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Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

HP was the Google of its day when H & P were in charge. People either retire or die eventually. What happens to Google when time claims Larry and/or Sergei?

Not trying to besmirch or minimize early HP by comparing to Google -- probably better to use Musk/SpaceX or something -- but IMO this is the key takeaway that doesn't seem widely discussed. Innovative companies have innovative leaders with expert-level knowledge in their technical specialties. At some point, the MBAs take over, attempt to put it on autopilot, and it's all downhill from there.

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This is one reason why the current high stock market valuations for large, profitable tech companies are crazy. Eventually the corporate culture rots from the inside and they're overtaken by a disruptive competitor. Unfortunately there's no practical way for retail investors to take a short position on those stocks for 30 years in the future; regular options only go out about 3 years.

True, but if you can identify both the winner and the loser, say AMD and/or TSMC vs INTC, you could sell puts/spreads on the loser and sell calls/spreads on the winner in similar at-risk dollar amounts. If the market itself booms or busts through your strikes, gains on one side will cancel the losses on the other. While you're right, you make double money by winning on both sides. But you lose double if you're betting the wrong way.

My friend, whether you're trading naked or spreads doesn't matter on timescales of corporate rot are ~30 years; the contracts available to retail traders are like ~2 years out.

TL;DR: The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

> Unfortunately there's no practical way for retail investors to take a short position on those stocks for 30 years in the future; regular options only go out about 3 years.

You don't, not if you're a small investor. You go index and hedge your bets that they're not all going to rot at the same time.

I would say H & P had a serious edge over the Google guys in the ethics department.

What about companies like IBM? The company was originally foundered in 1911, but you could say their heyday wasn't until half a century later (or even more), after the original founder had left.

Not saying this happened at IBM, but sometimes correct people can be promoted into correct positions, in which case the company keeps going just fine.

However, at some point any company is probably bound to promote wrong people, who will end up promoting/hiring the wrong people under them, eventually completely changing the course of the business.

It seems like the death of a company is inevitable.

> It feels like the death of a company is inevitable.

Which, from a higher perspective, is good. As it breaks down monopolies and give way to more innovative new companies.

It's good when we allow them to fail gracefully. I would hate to see what unscrupulous stuff a failing Google could do with all our info being held hostage.

No need to wait or wonder. Google Equifax.

It also happens that the circumstances that allowed a company to dominate come to an end. It would require heroic measures to move to a new form of dominance. Why should lightning strike again in the same place?

Lightning will strike a place many times if the capital is expended to erect a lightning rod.

I nominate your comment for the Hacker News comment of the day.

It was the unusual case of a competent son of the founder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Watson_Jr.

>Although the initiative, and as such much of the credit for the birth of the information revolution, must go to Tom Jr., considerable courage was also displayed by his then aging father who, despite his long commitment to internal funding, backed his son to the hilt; reportedly with the words "It is harder to keep a business great than it is to build it."

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