Yes, Silicon Valley Is Filled With Trivial Startups... And That's A Good Thing
from the missing-the-point dept
One of the more annoying logical fallacies of the post-gatekeeper era is that because so many people/companies/groups can do something, then the overall output is worthless. We hear this all the time. For example, people will claim that "blogging" sucks, because many blogs suck, and it doesn't have the same standards as journalism. That, of course, ignores the many excellent blogs out there. Similarly, we hear about how the world is now "flooded" with crappy music, because it's so easy to record and distribute songs online. The problem with this argument is that it makes a few really dumb assumptions, including the idea that relative quality is more important than absolute quality. It also is based on a lack of understanding of totally independent events.That there may be a ton of crappy blogs out there has no impact whatsoever on quality blogs. That there's lots more music out there that you don't like, doesn't mean that there's less music that you do like. In fact, in both cases, the fact that it's easier to create and distribute such things actually increases the likelihood that the amount of actual quality increases. You just ignore the bad stuff and rely on better filters to find the good stuff.
Still, we usually hear this argument applied to content. So I was a bit surprised to see someone named Hermione Way basically making the exact same logical fallacy when it came to Silicon Valley as a whole. Her complaint? Too many startups here are working on trivial things, and somehow that's some sort of threat to Silicon Valley itself. This is the same thing as saying that there's no good music anymore, because there's so much bad music out there. The fact that there are some startups in Silicon Valley that are doing trivial things does not change the fact that there are many others doing amazing, world-changing things. The fact that there are some who go into startups and see them as get-rich-quick opportunities, does not impact the huge number of folks here who do not view startups this way (and, honestly, anyone who views startups as a way to get-rich-quick has probably never worked at a real startup).
Let me flip the argument on its head. Is there any place in the world that has a huge concentration of "world changing startups" that doesn't also have a bunch of frivolous and trivial startups hanging on as well? Of course not. I'd argue that if you stopped looking at the relative level of "world changingness" and instead looked at the "absolute" level, you'd be hard pressed to argue that more world-changing innovation comes from a single location than comes out of Silicon Valley.
That there are trivial companies mixed in as well doesn't take away from that. In fact, it often can help the world-changing innovations take place. That's because in this environment so many ideas are tossed up on the wall, that you get surprisingly powerful ideas coming out of them. Blogger and Twitter were both "side projects" that many people considered to be trivial. While I'm sure some people still consider them trivial, to argue that these weren't "world-changing" when you look at the communication they enabled, and how they've been used around the world, would be an impressive level of denial. People derided the original Apple computer as being trivial. But it changed the world in many ways. People mocked Google as being a trivial search engine in a crowded market. But it changed the world and the way we interact with information today. Many world-changing ideas don't start out that way. Most companies don't end up in the business they intend to start out in. Someone who's lived through startup life knows this. It's easy to mock from the outside, and not realize this is how innovation works. A trivial idea may be trivial forever... but it can also spark the next world-changing idea.
It's the cauldron of ideas and innovation, good and bad, that helps bring to life those world-changing concepts when they come about. Pretending that you can build an ecosystem that only produces world-changing companies is a fallacy.
That's not to say there aren't problems with Silicon Valley. And there certainly are overly eager folks who jump into the fray all the time without realizing how the world really works. But to brush off Silicon Valley because there are some trivial startups out there is to miss the point in a big, bad way.
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Filed Under: innovation, logical fallacies, startups, trivial, world changing
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The real problem is not that there are too many crappy companies, blogs, music, movies or whatever, the problem is there are too many few people holding control of it all at the moment.
Funny enough those same few entities and people are the ones who least help society to grow, they don't pay the percentage of taxes others do, they can't employ millions of people at a time, they can't create everything and they surely can't supply everybody.
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The top 5 percent ...
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All These Pointless Businesses Give Capitalism A Bad Name
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Valid Point
It does all look a bit like the early IP bubble where way too many brain dead MBAs wrote business plans and found backing.
The same sort of crap is still going on. I just read about a start up who coded an RSS reader and have raised $10M in funding???? That's the sort of trivial deals backed by cubic dollars you read about constantly in the Valley.
In the end the cream rises and the rest consolidate or die off, and in this case perhaps the sooner the better.
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If they do that then, by definition, they aren't good talent are they?
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We've heard this before...
"Whether this revolution in the reading habits of the American public means that we are being inundated by a flood of trash which will debase farther the popular taste, or that we shall now have available cheap editions of an ever-increasing list of classics, is a question of basic importance to our social and cultural development."
I feel so bad for the large group of people who see abundance as a threat.
I wrote a bit about how our social graph is created ever-better filters for discovery of new content, and how abundance actually solves it's own problem as our social tools get better. I refer to this as "crowdsourcing curation". You can read more over on my "crappy blog."
http://blog.ericreasons.com/2010/07/crowdsourcing-curation-social-graph-as.html
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1) It's cost has dropped significantly (as you point out)
2) Competition and efficiency in delivery have thus passed that drop in cost to the consumer in forms of lower price
3) Anytime price is lower than value, we buy. Value has remained constant, cost, and thus price, have fallen.
This is indeed the same mechanic going on in Silicon Valley. The filters we use for search and discovery are still catching up to the abundance that has occurred.
To expect the filters to be put in place before the abundance is to put the cart before the horse.
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>1) because anyone at any age now can make "music" extremely
> easily ... and throw it up on Youtube
Okay, yes, I'm with you, this looks good ...
> and, because we have no reliable filters,
Ahh, I see where you're going. Google for music! Brilliant. I like your analysis ...
> the music merit bar has been deeply lowered;
WTF? You totally went off the rails here. What the hell is a "merit bar", and does it have nuts?
> many have given up listening,
Wait, what? "Everywhere I look on YouTube there are crappy songs, so I'm going to live in silence. No, asking a friend to recommend a song won't work because they all think I'm a freak, what with my no-listening policy."
> music has been devalued to zero
Wouldn't a sea of crap make good music more valuable? Let me ask you a question. You are going on a blind date and meeting at a bar. Do you want that bar full of good looking dudes with six-packs and fat wallets, or do you want a sea of Trekies with Mountain Dew guts?
> no more competition driving need to be good
No matter where I pause as I read that sentences doesn't make sense. Look, I can do it too!
> Alternatively, too much competition
I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. On one end there is a monopoly. In your world, on the other end is a multipoly. "Help, too many people want my business. I can find exactly what I want. I miss my limited choices and high prices!"
> not get into the market b/c rewards are much less
Exposure is its own reward. I'm pretty sure that is why we have this "problem" to begin with.
> There's more, but I'm done for now.
Code for, "I just puked in the comments section. Maybe something I said makes sense and doesn't contradict the other stuff." Nope and nope.
Yay, that was fun.
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Dear musicians, welcome to the real world. I spent two months writing a small book's worth of code, I got paid for those months and will not continue to get paid in perpetuity. I have friends in all walks of life, and every one of them expects to get up every morning and continue making a contribution to society.
Some of my favorite bands have been going to the dark side, and guess what...I don't buy their new stuff if it is released as part of an RIAA label. Your biggest fears are competition with legitimate bands (you can keep your corporate cookie-cutter music), and informed consumers who will no longer have terms dictated to us by middle-men and other useless members of society (IP lawyers I'm looking in your direction).
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The average "artist" was barely making a living before, and with a few whales, most of them were not. Increase the number of "artists" exponentially without increasing the income (and music related sales, live, recorded, whatever isn't shooting up), and things get exponentially worse for the people at the bottom of the hill.
Perhaps Bono (the U2 guy that Nicedoggy things writes laws) will have to cheap out a bit and take one less transcontinental private plane trip in his lifetime to balance the books. For the lower end guy barely making it on the bar scene, he just found out that he gets only half as many dates because there are twice as many bands in his area. He'll make ends meet by getting a McJob.
The farther you try to spread the wealth, the thinner it gets on the edges.
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You cannot make a living by selling recordings != you cannot make a living from music.
If you are good You can make your living from teaching music to all the other wannabees and have enough time to produce top quality music yourself. Most of the greatest music ever written was produced by people who lived that way.
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No, you were clear and ChrisB did not miss the point.
You however, failed to respond to points raised.
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So the opportunity for middle men is now in filtering - rather than organising physical distribution.
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Most of our new music discovery now comes from friends, social networks, and intelligent machine filtering (like Pandora.com or iTunes Genius).
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Why the gatekeepers are afraid
Journalism for example. Its not that the traditional journalist is worried about competing with the average blogger. S/he is worried about competing with the best bloggers, who may be the very few, but are the very best. There are some talented people out there. They don't all work for the dinosaur.
Music for example. Its not that the traditional signed band is worried about competing with the average garage band. They are worried about competing with the best bands, who may be the very few, but are the very best. There are some talented people out there. They don't all work for the dinosaur.
Software for example. Its not that . . . .
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Comparing Google and Twitter?
One based on some quite complicated technology, and another is IRC-written-again-now-in-html. You know what IRC is, right?
At no point at time Google was considered "trivial". But other "Web 2.0" crap, like Twitter, Blogger, and million others? The were trivial from day one, they are trivial today. They will (probably) disappear a year later and nobody will miss it. Remember MySpace? Geocites?
Google indeed changed the ways how people look for information, and Twitter - why should I use it, again?
Now, there's nothing wrong in doing trivial stuff, people still need trivial things like water, clothes, chairs, etc. But nobody call new chair factory "startup". This term usually reserved for business based on very unique idea. Not like Twitter, sorry.
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Second, i don't consider water to be at all trivial. There are dozens of stages and processes that water goes through from the river to your tap and back to the river. Billions of people have poor access to water. It is hardly trivial.
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Journalism?
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Too much too soon
I was recently involved in a startup. We began with a crappy product, but slowly developed the basis for something really valuable.
Then "the man" (founder) decided he was only interested in selling the company, and had us abandon efforts to make a silk purse out of that sow's ear, and just make it look "jazzy" so the company could be sold.
I dropped out, of course - it might work, but I don't like working with smoke and mirrors.
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IP and lockdown
Look at medicine, healthcare in general, the entertainment and communications sectors, fast-moving consumer goods, the luxury sector, banking and commerce -- all this has been facilitated by IP, not inhibited by it.
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Re: IP and lockdown
Correlation =/= causation.
While I disagree with Nicedoggy's original comment, I find it difficult to believe that there's a causal relationship as you describe either. There were so many other things that happened unrelated to IP that I think explain most things in your sentence here.
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Freedom to fail...
Cue Thomas Edison's schtick about learning "1000 ways NOT to invent a lighbulb"
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