I like this essay; am saving it. I'm running a small two man outfit for the money it brings in now, but it's not a start-up because we don't have any great ideas to sell.
I mostly spend my time wondering how automation can cut reduce labour and make life easier. I wish I could be talented enough to throw myself into this but nahhhh.
The point that Graham makes about living cheap though, is one of the best points about being a small outfit which isn't your fulltime job. It's amazing how cheap things can be done and yet how much other big firms can charge for it.
Nah it's just doing web solutions, which is a nice way of saying "contract IT manager".
I talk to the business owners, find out their needs and their operations, then develop/implement something for them customised to their needs, including open source implementations or developing web portals etc.
I can't compete with bigger companies on their big name, so I compete on price and being willing to work personally with them.
That said, this shouldn't spread too much around before the higher ranks discover :P.
The founding of startups. Who founds them, who Paul Graham asks to found them - students are hardly the group best suited to manage and deliver on potential new ideas. I mean, I can see why - youth need less job security - but this essentially reflects a financial market failure.
I mean, here's a blunt synopsis of the state of affairs as described: making a startup is difficult, most who found startups would not have done so if they had known how difficult it would be, those who do invest far more effort into them they they had planned to. It seems reasonable to suggest that maybe founding a startup isn't welfare improving, at least to this particular demographic. Maybe it has the expected payoff of, say, a lottery ticket. Sure, great if you succeed, but...
People who found start-ups primarily do so for human reasons: they want to solve problems that large organizations ignore; they want the breadth of experience that comes from being simultaneously manager, marketer and engineer; they want to *create* something; they enjoy the thrill of staring in the face of probable failure.
Certainly this is Graham's purpose, which is why he founded Y Combinator: It's run almost like a non-profit whose sole purpose is to make technology *happen*. Start-ups under their wing get funding, coaching, networking, and anything else they need.
Also, making a successful start-up, unlike winning a lottery, is not a random event. (Unless you're a venture capitalist, then yes, it is. =p)
Yup: Singapore ranks highly if you use metrics like amount of paperwork required to start up a company.
Nope: The government will only help you if you're bringing foreign investment, creating jobs, or sitting on lots of equity, which is not the kind of low-footprint setup you would find in a software start-up. Also, good luck trying to finding Singaporean companies to partner with, newspapers to review you, risk-taking developers to hire, etc. Singaporean conservative and stability-preferring culture works against small businesses.
Speaking of rankings: I just discovered (via Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) that according to Hofstede's cultural dimensions, Singapore is the country whose culture is the *most* tolerant of ambiguity in the world. In other words, Singapore relies the *least* on rules, regulations, and laws. I think something went wrong with the research? XD
No, I don't think anything went wrong with the research, in fact I laughed out loud when I saw that figure... it demonstrates how people here really interpret laws and rules. In fact, I believe that this research (unlike most others!) truly reveals what our working adults believe:
Singaporeans rely essentially on unwritten, unsaid social norms that have little to do with established laws. For example, witness the general public's attitude to situations like 377A - 'if they're doing it, as long as I don't know about it, it's their own business, just don't prosecute lor' - this is low uncertainty avoidance at its best! Similarly, culture within the SAF, a microcosm of Singaporean male society: 'do anything you want, as long as you don't get caught'. Examples abound. The lack of principles and our willingness to denigrate them ('why you care so much', 'don't act garang la', etc) further exemplifies this.
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I mostly spend my time wondering how automation can cut reduce labour and make life easier. I wish I could be talented enough to throw myself into this but nahhhh.
The point that Graham makes about living cheap though, is one of the best points about being a small outfit which isn't your fulltime job. It's amazing how cheap things can be done and yet how much other big firms can charge for it.
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I talk to the business owners, find out their needs and their operations, then develop/implement something for them customised to their needs, including open source implementations or developing web portals etc.
I can't compete with bigger companies on their big name, so I compete on price and being willing to work personally with them.
That said, this shouldn't spread too much around before the higher ranks discover :P.
Reply
Do you want me to screen the above comments? lol
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I mean, here's a blunt synopsis of the state of affairs as described: making a startup is difficult, most who found startups would not have done so if they had known how difficult it would be, those who do invest far more effort into them they they had planned to. It seems reasonable to suggest that maybe founding a startup isn't welfare improving, at least to this particular demographic. Maybe it has the expected payoff of, say, a lottery ticket. Sure, great if you succeed, but...
Reply
Certainly this is Graham's purpose, which is why he founded Y Combinator: It's run almost like a non-profit whose sole purpose is to make technology *happen*. Start-ups under their wing get funding, coaching, networking, and anything else they need.
Also, making a successful start-up, unlike winning a lottery, is not a random event. (Unless you're a venture capitalist, then yes, it is. =p)
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1) You can't create a start-up in the US because you're not a PR, and
2) Singapore is a terrible place to create a start-up. (reference: BarCamp).
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Yup: Singapore ranks highly if you use metrics like amount of paperwork required to start up a company.
Nope: The government will only help you if you're bringing foreign investment, creating jobs, or sitting on lots of equity, which is not the kind of low-footprint setup you would find in a software start-up. Also, good luck trying to finding Singaporean companies to partner with, newspapers to review you, risk-taking developers to hire, etc. Singaporean conservative and stability-preferring culture works against small businesses.
Speaking of rankings: I just discovered (via Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers) that according to Hofstede's cultural dimensions, Singapore is the country whose culture is the *most* tolerant of ambiguity in the world. In other words, Singapore relies the *least* on rules, regulations, and laws. I think something went wrong with the research? XD
Reply
Singaporeans rely essentially on unwritten, unsaid social norms that have little to do with established laws. For example, witness the general public's attitude to situations like 377A - 'if they're doing it, as long as I don't know about it, it's their own business, just don't prosecute lor' - this is low uncertainty avoidance at its best! Similarly, culture within the SAF, a microcosm of Singaporean male society: 'do anything you want, as long as you don't get caught'. Examples abound. The lack of principles and our willingness to denigrate them ('why you care so much', 'don't act garang la', etc) further exemplifies this.
Reply
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