[asknemo]

Am I the only one who think pg's view points appear to be getting more and more extreme, in some sense rather biased compared to his previous essays?

Zynga is definitely all about growth. It is fiercely focused on metrics, fiercely focused on growth. But as someone from game industry, we cannot agree that this model is THE model that gives the world and everyone value. If the game industry worked like the way pg describes in the essay decades ago, we would never have Diablo, Baldur's Gate, Grim Fandango or Minecraft. We would all be left with choices like Farmville, Monsterville, Mineville, forever and ever.

"Growth drives everything in this world."? Does it? All fads grow like wildfire too, but does it drive everything in world? Or a better question would be: should we allow it to?

[chubot]

I don't think he's trying to make any moral judgements. He's just making observations about what actually works within the context of our capitalist system. Capitalism has produced this period of explosive growth centered around technology in the USA and Silicon Valley in particular. And if you are trying to participate in that ecosystem, then you should understand what he says (IMO).

There wasn't any part of the essay which says you should start a startup, or that it is a morally valuable thing to do.

I somewhat agree with you that capitalism doesn't produce optimum value for society. Zynga's maybe an example of that -- I'm sure the are worse ones. But as the saying going, we have the worst system except for all the other ones that have been tried. For all the Zyngas there are some pretty good companies too.

Also, I think your question is essentially hypothetical or philosophical: "should be allow it to?" Who's we? Short of an overthrow of the US government, I think this segment of the economy will exist for a long time.

If you want to have an interesting reflection on capitalism, read "The Idea Factory", about Bell Labs. That is the other end of a spectrum -- a single company holding a monopoly for 50+ years. But it actually produced immeasurable value. It's interesting to think on which model produces more value -- a monopoly where people are free from competitive pressures, or an intensely competitive market.

[asknemo]

You made great points, but I disagree about the morality part.

Wall Street had also produced explosive growth in our economy. It was also a ingenious system with participation of lots of hackers and talents. But I think most will agree now, that when Wall Street operates without considering its own morality, it is by itself, immoral.

In other words, I believe the essay's lack of reflection on the morality issue, which is definitely not a small one (e.g. the Zynga example), is what makes it biased, and partly, immoral.

[chubot]

OK, but you're making an observation without a solution... that kind of thing is pretty much irrelevant to people like Paul Graham and CEOs of startups, who have to make decisions about what things to do. You can call people immoral from the sidelines but it will have zero effect.

My opinion is that corporations are essentially "amoral" -- not immoral. Morality simply doesn't enter into any substantive decision. Google's founders often invoke the self-interest argument: "people don't have to trust us to be moral, because if we acted against our users, they would leave us, and we wouldn't make any money". This is what I call an amoral argument -- with no negative connotation to "amoral". PG almost invoked a version of this in footnote 8.

You might think that being amoral is equivalent to being immoral, but morality isn't as well-formed a concept as people think it is. Namely, the most common use of the concept of immorality is to label "stuff I don't like". I mean, what's wrong with millions of people playing Zynga games all day? Would people be curing cancer if they weren't playing Zynga games?

Another issue is that a person isn't moral or immoral; it's well known that the same person will act moral or immoral according to their environment. Paul Graham even said that about HN (in terms of trollish behavior). (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error)

In the case of Wall St, there's no possibility of it "considering its own morality". No amount of goading or convincing will make an ounce of difference. The only way I can think of is for voters to make it clear to elected officials that they won't tolerate the status quo, but so far that hasn't happened. Even after the 2009 crash.

(And btw I didn't make any assertion about morality in my original message, other than to say "I somewhat agree" about Zynga, so not sure what you are disagreeing with.)

[asknemo]

I appreciate your response, and I fully understand the realistic angle that you have provided.

But I have to clarify that I am not calling pg immoral. I am suggesting the essay could be. People outside the game industry may not get the Zynga problem, but you can also look at, say, Groupon's controversies. "Immoral" could indeed be too strong a word, but I believe few will disagree that aggressive growth strategies has some inevitable side effects, and for this no amount of footnotes is sufficient.

But again, call me naive, "people like Paul Graham and CEOs of startups" should, contrary to what you claim, should care MORE about these problems, because they can certainly afford to, and when they do, it will matter. :)

[chubot]

OK... well I think your point is that PG's essay is "amoral", which is true. It doesn't say anything about whether hyper-growth is a thing we should value (as human beings, not as money making machines).

Actually ALL his essays are amoral. PG is very precise. He doesn't advocate specific things; he lays out a set of deductions. You will come to the same conclusions IF you have the values he supposes. IF you value this, then you should believe that. Which is a true statement regardless of what you believe.

My point is that amoral != immoral. But I think you are saying they're the same -- that all decisions must have a moral component or they are immoral.

I agree that hyper aggressive growth doesn't always produce the kinds of companies that society "should" want... but sometimes it does! It's probably impossible to separate the two, not least because everyone has different opinions on what's valuable.

[mattmanser]

You're reading too much of your own POV into another person.

Compare this essay with a random earlier one I selected (I just scrolled down and clicked a title that would seem ripe to disprove you)

http://paulgraham.com/opensource.html

Morality is rife within it, justice, monopolies, boss-employee relations.

He may have changed but all of his essays aren't amoral.

[mkramlich]

to make what is clearly a generalization, though I think an accurate one:

Silicon Valley = makers

Wall Street = takers (sometimes enablers or rewarders for the makers)

[marvin]

This is not true. Minecraft is the best example; it had an insane growth rate both in percent and absolute numbers, exactly what PG is talking about. The other games you mention are also good examples of starups in high-growth terms. And when talking about markets, most people who enjoy Diablo, Baldur's Gate and Minecraft _don't_ enjoy free-to-play games, since these games have no element of art or story to them.

And PG even explicitly said that not all companies should be startups. You are reading things into this essay that aren't there.

[ozataman]

Somehow titling Minecraft, Diablo, BG as "Startup"s or "Startup-like" things feels wrong to me.

Minecraft was one guy (probably) enjoying himself while putting together something creative. It then exploded. Did he really target 10% growth per week?

Diablo, BG, etc. were all calculated bets by people with lots of experience in the industry. They weren't building a business model, a new organization, etc. They were doing "projects" they felt would promise high returns. That's it.

[shimon]

Minecraft maybe didn't set out to be a startup, but it achieved all the growth goals of one, and it's certainly fair to call it one now, isn't it?

Games like Diablo and BG are actually run in a fashion closer to movies than startups. A game publisher finances games that it expects will succeed. The publisher's competitive advantage comes largely from brand equity and high capital cost of creating a new game. Thanks to brand equity, they are primarily expanding or upselling into a market where they already have a lot of reach. Of course, there is some risk of failure in each project, but it's closer to that of making a blockbuster sequel than that of solving a novel problem with technology.

[dasil003]

Growth is the litmus test, but the article seems agnostic about how you achieve it. Do you go full on psychological predation like Zynga? Or do you make a tool that is undeniably better than the competition by orders of magnitude such as Google? The article seems non-prescriptive on this point. But, if you do not achieve growth by any means, then your company is dead by definition, so you should probably be measuring it.

[zackyap]

For modern startups, growth can be optimized on an ongoing basis but not if you're not building something that people love. There's a reason why Zynga games' growth aren't sustainable and they need to rely on the novelty of games to grow.

I'm sure even Blizzard and Steam teams are very focused on growth as a metric. It's just that unlike Zynga, they believe that creating fun mechanics in their games and improving on them through patches make for a great way to move their needle. Therein lies the difference. I guess the focus shouldn't just be growth at all cost, but sustainable growth.

[blakeweb]

"Growth drives everything in this world."

I think you're choosing one single sentence and taking it out of context, in other words, misunderstanding. By "this world", I took pg to mean the high-tech area of economic activity, with silicon valley serving as a figurative stand-in. I don't think pg means that every single thing in the world is driven by growth. The essay is about what makes a company a startup, and how a startup can be successful. The essay is not about what is most important in the world.

[chmike]

Growth is for startups. This determines the value of startups. Startups are only a minority but they get alot of attention. This is logical since to achieve the growth goal they need the publicity.

People have different understanding of success. Make your pick and don't care of the others.

Some people get confused one their goal or success target.