I do in tech after a couple years (I took a pay cut for reduced work load; not making FAANG cash) Bought their own floor sander.

The VC-tech bubble really screwed up the economics for the majority. Will be great if higher rates mean bunch of people working for funds and yet another clone of bear are scooping ice cream in a few years

mobiuscog• 3 years ago

If we removed VC backing, the world would be a better place. Sure, less businesses, but they'd exist for tangible reasons, rather than just being short-term vehicles to make VCs richer with no longer-term vision to actually solve problems.

calderwoodra• 3 years ago

This post (as well as the companion post) read like rationalizations for Clubhouse's failures (of which the author was an early employee).

It's okay to fail - and in that sense, Clubhouse was a success.

tpmx• 3 years ago

There's nothing contradictive between being fine with short-term failures and celebrating long-term successes.

larsrc• 3 years ago

That is so Silicon Valley. 30 years as the longest span? There are businesses here in Munich that have been around longer than the US has existed. They are not "investable", though, they just go about doing good solid products that people need.

rufus_foreman• 3 years ago

> There are businesses here in Munich that have been around longer than the US has existed.

There are businesses here in the US that have been around longer than the US has existed.

jrm4• 3 years ago

It's funny how this is a weird or foreign idea to so many. I teach in IT, so I'm soaked in all the "entrepeneurship" stuff; but somewhere else here had it right. One way to think of a business is that it's simply a machine to solve a problem. It doesn't have to be a self-sustaining money maker.

I'd go so far as to argue that generally, the former is probably better for the world.

Anecdotally, this 100% describes why I started a business. Like many people, I fantasized about the idea of "having a business" but didn't do anything at all serious toward that. For me, it wasn't until an opportunity arose that had not much to do with "making money" per se. Specifically, I'm close to people who tried to start a Black news channel, and the website was trash; I knew I could to a LOT better, and I thought the whole idea was good. The channel didn't work out, everyone had other jobs, and so I don't have much of a business anymore AND THATS FINE.

b2c04122• 3 years ago

Agree, "a business is simply a machine to solve a problem." The problem is when keeping the business alive as long as possible becomes the core problem to solve.

pixodaros2• 3 years ago

Or when the problem is "how to get as much of other people's money into our hands for as little work as possible?"

mlhpdx• 3 years ago

Around 2000 I was in Stanford’s executive education program and the discussion at hand was a case study about a company that faced a disruption with a large cash reserve on hand. The question was what the leadership team should do, and the answers were all variations of “spend the money”. Except one - a lone voice allowing that the company could return the funds to investors and call it a day.

Pure heresy. Return the funds, allow investors to decide how/when/if to reinvest? Soundly rejected by the presenter and audience.

I wonder if that’d go differently today? I hope so.

nwiswell• 3 years ago

I wonder if that’d go differently today? I hope so.

Well, it would put said executive out of a job, so probably not.

ehershey• 3 years ago

Why would it?

zamnos3• 3 years ago

Because this piece made the rounds recently https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-08/oil-co...

jjk166• 3 years ago

The problem is the institutions that are okay with being ephemeral evaporate away when their job is done, leaving behind a salty brine of institutions that aren't. In any system where there is selective pressure, survival becomes incredibly selected for, often being prioritized over all else.

Animats• 3 years ago

There are finite-life businesses. Venture capital funds are finite-life, usually about ten years. Then they return the profits to the investors. VC firms, if successful, create new funds and have them overlap. Sometimes a VC firm just runs down, and the remaining funds eventually mature and are dissolved.

Single-film production companies are finite-life investment vehicles. They put up the money to make a movie, and, after the movie has been released, pay off the investors and dissolve. But that's more of a financial construct than an operating company.

A construction consortium is a true finite-life operating company. These are companies established to build some big project, and shut down when it's finished. The first big one was Six Companies, created to build Hoover Dam.

So ephemeral businesses are already a normal concept.

cperciva• 3 years ago

Not just large consortia like that. At least in Canada, it's common that Foo Inc. will create Foo 1234 Main Street Inc. as a wholly-owned subsidiary to construct a single condo tower. I think it's a matter of limiting their liability (or at least keeping potential liabilities from one project from affecting other projects). A few years later once the construction is finished, the company is wound up.

kerkeslager• 3 years ago

Ephemerality is the only workable solution to mission drift in an organization.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs don't set out to create surveillance capitalism[1] or enslave children[2], but over time the pressures of keeping the business alive and growing force you to make compromises. The compromises are small, but each one takes you farther and farther from your values. Eventually you end up doing things that are abhorrent to any normal person, but seem normal to you because they're not that different from the thing you did before. This happens with all kinds of organizations including nonprofits, churches, etc.

One of the things I've observed in the success of organizations such as 12-step groups, is that they have principles which they can and do "die" for--rules like "We would rather dissolve the group than do X". Groups in a 12-step program are autonomous--they follow certain principles (traditions) and often groups die off rather than break tradition. Similarly, impermanence is a core feature of Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs)[3] which allows it to avoid perversion of its ideals.

I think ephemerality is a good idea for businesses, as I think it's a key step in the direction of making capitalism more ethical. Businesses which can't operate ethically should fail, and our society should have safety nets for dealing with that (and other reasons a business should fail). But that's such a fundamental shift in thinking about business. Half of HN seems to think that if a company is making money it must be because they're good, despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary so we have to keep letting those businesses do what they're doing, without any regulation. I'm not sure how we can get to a future where businesses behave ethically when the unethical businesses have successfully sold the idea that their success can only have been achieved ethically, as a rule of economics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/m...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone

phkahler2• 3 years ago

Fidget spinners made a lot of money for about 3 months. Most were made in China, where everything is considered efemeral. That is the fundamental difference between them and a lot of US companies. Here everyone wants to set up a business for ROI or MRR, with the ultimate exit being IPO at which point a company is expected to never die, else the last purchasers of the stock are left holding the bag.

Could your company make a quick buck on the next fidget spinner craze? Not that I think you should, but you should clarify why not. It might illuminate something.

retrocryptid8• 3 years ago

The factories that made the fidget spinners are still in business. Amazon, who sold the fidget spinners, is, last I checked, still in business. The brick and mortar shop down at the mall that sold them is definitely out of business, but I don't think that's because fidget spinners themselves lost their luster.

wyre• 3 years ago

This has more to do with Amazon and local businesses than it does with fidget spinners.

squeaky-clean• 3 years ago

I don't really know how it works over there, but were many of the Chinese companies producing fidget spinners specifically fidget spinner companies? I imagined they were generic factories that made spinners for other more ephemeral companies. But once the fidget spinner craze was over they could just retool for their next customer.

phkahler2• 3 years ago

That's right. Chinese companies see everything as a short term opportunity. The future is uncertain. U.S. companies are usually more future focused and less nimble as a result. It's an interesting difference, but I'm not sure it means anything.

sircastor2• 3 years ago

I've been mulling a Crowdfunding project for a while to make a product I have in mind. It is not a big product, not something 'everyone needs', and it doesn't have enough utility or audience to sustain a company around it. I want to make it, and I want to distribute it, but I don't want to operate a business and I don't want to simply give away the thing I made.

I want an ephemeral business - something that will last long enough that I can make my thing and be done. But I don't want all the overhead of creating a company just to do the darn thing.

zamnos3• 3 years ago

I mean, you could just do it without creating an LLC or S or C corp. You don't get any of the legal protections that grants you, but that's up to you.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

Its already normal if you expand your social circle.

pclmulqdq4• 3 years ago

Pretty much all businesses used to be basically ephemeral until about 150 years ago. The whole idea of a business that is intended to run perpetually just didn't exist in the West, and anything that ran long was tied to a family that plied a trade. Businesses were also a lot easier to understand: a corporation might run a ship or a mine, and go out of business (still having made everyone a lot richer) when the captain of the ship retires or the mine dries up. In fact, the way we value businesses today still somewhat applies that model.

Most attempts at perpetual businesses today fail after less than 100 years, too, so it looks like we haven't figured out how to actually make a perpetual business - aside from a few notable examples like Zildjian (the cymbal company). Most of the success stories here are businesses with modest ambitions under the tight control of a single family.

I think you could argue that the idea that a business has to be a long-lasting perpetual enterprise comes from an increase in the power of business managers, at the expense of both investors and employees. These long-lasting businesses give managers a chance to build empires and personally enrich themselves without worrying about anything so pedestrian as figuring out when to return cash to shareholders ("they can have a tiny dividend if they whine too much, but don't get in the way of the expansion of my empire").

retrocryptid8• 3 years ago

Yes. The East India Company was notoriously short lived.

pclmulqdq4• 3 years ago

I know this was intended to be sarcastic, but it is the exception that proves the rule. The big East India Companies (both the Dutch and English ones) only really lasted so long because of governmental charters that granted them valuable monopolies on trade, and they later became models for Standard Oil and other similar monopolistic businesses that really kicked off the era of the perpetual company. However, they were basically arms of their respective imperial governments.

gjsman-1000• 3 years ago

Most of the success stories here are businesses with modest ambitions under the tight control of a single family.

Companies that aren’t afraid to really shift gears whenever necessary also do well. Take Nintendo - founded in 1889 as a playing card company that later became an overly ambitious toy company…

During that era they also invented that classic scissors-mechanism extendable hand (“Ultra Hand”). That was a bestseller for years before the NES.

pclmulqdq4• 3 years ago

Nokia, a famous logging and paper company, is also a great example.

antipotoad• 3 years ago

For anyone else wondering, Zildjian was founded in 1623 in Constantinople.

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

The normalization of ephemeral businesses would be harmful in at least one respect -- customers wouldn't be able to know who they're doing business with and avoid the ones that they would prefer to avoid.

sircastor2• 3 years ago

I’m not confident that is the case anyway. Modern business has a level of complexity that a given customer has to prioritize the levels of avoidance they can tolerate. You might avoid businesses that have a bad reputation of workers rights, sustainable resourcing, customer privacy, humane treatment of animals, responsible security disclosure, etc. but can you avoid all of those things if you wanted?

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

It's certainly not possible to avoid every business who has practices you disagree with, even if you're fully aware of their practices. But you can to some degree, and that's far better than nothing. It would be a shame to make doing that even more difficult than it is.

retrocryptid8• 3 years ago

This seems to me to be written exclusively from the business operator's perspective. And that's completely okay. And HN is probably an appropriate venue to post it. But if you flip it around and look at it from the customer perspective, it seems to be an argument for a transactional focus. The business is focused on deriving value from a small number of transactions before evaporating into the ether.

Psychologists who study brands tell us that people who like brands like them (in part) because they guarantee a minimum level of quality. Sometimes that "quality" is the lack of expense. I'm thinking of Costco's "Kirkland" brand. For instance, I shop at Uwajimaya here in Seattle because I associate a minimum quality level with their seafood. I buy gas for my gas-burner at Chevron, Shell or Arco because I once got a tank of bad gas from Marathon. I wear Hoka running shoes because my shins stopped hurting after I bought them.

It took years for these companies to establish their brands.

A short-lived company is fine, but if you're competing in a space where there's a competitor with an established brand story, there may be a number of customers who favor a "least bad experience" over your "more great experience." (This assumes you can make something that is a "more great experience.")

David Graber in Debt: The First 5000 Years, notes the correlation to the development of professional militaries with the rise of cash. The implication here is cash is useful for people who invade your turf and steal your things, but credit might be a better idea for someone with whom you want to have an extended community relationship.

Or at least that's the theory.

But what I see from this is "I don't want to bother with establishing a relationship with my customer." This is fine, of course. Even the carpet dealers I drink tea with in Istanbul know our relationship is fleeting.

But if you're going to focus on transactions rather than relationships, I fear that puts you in the quadrant where you're competing on price. Why would anyone trust you if they know you won't be around next month? You can't say it's quality, because quality usually requires a guarantee. Mediocrity even requires a warranty. Neither of these are possible if your company vanishes into thin air every month. The only possible axis to compete would be price. Is that where you want to start out? Competing on price?

Still... I think it's great someone's out there asking these questions and I would love to be proven wrong. Also, adding some data like "what is the average lifetime of a small business with $XXX of capitalization in market YYY?" might make the argument a bit more compelling. I know that data's out there somewhere.

rglover• 3 years ago

If you need a "we" to normalize something for you, you probably shouldn't be doing something in the first place. At that point, you're doing it for the validation of a generalized other, not serving customers. If you want to do it, just do it.

And people are welcome to do it, but as a business owner I'd much rather find a profitable business/moat and exploit it indefinitely (see Charlie Munger's point about how cola has no taste memory leading to Coca-Cola making for a great business).

bze12• 3 years ago

I’ve found this idea to be unappreciated; I bet most people think that a business dying means they failed, but in a strict sense a business only failed if it didn’t generate net positive cash over its lifespan. Seems like most businesses would rather reinvest the resources they already have - being in a position of some success makes it easier to find more. Fad toys are a good example: do you cash in on the fad and ride it out smoothly until demand dies, or do you try to parlay into some bigger brand? Popsocket did this pretty successfully, but plenty others probably failed.

All else equal I think a longer term success is more admirable, but many companies end up existing primarily to keep themselves alive. They acquire startups and ride out brand well beyond their useful life. At what point do these companies become net harmful?

fmajid• 3 years ago

Hollywood films are the ultimate ephemeral business. Thousands of cast and crew, hundreds of millions of dollars spent in a few years of intense activity, then a skeleton crew of lawyers and accountants collecting residuals.

19h• 3 years ago

No we should not, at least for businesses that sell physical things. It’s been bugging me a lot that many Chinese vendors bypass the EU‘s 2 year warranty laws by simply ceasing to exist.

amadeuspagel• 3 years ago

"Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?"

— Alan Perlis

Should we normalize ephemeral businesses?

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