Comment by genericresponse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by genericresponse | Hacker News Reader

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genericresponse

I'd love to hear it, because it took me a quick Google search to find numbers for startup failure from 80%-95% cited. (Much higher than the 48.8% I found for small business failure rate.)

Moreover, I'd be interested if anyone has actually done a comprehensive study on total value (long-term economic and short term investor profits) added/lost from startups. I wouldn't be surprised if we found something that looks net/net negative or even pretty small.[1] (That is startups globally, not just VC funded or SV startups.)

If startups are engines of wealth re-allocations rather than drivers of long term economic benefit. Well, then silicon valley is just as bad as Wall Street.

[1] We're quick to count the successes, but struggle to count the failures. More than that, many startups, as the author points out, are entertainment companies that don't add much economically. Finally, how much money is churned out of investable capital into acqui-hires? How much of that delivers a meaningful return vs. defending a market position?

There was a research .in 2010 measuring a decrease of 40% in empathy among college students since 2000[1]. And Israeli researcher who talks with teens everyday and deals with those subject recently did an interview in an Israeli newspaper , and he thinks that the cause is smartphones and social media. He frames this as "our children are becoming less human".

If you add that into the calculation, it could be that the total value of all internet startups, Paul Graham's specialty , is greatly negative, and they're not just silly entertainment.

[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocke...

How are startups responsible for empathy in college students?

Teenagers have little face to face time , and a lot of social media time , due to the addictiveness of smartphones, and various social media apps and probably various games -mostly created in silicon valley.

Face to face time is where you learn emotional intelligence and empathy. A simple example: usually in real life , when you hurt someone , you see him getting hurt and you might feel ashamed. Social media lacks that.

That's an interesting theory. How would you test it to prove (or disprove) it? Would you predict that it would change as video chat becomes more commonplace? Why or why not?

There's this study :

http://www.csudh.edu/psych/Virtual_empathy_-_Positive_and_ne...

It says "little negative effects for online usage, except for gaming both for males and females", but the other thing it says - "little decrease in face to face time" contradicts other research that talks about greatly decreased face-to-face time :

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/1137/the-effect-of-tech...

So it does require more research.

As for changing to video chat - i'm sure that would help(to some extent, and depending on video chat quality [things like eye contact]) but the weird question is - how do you make face to face chat as addictive as facebook/reddit/HN ?

Well, the startups that don't fail generate financial returns that far outweigh lost capital from faulures. But value isn't just returns to investors, it's value for customers and employees which even failed startups generate But more importantly, you don't get to make claims that you can't substantiate and then ask others to prove to you they are false. Do you think Zeus is real? No? Well, prove to me he isn't. If you claim startups don't create value without actual evidence to back that statement up - that's a nonsensical way to converse

My evidence is not high quality, but it's evidence. Just because I don't have higher quality evidence at hand doesn't make it true. The sky is blue. You can disagree, but where I sit it looks blue.

I claimed my point and my evidence centers on failure rate and personal observation. You can disagree or choose to maintain your own anecdotal/limited evidence. Neither hypothesis is proven invalid until clear high quality evidence is provided.

I find your strawman distasteful bordering on offensive.

Failure rate is in no way any evidence of whether or not startups create value. Failure rate of drug discovery is also high, would you say drug discovery doesn't create value? I'm sorry if you feel offended but I'm not trying to offend you personally, I'm just pointing out that it is a nonsensical way to converse, to offer up claims that make no sense outside of personal observation

I'm not claiming that failure rate is the sole value destruction mechanism. Rather that it is one. The other, perhaps more pernicious, mechanism is solving problems with little to no long term social benefit. (i.e. much entertainment)

Your point about drug discovery helps illustrate the second item. If most of the drugs being pursued were cosmetic in nature, we could challenge the long term benefit of drug discovery.

I appreciate the apology, but that's part of my frustration. My claims do have some grounds for validity and consideration. They have a rational basis.

I don't see the rational basis. You keep repeating it exists but at no point have you explained how it follows that a failure rate of startups in any way whatsoever to any degree at all leads to them not creating any value. You have simply assumed this link - that's nonsensical

In fact, simple economics teaches us that a high failure rate is a good thing. Low failure rate would be consistent with very low risk projects that tend to be about some form of rent seeking or regulatory arbitrage. High failure rate means people are actually working on things that are hard to do. That's very valuable

If a new drug to cure something is discovered, we have a new drug no matter how many other startups fail and people who might have died are cured by it.

This is completely independent of what other people are doing, or whether other people have, say, failed music startups / failed websites that fail at whatever rate.

I'd say that startups can create wealth though, as 'value' is either tied to currency or not objective at all, and funny business with numbers isn't the most important thing in life.

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