
Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture - minimaxir
http://recode.net/2014/01/01/can-do-vs-cant-do-culture/
======
zach
The economist who helped Walt Disney's theme park dream become what it is
today[1] said that the most important thing he learned through it all was the
profound difference between a "no, because" person and a "yes, if" person.

If you ask many people an audacious "Can we do X?" their response is usually
along the lines of "No, because [valid reasons]". They're not wrong, but the
basic attitude is to shoot down what doesn't seem to fit with one's own view
of the world. These are "no, because" people, and big companies are often full
of them.

Much rarer and infinitely more valuable, especially for an entrepreneur, is
the person who hears "Can we do X?" and responds, "Yes, if... [possible
solutions]". Their response is one of problem-solving instead of
confrontation, seeking to find a synthesis of the new perspective and their
own. It seems like a small thing, but it is a very significant shift in
mindset. Thinking like a "yes, if" person can unlock so much potential.

A friend of mine, one of the most talented and knowledgeable game programmers
around, could easily have shot down many of the ambitious ideas that came his
way. Instead, he greeted them with enthusiasm, often saying, "It's software!
We can do _anything_!" Wouldn't you like to set out to do amazing things with
that person on your team?

[1] - [https://d23.com/harrison-price/](https://d23.com/harrison-price/)

~~~
michh
The risk with saying "Yes, if.." is that a lot of managers (or clients or
whatever) stop listening after the word "Yes".

With "No, unless ...", it's a different story. Then success is dependant on
the conditions mentioned and they're much more likely to do their part in
making sure those conditions are met. If you said "Yes, if" they'll often just
remember you promised you could do it and leave it at that.

~~~
benihana
I love this comment; it so beautifully and unintentionally proves the OPs
point. It's like the perfect comment to represent Hacker News.

In an article about Can Do vs Can't Do culture, it piggybacks on an insightful
top comment that takes an optimistic approach and provides the kind of cynical
pessimism and tries to shoot down the Can Do nature of the OP's comment. But
the best part of it, the most beautiful part, is that it places the blame on
the cause of all problems for hackers: the manager. Literally, managers are
the only reason the world isn't amazing, they're the ones that shoot down all
my brilliant ideas.

~~~
lucisferre
It seems somewhat unfortunate to distil this down to where there are only two
possible interpretations of someones idea, right and wrong. I don't think you
could have straw manned his point any more either.

The entire idea of "can do vs can't do" is such a platitude anyways, it's not
even remotely interesting. It takes all nuance away from communication. As if
just because someone has to make their position clearer than a statement like
"yes, if" in order to manage the expectations of others that they just don't
have a "can do" attitude and by implication are destined to fail.

~~~
bernardom
How is "no, unless" clearer than a statement like "yes, if?"

I think the entire point is that they say the same thing while projecting a
completely different attitude.

The _way_ that someone responds to the question of "can we do this" is very
important.

~~~
epochwolf
Because there's plenty of people that don't listen past the first word.

~~~
sbuk
So start with "If..." and finish with "...then yes!"

~~~
nrs26
This is my favorite comment in the thread :)

------
austenallred
I love the comment from Robert Scoble:

"My friend Andy Grignon worked for Steve Jobs and was on a very small team
building the original iPhone. Steve told him "sorry, you can not hire anyone
who has worked on a phone before."

Why not? For exactly the reasons laid out here. He didn't want his team to
find out what they were attempting to do was "impossible." Andy learned that
when he went to AT&T to pitch them on what became visual voice mail. Andy and
his team thought it was possible. The AT&T folks thought they were nuts. It
took lots of work by Steve Jobs to convince AT&T to try."

~~~
Aloha
Not all telecom people are sticks in the mud, that said modern at&t (SBC) is
not known for being progressive, forward looking or flexible.

~~~
mathattack
They are too big and mature to be reinventing the future. For better or worse,
the modern AT&T came about by Southwestern Bell being the most disciplined of
the baby bells. While other telecoms invested in pie in the sky projects that
didn't work, SBC invested in operations and financial discipline. Their
increased market cap relative to size allowed them to buy their less efficient
competitors. They won on efficiency, not product development.

~~~
Aloha
Disciplined, is not the words I would use - SBC was the most corrupt (IMO) of
the former baby bells too. They have been slimy for a long long time. In the
70's several executives were fired for what amounted to having a political
slushfund [1] to buy off state officials when needed.

While they may be successful they miss the concept of "Spirit of Service" in
whole.

[1]
[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19760728&id=p...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19760728&id=pgYkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jwUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2555,5732593)

------
mech4bg
That Alexander Bell quote sounded way too good to be real, looks like I wasn't
the only person to think that, some interesting sleuthing:

[http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-
greatest...](http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest-bad-
business-decision-quotation-that-never-was.html)

~~~
Joeri
The interesting thing is that apparently the kernel is true, but the actual
quote is invented. It's a shame that people in the real world rarely give us
quotes ready to be made into a movie.

------
praptak
I don't buy this division into can - the good and cannot - the bad. It's just
two strategies with different outcome distributions. The critic will be right
more often, invest in boring tried ideas, earn less on average but with less
variance. The enthusiast will often fail but when he's right against the
common knowledge, he hits the jackpot.

And picking those jackpots and their critics ignores the majority of crazy
ideas that indeed fail - _" They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton,
they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the
Clown."_

Here's some criticism of a crazy idea that actually failed (CueCat):
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html)

Obviously there is a lot of criticism for the sake of proving oneself smug.
Unfortunately sounding smug does not automatically make one wrong.

------
altero
A few years ago the iPad mania just started. I worked for harware company on
admin software. It was written in Java, 15 years old (1998) and never had
major rewrite.

All managers were like 'be like apple' and 'we must release iPad app' and 'PC
is over'. Programmers on other side wanted to rewrite some critical parts,
introduce automated tests and fix some very old bugs.

I was speaker for programmers, soon I became 'tablet hater' (kind of funny
since I had Android tablet). Latter we even bough some iPads for developers to
learn, those were locked in managers office :-). I left company shortly after
that.

So for me 'Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture' is just sort of bullshit to mask real
problems. Sure Jobs made iThinks, but he pulled massive resources towards the
problem. Apple actually bought factories for touch screens before iPhone was
made.

------
fudged71
I see this all the time in the consumer 3D printing space. Sometimes high tech
people act like laggards. "I can't make a metal part on my desk, so it's
useless!" "okay, we're almost there, but how about you look at the progress in
this industry and all the other applications that we CAN do right now!"

~~~
starky
I'm probably somewhat the person you are complaining about here. The current
desktop 3D printers are pretty useless for anything functional (but fine for
initial aesthetic models). All these people have grand ideas of being able to
print functional products at their desk and there are some significant
technical challenges that need to be solved yet. I don't believe that any of
the current printing methods are ever going to get to the point where typical
consumers will truly be happy with them, especially when compared to injection
molded parts. I think the technology that may eventually accomplish what I
consider to be fully functional will not look at all like we have today and it
at least 15-20 years away.

~~~
Joeri
On the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a continuous path from
the current 3D printing technology to the eventual mass market technology.

I see strong parallels to the early history of inkjet printers. From the 1976
IBM 4640 "ink jet" to the Thinkjet took 8 years, but the technology shows a
clear lineage. Inkjet printers struggled with many of the same teething
issues. See this 1985 article explaining the challenges:
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1985-05.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1985-05.pdf)

~~~
fudged71
Thanks for the link! The last page was great: "Managing the development of a
new technology"

------
crazygringo
Of course, too much of a 'can do' attitude can lead to completely unrealistic
expectations, spread your resources too thin, and bankrupt a business or lead
you to waste years or even decades of your life.

The smart choice is obviously a happy medium. Too much of a "can do" attitude
is just as harmful as too much of a "can't do" attitude. We all need reality
checks.

And this is why diverse teams and groups are so important -- one person says
"of course we can't do", another says "of course we can do", and everyone
hashes it out until they've come up with a realistic assessment that is
neither clouded by overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic thinking.

------
_delirium
I kind of wish the startup community looked like the picture painted in this
post. :)

More audacity and innovation, less audacity-lacking "innovation" of the form,
_how to get users to click ads more often and exit this company for a multiple
ASAP_.

------
rayiner
Here's my problem with the implied attack on skeptics: sure you can point to
the cases when the skeptics are wrong, but for every poo-pooing of what turns
out to be a tremendous invention, there are 99 cases where skepticism averts
disastrously misconceived projects. There is tremendous economic value that is
preserved by people who say no. People like to use the example of Jobs
launching a tablet in the face of skeptics, but this doesn't give Jobs enough
credit. Apple is tremendously skeptical. A huge part of their success is the
products they _don 't_ launch.

------
devhinton
Any one else notice the self-justification of the comments?

> Cherrypicking. A great majority of startups fail and their ideas are proven
> as unworkable or impractical, so it is not unreasonable to summarily dismiss
> most of them.

Clearly read the article but is trying to justify his own negativity in the
past and undoubtedly.

>Would love to see a post on how you define "great" in this context, Ben.

Who the fck, address someone they don't know by their first name like that??
Ending the statement with his name also seems a bit passive aggressive.

Enlightening check out the comments and see how many people actually respond
to the article. All too often when reading articles or listening to other
people, instead of listening or understanding, the goal is: 'let me read until
I think think of something I can say'. This really hurts that person and just
isolates people in their own point of view

(note this post could be ironic. Its not though, the article was freakin
awesome! I will try to change my mindset towards a more positive one after
reading and rethink what it means to innovate)

------
aetherson
I don't believe that quote that purports to be a Western Union memo on the
telephone. I don't think that 19th Century businessmen put words like
"idiotic" into business communication, and I don't think that they used
phrases like "the technical and economic facts of the situation," as the word
"economy" at that point was much more strongly meaning "being thrifty at home"
and much less about economic systems.

This blog post claims that the quote is fake:
[http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-
greatest...](http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest-bad-
business-decision-quotation-that-never-was.html)

Slate says it "may" be fake and is awaiting verification:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/02/why_p...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/02/why_people_thought_telephones_would_fail.html)

------
jasonkester
I wonder how much of this is just a visibility issue.

We notice this same thing here on this site, where every new idea seems to get
immediately piled on with negativity. The feeling is that it didn't used to be
this way, and many of us old timers will remember a time when new ideas were
mostly met with encouragement and constructive criticism.

But I bet if you look at the threads today and then, you might find that the
absolute number of constructive, encouraging comments hasn't changed much at
all. Rather, they are simply lost in a sea of negativity spouted out by the
peanut gallery that seems to have washed in from other places where people
dump all over tech news. We used to be conspicuously entrepreneurial here. Now
we're a lot more representative of the tech world at large.

So yeah, I think that there are still plenty of people with the right
entrepreneurial mindset out there. It's just getting harder to find them.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
The visibility / selection bias issue works both ways. Only successful
entrepreneurs are visible, not the many more that have failed despite their
"can-do" attitude.

Maybe we're just slowly reaching a more realistic equilibrium.

------
joelandren
Let's also remember that there is valid criticism of startups and how they
operate their business.

If a startup founder is an asshole, let's not excuse the behavior because they
are building something worthwhile.

If a startup makes a mistake due to lack of concern about its users (i.e.
Snapchat and their security hole), they should be criticized.

All told, I'm all about "can do" culture, but let's not use it as an excuse
for boorish behavior or bad business practices.

~~~
temphn
Let's also make sure the person criticizing said "assholes" is not paid to be
a professional asshole themselves, like Sam Biddle or Nitasha Tiku at
Valleywag.

------
elwell
When I'm overworked or simply lazy, and my co-founders want to add some
feature, it becomes a "can't do" culture pretty fast. Yes, I'm the only
technical co-founder.

~~~
seivan
Not being snarky, but what domain knowledge do they have that you can't get?

~~~
elwell
My two co-founders handle the business aspects of company, though there is
some overlap between our roles. Is that an answer to your question?

------
mrbrowning
He's making a good point in the abstract, but I think Horowitz is too close to
the matter to understand that a lot of the negativity he cites is a natural
reaction to the totally overblown rhetoric of the start-up scene. He
inadvertently proves this by referencing such epoch-defining inventions as the
telephone and the internet. Many tech start-ups are creating interesting,
useful, and sometimes even novel products, but it's nonetheless annoying to
anyone with a sense of perspective to hear from every angle that Start-up X is
going to change the world by revolutionizing, you know, shoe-resoling.

------
tlb
A fine editorial. Stirring. It has inspired me to not write off recode simply
because 90% of what's on their front page today is crap.

~~~
xux
The article was written by Ben Horowitz.

------
abalashov
_Ultimately, in 1842 English mathematician and astronomer George Biddel Airy
advised the British Treasury that the Analytical Engine was “useless,” and
that Babbage’s project should be abandoned. The government axed the project
shortly after. It took the world until 1941 to catch up with Babbage’s
original idea, after it was killed by skeptics and forgotten by all._

Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and
useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in
which it appeared?

There has always been utility for mechanical computation, but it's entirely
possible that the world simply did not have an application for The Analytical
Engine in the 1830s-1840s because other sectors of technology and the economy
simply hadn't evolved to a level where they could effectively utilise it,
especially given its physical properties--its size, scale, and energy
consumption.

I don't know that for a fact, and can't effectively gauge the merits of my own
suggestion, as I am neither a mathematician nor a competent historian of the
intellectual, scientific and commercial zeitgeist of that period. But, for the
sake of argument, is it not possible that this invention fell into the
"interesting, novel, but useless" category?

Now, as for the telephone:

1) From the point of view of the telegraph establishment, it was a competitor;

2) Unintelligible voice really _is_ useless. They just weren't far-sighted
enough to see that the voice quality could improve, and indeed, it was a quite
a long time before it did. Local loop quality improved first. Long-distance
toll voice really didn't begin to sound good until digital trunking came
along. Ask your grandparents or great-grandparents what coast-to-coast long
distance phone calls sounded like in the era of analog lines and waveguide-
type multiplexing technology;

3) In the heyday of the telegraph era, deploying lines was an extremely
expensive and capital-intensive process, and it wasn't until other
technological advancements that made possible various multiplexing and
aggregation schemes (frequency-division, and later digital TDM) came along
that the idea of running a copper line into _every_ home really got to be
realistic[1]. I agree that Western Union was a bit shortsighted in turning
down this patent, but one could hardly blame them for thinking that universal
telephone service wasn't economically possible. That's like selling a business
idea today that relies on everyone having a 10 terabit fiber cable run to
their home. Yeah, it's possible, and I have no doubt someone will make fun of
me in a decade or two for naysaying it in any way, but would you invest $2bn
in a related patent _today_?

 _What mistake did all these very smart men make in common? They focused on
what the technology could not do at the time rather than what it could do and
might be able to do in the future._

I don't disagree, but that needs to be fleshed out. No viable entrepreneurial
venture can succeed solely on the basis of what it is logically _possible_ for
the technology to _someday_ do, or what it could, in principle, in theory, one
day. There is a need to realise a return in a usefully short period of time
that is also unanimously acceptable to a coterie of investors with varying
needs in terms of payoff time frame and patience.

Thus, you need a practical plan for getting to point B, making the technology
do X. Even the most far-fetched, high-risk, R&D-driven ventures entail a
proposal to concretely deploy and commercialise technology in a period that is
usefully short and politically palatable, and that means everyone involved is
somewhat constrained to what can be practically envisaged in terms of _today
's_ possibilities. One can make some leaps of faith, some intelligent
extrapolations and some prescient forecasts, but ultimately, it's something
expressed largely in the observational language and ontology of _today_.

Thus, I can't bring myself to fault someone for doubting, in 1995, that the
consumer web is going to be what it is today, or even be what it was six or
seven years later, in the early 2000s. It was possible--perhaps even
reasonable--to suppose so, but would you have bet the farm on it? Your
retirement savings? I'm not sure I would have (not that I have a farm or
retirement savings, _pero bueno_ ).

[1]
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=451163...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4511639&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F35%2F4511634%2F04511639.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4511639)

~~~
smacktoward
_> No viable entrepreneurial venture can succeed solely on the basis of what
it is logically possible for the technology to someday do, or what it could,
in principle, in theory, one day._

I think the real trick here is to learn how to distinguish between objections
that are just examples of people not getting it, and objections that really do
point up a fundamental problem you will have to overcome or find a way around
in order to succeed. This can be trickier than it sounds.

A common mistake advocates for new technologies make is to fall in love with
their new toy and dismiss _any_ skepticism of its prospects as examples of
cluelessness -- often with glib responses like the one in the OP, "don't hate,
create" (ugh). Not everyone who comes to you with a critique is a "hater."
Some of them are coming to you because they have learned something through
hard experience that they think will be helpful to you. Ignoring those people
can lead you to walk right into the same well-hidden minefields that have
blown up countless other bold explorers over the years. So there's value in
learning how to spot the one guy in the crowd of people telling you to watch
where you step who's sporting a peg leg.

~~~
abalashov
Indeed. Also, about "haters":

It'd be nice if the tech startup community looked like the OP imagines it,
with innovative companies boldly challenging ingrained assumptions and
disrupting conventional wisdom with forward-thinking solutions to hard
problems worth solving.

I think a lot of the "hating" is directed at the latest pump-and-dump social
plugin or other VC-funded sausage party. The lack of mood emoticons on Twitter
is not a problem worth solving, and failure to see its utility is not for a
paucity of vision or ambition.

~~~
hatu
It seems to me (an outsider looking at the Bay Area culture) that people
create what the VC's will invest in. In a way the VC companies are the first
customers they focus on. If VC's stop funding 90% of their portfolio useless
social websites and instead focus on robotics, green tech, medical tech etc. I
would argue that most new startups will start working on meaningful products.

------
daemonk
How about just being reasonably rigorous in your assessment instead of being
overly cautious or overly idealistic? This division into can-do and can't-do
seems to represent two opposite extremes that might not reflect the majority.

What's the real data here? From a practical standpoint, isn't it just risk vs
reward? Can-do's probably get a bigger reward than can't do's, but they fail
more. A can't-do gets smaller reward, but succeeds more.

------
Aloha
This goes back to the glass half full/glass half empty discussion. It's not
anything really new or different. The problem is half full people, tend to
turn into half empty people as they age, get more conservative and have
power/established interests to protect.

In short, disruption seems scary when you are part of the powers that be.

------
lmm
I've found the best places to work are quite negative about their own products
(I wish I could find the release announcement Facebook had for one of their
open-source libraries, with endorsements like "okay, I guess" and "oh, that
thing") and ideas. If you're able to shoot down bad ideas fast, and have a
culture where that's ok, people are much more willing to make all sorts of
crazy suggestions, and you have a better chance of finding one that will
actually work.

------
jeffdavis
Way too general to be useful.

I think it's useful to be optimistic when it comes to visions of the future
and how a business can accomplish it. Electric cars for everyone? Sure, give
it a try. All that can be lost is a little money, and maybe you make a huge
fortune and change the world. Isolated government programs can be a similar
story -- e.g. NASA, which is unlikely to lose anything but a small amount of
money but can be really inspiring or create some great things.

However, when it comes to government policy, the downside can be utter
disaster. It pays to be a little skeptical that the "help the poor" bill (or
whatever other utopian title) will actually deliver as advertised. Or
skeptical that a war will be a simple in-and-out proposition.

Or some things just have little upside. We see this all the time in
engineering. Someone wants to use a fad technology or model of some kind, or
wants to reimplement something to be a little faster, or whatever. There's
huge project risk that it could derail other projects and destabilize the
entire product -- which is fine if you're going to change the world with it,
but not fine for a 10% speedup on some specific workload.

Moral of story: optimism and "can do" attitude is good when the upside is huge
and the downside is contained (like in a startup). Not exactly a profound
revelation.

------
MichaelMoser123
And venture funds also have to be picky about start-ups that they are going to
fund; I understand that the author is working for a venture fund, and that he
tries not to be a 'hater'. Is the Andreessen Horowitz portfolio really
breathtakingly innovative, or is it more of the same?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments)

"In February 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in Twitter,[2]
becoming the first venture firm that holds stock in all four of the highest-
valued, privately held social media companies: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and
Zynga"

[http://a16z.com/](http://a16z.com/)

Otherwise its a great article.

The lesson that I took home: I always held that asking/questioning of
assumption is also of value; but this article told me that I have to be
careful here, and that style of communications is often also very important -
style determines how a person is evaluated by others.

------
brianzelip
Pleasantly surprised to find the son of David Horowitz is a rap fan. Not only
does this article start with a Rick Ross (ugh) quote, but most of his blog
posts all start with music lyrics too.
[[http://bhorowitz.com](http://bhorowitz.com)] Seems he's on the Board of Rap
Genius.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Not even sure why this needs an article. The great majority of people in the
world are "can't-do" people. It's entrepreneurs who buck the trope and create
the things that end up being valuable. It's risky and scary and you'll
probably face opprobrium. Fuck the noise.

~~~
XorNot
You might also fail because you refused to consider reasonable objections
(because people didn't put them in a tone you approved of), and then blow a
lot of money and put yourself in debt you might never escape.

So you know, it's a trade-off.

------
annnnd
I think this article missed a point. It is not a battle between "Yes, if" and
"No, because" \- each has its own place and each should be used with care.

The first stage of innovation should use "Yes, if" approach. This is similar
to brainstorming session, where negativity should be kept to minimum. This
mentality lets people find ways around the obstacles.

When the idea is ready for evaluation, it should be evaluated in light of
resource constraints and similar. In this phase "No, because" approach should
be used to identify all possible downsides. If the answer is "No", the idea
can be either retired or returned to brainstorming session, until it is ready
for re-evaluation.

So it is not a question of Yes/No, it is a question of appropriate answer in
appropriate moment.

------
gfodor
One thing to ponder: this is a strong counterpoint to the "Lean Startup"
culture, which basically states that unless you have people telling you not
just that something _can_ be done, but that they will pay you for it
yesterday, it's not worth working on.

~~~
argonaut
I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. The lean startup methodology
doesn't care at all what people think about the feasibility of something. What
matters in that methodology, however, is whether people will pay for
something, _if implemented_.

A side note is that people telling you they will or won't pay for something
can be quite misleading. The act of talking is quite disconnected from the act
of actually paying you.

~~~
gfodor
"Why would I ever need anything other than a horse to get around? Mine gets me
where I need to go just fine. And more cheaply, too."

The short-sightedness of the people cited in the article doesn't just come
from critics, but from the potential market as well.

------
yalogin
He is concerned about this because it directly impacts him and his line of
work. But this is nothing new even in technology. The one glaring example is
Apple. When the first iPhone came out Apple was the savior but soon the number
of people hating Apple is greater and more vocal that the so called fanboys. I
think its simply that success begets hate on a superficial level and in some
cases makes people look into certain aspects of that success with more
scrutiny which might beget dislike(or hate). Its just what it is. Point being,
even the most educated, practical thinking people on the planet succumb to mob
mentality, particularly online. Deal with it.

------
lazyant
"Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone," obligatory to mention the
other inventor:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray)

------
stevewilhelm
I have found that there are many more ideas than time or energy to do them
all.

How does one foster a successful "Should-Do" culture instead of a "Can't-Do"
culture?

------
rikacomet
My thumb rule: As long as you are young, given the time, you can do anything
that you can conceive in the mind.

I firmly believe, that its a practical thing, that with time, most people who
aren't way successful become pessimist, yet.. their kids always have the fresh
start.

It is upto the young generation, to carry the baton of HOPE! If young people
won't dream, who will?

------
oznathan
"Bitcoin could never succeed as a currency. It's too unstable"

~~~
al2o3cr
If you bought at the beginning of December, it's certainly "succeeded" in
turning 1/3rd of your money into nothing...

~~~
oznathan
sure that's a clever argument?

what if you bought it at any other time during the few years it exists?

anyway that was not the point. The point was people failing to see the
innovation and seeing only the problems. Which was the point of this article.

------
sopooneo
No, [your "Soylent" food replacement will not work] because...

------
smokeyj
Looking at you Krugman.

------
robgibbons
Ben, your site is so Goddamn frustrating on mobile.

------
michaelochurch
One more quote to start this off.

 _I do not bring a weapon. I am the weapon._ \-- Michael O. Church

I like the overarching theme of what the OP is saying. Good companies provide
multiple ways to succeed. Shitty firms provide multiple ways to fail, and only
one way to succeed. That's why closed allocation is such a pile of 9/11
nukular buttfail: because it's founded on the idea that a person is only
admitted _one_ avenue for success (but there are numerous ways a person might
lose face).

Good institutions provide multiple ways for the people within them to succeed.
This encourages creativity. Bad companies lay down multiple ways to fail, and
only admit one way to succeed. It is known.

I don't think this is only an artifact of company size. I've seen small
companies with that negative, embarrassment-averse culture; I've also seen
large companies create pockets of the positive, open-allocation type culture.

 _Hardly a day goes by where I don’t find something in my Twitter feed crowing
about how a startup that has hit a bump in the road is ”fu &%@d,” or what an
“ash%le” a successful founder is, or what an utterly idiotic idea somebody’s
company is._

I am all for product risk and innovation. If someone tries to cure cancer and
fails, I'm going to praise her to the moon for trying. On the other hand,
moral failure (asshole founders) I cannot support. There is a huge difference
between a scientist who tries for 20 years to cure cancer and falls short (but
probably delivers a lot of useful research along the way) and an Evan Spiegel,
who fails morally. "We're a startup" has been used too many times to justify
reckless management and moral bankruptcy. Well I say: fuck that shit.

I am all for removing the stigma against good-faith failure. The problem in
the VC-funded startup world is all the bad-faith failure that is out there.
When someone gets fired with no severance because his 24-year-old,
inexperienced, technically incompetent manager turns out to be a wad, no one
should congratulate the company for "taking a risk". Recklessness, the
defining trait of the current crop of VC-funded cool kids, is not a virtue.

 _It seems like there is a movement to replace today’s startup culture of hope
and curiosity with one of smug superiority._

That "culture of hope and curiosity" is long gone. Snarky people like me are
working our asses off in the effort to bring it back. We do it by taking down
the Evan Spiegels and Lucas Duplans of the world. We need to take out the
trash so there is some fucking space for the good guys.

 _Some people would like to turn the technology startup world into one great
big company with a degenerative Can’t-Do Culture._

That's VC-istan, not in some future dystopia but right now. With all of the
co-funding and note-sharing and collusion, VC has degenerated into a feudal
reputation economy that behaves like a large and dysfunctional company where
people are too busy padding their resumes and manicuring their reputations to
even consider doing anything remotely ballsy. That's exactly what has already
happened.

