[zem]

even neglecting the money aspect entirely, this is bullshit. as a hacker, i want to build things. not "implement a vision", just build something that is useful to someone. if some larger company sees the thing i built and says "wow, this is exactly what we need to fill this gap in our product/service/lineup" and acquires my creation (with or without including me to continue developing it), i would consider that a resounding success.

as a real world example, does anyone think the keyhole vision was somehow killed by becoming google earth?

[jlodwick]

Maybe it wasn't clear from the article, but I was talking about the acquisition of a company, not a product. Hackers, and SV people in general, tend not to distinguish between the two, as many "startup companies" are actually just attempts to commercialize a single product idea. The potential for a company is orders of magnitude greater, because a company can create endless products. If you're talented enough to build things that are useful to people, why not found a single legal entity that creates many things, mitigating per-thing risk and exploiting countless economies of scale?

[mindcrime]

The potential for a company is orders of magnitude greater, because a company can create endless products. If you're talented enough to build things that are useful to people, why not found a single legal entity that creates many things, mitigating per-thing risk and exploiting countless economies of scale?

Now that I totally agree with. And that's one of our goals at Fogbeam Labs. I'm absolutely down with the idea of building a large, sustainable, profitable company that branches out into many fields. I've joked with people that our goal is to be "the next Red Hat", but in a lot of ways, I could say that we want to be "the next IBM" or "the next GE" and it would be more on point.

The big part of TFA that I disagree with is the part where you presume to tell entrepreneurs what their ambition ought to be. That and what came off to me as a judgemental tone, but that probably had a lot to do with the title.

[zem]

okay, that is indeed a good point. one dissenting pov is that the "hollywood model", where a group of people come together, create something, and then dissolve, has produced some great stuff, but i can see how a company can accumulate shared vision and synergy that is lost when it is acquired.