
Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation - gilad
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/25/1000563/covid-19-has-killed-the-myth-of-silicon-valley-innovation/
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rvz
The 2020 soothsayers [0] could not have been more wrong. This pandemic has
questioned the sustainability of many startups that provide no value to
society and have resorted to purely being driven by buzzwords and hype to get
investors to continuously throw money at them. The red flag was signalled
after the poor tech IPO performances of 2019 and right now, the same companies
have taken a critical hit from this pandemic.

Maybe when this is all over, we should really go back to looking at companies
that are 'financially sustainable' rather than investing in frivolous tech
companies that compete in burning up their capital on cloud services owned by
some FAAMNG companies. Henceforth, the magnificent FAANMG will sail through
this storm unscathed.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934955)

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PopeDotNinja
What is an example of something that provides no value?

~~~
rvz
You can take most of the companies mentioned in this article which most of
them are in SoftBank's Vision Fund: [0]

My favourites are 'Brandless' [1] and 'Wag'

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/13/softbank-
expects-24-billio...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/13/softbank-
expects-24-billion-in-losses-from-vision-fund-wework-and-oneweb-investments/)

[1] [https://brandless.com/](https://brandless.com/)

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tomlagier
Wag may be overvalued, but it definitely provides nonzero value.

Anecdata: we use it (and Rover) almost weekly to find someone to sit or walk
our dog when we can't get home in a timely manner due to work or social
events. We've kept the contacts of several sitters but it's so much easier to
use a platform for scheduling rather than playing are-you-free with 3 or 4
people that we'll pay the markup. Having access to those services is a huge
QoL improvement.

It also enables a pretty easy additional income stream for people in a
position to do the gigs. From what I've seen, it's straightforward to support
yourself and even make a good middle-income wage just because dogs are a
little simpler to parallelize than, say, taxi rides or food deliveries.

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ac29
Sure, but what you're describing is service for people rich enough to try and
have it all (aka paying a lot of money to not have to give up weekly social
occasions to take care of their pets) but not wealthy enough to have full time
help.

The vast, vast majority of the world doesnt have that kind of luxury, which is
why most people aren't too terribly sad to see these businesses fail.

~~~
perl4ever
"The vast, vast majority of the world doesnt have that kind of luxury"

This is a perverse way of framing the difference between developed countries
and the rest of the world. It's a privilege to _not_ be able to afford
servants, as they would in many non-Western countries with greater inequality?

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askafriend
Meh the writer isn't gonna get this narrative to stick.

Most people's practical experiences right now are that many technologies
developed in SV are making it possible for them to survive quarantine. From
video chat and other communications, to social media, to delivery platforms,
to all sorts of systems that companies are quickly adopting to adapt to the
new operating environment around them.

I'm all for the critical self-reflection of tech and journalists being hard on
leaders. But this in particular is reaching for a story.

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jseliger
Part of a counterpoint:
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/th...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/the-
decline-of-the-innovation-state-is-killing-us.html)

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Nasrudith
That article is utter trash of a smear piece - it isn't worthy of any word
mincing. In contrast to normal advice I would say don't read it - it isn't
worth your time. His demands are like grabbing a Med School Dean by the
shoulders and shaking them while asking why they don't have a vaccine ready.
That isn't their job and is literally demanding the impossible. It betrays a
deep ignorance or attempted manipulation of expected ignorance among the
audience that Silicon Valley are literal wizards. There are legitimate
questions about shifting in industry and what lasting role start ups could
play in a post Covid world but this is not that article. There is nothing
reasonable to discuss.

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giardini
There is no "myth of Silicon Valley innovation": SV is only a tiny fraction of
innovation in the USA and a very specialized fraction at that.

