I love Wozniak, but is track record of founding companies after Apple hasn't exactly been stellar. Anybody else here remember WoZ? Woz-U? That VC fund he co-founded? Entrepreneurship clearly isn't his strong suit.
He took questions after giving a short speech.
One person asked what he thinks about blockchain-based businesses.
Joe basically said "These days, in Silicon Valley, if anyone brings up a business idea that involves blockchain, that's how you know that team doesn't know what they're doing."
Basically, to paraphrase, people trying to throw blockchain into business concepts is like throwing like spaghetti against walls. Investors, according to Joe Lonsdale, do not typically find such ideas respectable-- in fact, the opposite: they seem to find them comical and gimmicky.
Who remembers how Imogen Heap's blockchain based "Creative Passport" would solve all the music industry's efficiency and fairness problems? Her mi.mu gloves are pretty cool though, but they don't need blockchain.
https://tidal.com/magazine/article/imogen-heap-and-the-block...
Imogen Heap: Mycelia's Creative Passport and reimagining the music industry
Multi award winning artist Imogen Heap shares how she's creating a fairer music industry with Mycelia's Creative Passport and demonstrates how to make music with her wearable tech mi.mu gloves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_lR5ua54XY&ab_channel=Nesta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_Heap
>Heap developed the Mi.Mu Gloves, a line of musical gloves, as well as a blockchain-based music-sharing program, Mycelia. She also composed the music for the West End/Broadway play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Over the course of her career, she has received two Grammy Awards, one Ivor Novello Award, and one Drama Desk Award. In July 2019, Heap was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
Imogen Heap's Mycelia: An Artists' Approach for a Fair Trade Music Business, Inspired by Blockchain
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgehoward/2015/07/17/imogen-...
>“It sounds a bit far fetched maybe right now, but I really believe it’s attainable,” Heap adds. “We just need musicians to put their foot forward and sign up for something that isn’t really there yet. There’s no ecosystem there, there’s no marketplace there. Will you put the flag in the ground showing that you’re here?”
Hmmm...
I'm sure there exist a few rusty metal sewage snakes in need of lubrication, but that's not what most people are selling snake oil for.
Not only does attaching to it act as a fairly reliable indicator of fraud or cluelessness, but it also means that you'll be constantly wasting your time deflecting suggestions to copy practices which are illegal, unethical, or just technically unsound from the majority of other 'blockchain' based ventures.
He brought up an example whereby some user could hide something very illegal within the encrypted data.
To be honest, I don't know enough about block chain or the blockchain economy, but the idea of hiding data/URLs related to very illicit content definitely makes me think it could be abused. Especially since decryption would be necessary to uncover the abusive usage (i.e. the concealing of illicit content/URLs to illicit content)
The less charming aspect is that I don't think he really had much skin in the game in any of his post-Apple efforts, and some people who went along with them probably could not afford their failure as easily as he could (although I've never heard first hand testimony to that effect).
And this particular company seems downright snake oil, with Wozniak serving as a figurehead. John McAfee with less sex, drugs, and harm to whales.
Makes me wonder how many top 1 world wide companies you have to have founded to be considered a successful entrepreneur.
EDIT: HN, where people argue whether Wozniak really qualifies as a successful entrepreneur or not :)
OK, I'll bite.
First of all nobody is denying that he/Apple was extremely successful. The argument is if entrepreneurship was his strong point, and I think most people would agree that it isn't. Nobody is denying that he was probably one of the greatest programmers of his generation and that is engineering genius was fundamental to kickstarting one of the most successful tech companies in the world.
You can absolutely found an extremely successful company without being a great entrepreneur if other things align, like having a co-founder who is a great entrepreneur and having a truly groundbreaking product.
Entrepreneurship is not being good at sales. It's not being a good leader. It's also not being a good coder and it's not being good at whatever metric you might feel is important. It's about founding an (eventually) profitable company.
(which is to say, there isn't actually a real disagreement here, except over how language is parsed)
He's a worse-than-average entrepreneur, and I'd wager that without the other Steve, the Apple I would have been one of the many promising microcomputers which fizzled out.
> In May 1983, Apple entered the Fortune 500 at #411 after only seven years of existence. It became the fastest growing company in history.
Both Jobs and Woz left in '85.