
Successful Tech Startups Don't Write Code? - u8mybrownies
https://iamtrask.squarespace.com/blog/2013/12/18/geniuses-give-it-away-to-simpletons-who-make-millions
======
onion2k
Running a business is about solving a problem. Some problems are things that
need innovative development because they can't be broken down in to smaller
units that people have solved before. More often though, people's problems are
actually a configuration of smaller, very simple steps that _have_ been solved
before. Recognising the problem, breaking it down in to it's constituent
parts, knowing that those parts have been solved, and knowing how to get the
solutions to work together - that's the clever bit. That's what people give
you money for.

------
pedalpete
We've all been doing this for ages. What's newer is that the pieces of the
puzzles are getting smaller and smaller and we glue together more and more of
them to create the end product.

At one time, somebody had to build databases, not a problem anymore, now we
just use Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, etc. etc.

We used to write CSS from scratch, now we use Bootstrap.

Think of how many gems or packages your average Rails and Node.js (sorry,
don't know much about Java, C#, etc. etc) apps use. That's all these pieces
glued together. How much 'code' do any of us write anymore? I'd say very
little, and it seems to be less and less every year.

------
adventured
"Truth be told, the fact that they know what to glue to what makes them smart
in some sense, but in others, they didn’t really create the value."

They did create the value - of the new entity that is the glued together
product, which did not previously exist. Most of the time creativity is
combining two or more existing things to get a new whole. The unique creation
is an extraordinarily rare event.

It's very likely those components that the company glued together, were
previously individually glued together from prior ideas / inspirations and
existing concepts or products.

You'll find that most of the businesses in this world are little more than
glued together pieces, rearranged combinations of previously existing
elements; often done better, or in a slightly novel way, or with better
customer service, or more efficiently, and so on.

------
jotm
I think it's a good thing. It's actually harder than you'd think to build
something out of existing pieces, and if people like it and use it, then why
not? As for the original piece makers, that's what licensing and other
agreements are for...

------
dblacc
Aren't most 'new' things 'inspired' by already existing things anyway ?
Piecing together a number of separate things to create a new - sometimes
better - thing still counts as a win in my opinion.

