
Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups? - JrobertsHstaff
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28266341/why-has-apple-spawned-so-few-startups
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bomanbot
Maybe another reason why Apple spawned comparatively few startups might be
that some of the areas of expertise for Apple and their employees are harder
to do in startup-sized companies; namely hardware engineering and mass
manufacturing innovation.

Apple does a lot of work in hardware and hardware manufacturing, both areas
which are pretty capital-intensive and might not lead themselves as easily to
the startup world.

Say, you are an Apple engineer working on the Ax chips for the next iPhone and
have an idea for something great in CPU design, you cannot exactly rent a
scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS to try to build it on your own and sell it
market.

~~~
derefr
> rent out a scalable 14nm chip fab from AWS

I was pondering the viability of almost exactly this. Could one invest in a
hardware pipeline that efficiently combines e.g. 3D printing with FPGAs to
create the consumer-electronics equivalent of Lulu.com's just-in-time small-
batch book printing + drop-shipping.

Or, in other words: you can do pretty much anything with the sensors in a
modern smartphone. All most manufacturers probably need is smartphone boards
(with maybe some options of extra sensors) in custom cases with fancy buttons
and displays, maybe custom remotes, and a cute little 4-colour double-walled
box. That describes everything from Nest to Roku to some drone controllers.

~~~
nickpinkston
At Plethora, we're building the mechanical pieces of this - starting with
full-auto, on-demand CNC milling as fast as LuLu or similar, then adding more
capabilities.

Happy to make some free parts for anyone's ideas on here!

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

nick@plethora.com

~~~
Animats
Compare emachineshop.com. They have been doing that for years, and have a site
with useful information instead of just pretty pictures.

~~~
nickpinkston
Ha - yea, we're not the first machine shop, but we're doing something really
new in regards to: instant pricing/feedback (inside your CAD), speed, and much
more to come

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Eric_WVGG
(I really hope I don’t offend any Apple people saying this)

My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and
several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple is
that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your
family.”

It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while
we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more prone to eventually jumping
ship and creating a startup.

I could be totally wrong about this.

~~~
gumby
> My impression, which comes from meeting a handful of Apple employees and
> several friends who took jobs and later left, is that the culture of Apple
> is that of “show up, do good work, cash the paycheck, and go home to your
> family.”

I have a lot of friends and former colleagues who are at Apple and you're
wrong about the 'go home to your family.' At least the friends I have (mostly
nerds admittedly) are routinely in the 60-70 hours mark (have only one
exception and he's worked at Apple since the 1980s). But they seem to like it.

> It is not one of “Let’s conquer the world and become bazillionairres while
> we’re at it” — the Google culture — which is more prone to eventually
> jumping ship and creating a startup.

This feels more like Google propaganda. My impression is that google folks
seem to work a lot less (long hours its true, but less) than the Apple folks.
Unlike Apple I _only_ know nerds at google -- no marketing or business folks,
so it could be different.

But of my google friends there are two groups: the übernerds who get to work
on whatever they like (basically research) and they seem to have a lot of fun.
A bunch of them are former colleagues from PARC and MIT, so they are doing the
same kind of work we did years ago -- probably Microsoft research is the same.

The rest are doing product work of some sort of another and none of them seem
particularly happy. A lot of them are on the market (I have hired a couple).
It feels like Google has reached the microsoft phase: they have two real cash
cows and are struggling to find more. Product managers have a lot of sway.
They aren't really organized like an effective business.

Apple went through that mode and was within a few weeks of dying. Luckily they
debugged themselves. My Apple friends, even those deep in the bowels of tools
or drivers, amazingly are still super excited by the Apple products (I guess
they would have given up by now if not).

~~~
foobarqux
> Product managers have a lot of sway

Can you elaborate on what you mean to say here? Is it that PMs have a lot of
influence compared to engineers?

~~~
logicallee
it's actually a funny statement given the definition of a product manager...
it's like saying the CEO has a lot of sway over company policy. well, yeah.

~~~
tsunamifury
PMs of old were supposed to be the smartest or most experienced people in the
room. Now, mostly due to microsofts export of thousands of poorly trained
politically savvy, they are infecting other companies.

~~~
reagency
IIRC, when Simonyi invented the term "product manager", he was referring to
what is now called tech lead or architect.

------
pvg
Article doesn't seem to give any evidence of this. Apple's been around forever
and former Apple (and NeXT, if you stick to the logic it's some sort of
Jobsian startup-suppression field) employees have been involved in zillions of
startups over the years. EA, Danger/Android, Nest, Flipboard come to mind.

~~~
trimbo
Exactly. Though technically, NeXT is "a startup that Apple spawned", I think?

Also: Be Inc., Palm/Handspring (Donna Dubinsky), General Magic, Eazel.

~~~
cromulent
Claris? (FileMaker)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claris)

------
ianamartin
Few compared to what? Microsoft? Google? Facebook?

Oh, the article doesn't quantify what it means by "few." It just throws that
idea out there for no reason and then pretends it's a thing.

~~~
Illniyar
"Although firm figures are hard to come by, Ganesan estimates Apple's tally of
startups is about 50 percent smaller than companies such as Google, Yahoo and
PayPal. (Coincidentally, smart thermostat maker Nest, the most prominent
startup hatched by Apple alums, was acquired by Google last year.) "

They did. Wheather that data is accurate is another matter.

~~~
Retric
I would argue Pixar is a far more well known example outside of SV.

~~~
jgmmo
What are you talking about? Pixar didn't come from Apple. It came from folks
who left Disney. Then Steve Jobs, as himself - not Apple - invested in Pixar.

~~~
CyberDildonics
This is not true. Pixar was originally Lucasfilm's computer graphics division
lead by Ed Catmull. It was separated and sold to Steve Jobs.

~~~
jgmmo
True or False, the guys running Pixar were ex-disney cartoonists?

What does it matter if they were a division of lucasfilm when Steve Jobs
became majority shareholder?

~~~
gdubs
The central core of Pixar, when it originated at Lucasfilm, were people from
NYIT led by Ed Catmull. John Lasseter didn't join until later, and he's the
only prominent ex-Disney person I'm aware of.

------
tlogan
Not sure if this is true - I would like to see some stats.

I think the problem is that the press will not write about some founder as "ex
Apple engineer", "ex Oracle engineer", etc. It is not cool. The story will
sell if founder are "ex-Google", "ex-Facebook", "ex-Dropbox", "Y-combinator",
etc.

For example, if you are ex-Oracle, then you need to have significant revenue
in order to be mentioned in the press as ex-Oracle fonder (PeopleSoft,
Salesforce, Sibel, etc.). If you are ex-Google, you need to raise 100K seed
and press will say ex-Google.

~~~
seizethecheese
I disagree entirely. Many of the Nest articles that I read were heavy on the
"ex Apple" rhetoric.

~~~
rimantas
Maybe because it was founded by former Senior VP and the "father" of iPod, not
just some random Apple engineer?

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sgustard
Here's one minute of methodology to throw at this question.

Search LinkedIn for title keyword "founder", past company Apple. I get 7668
hits.

Same search for Google, 7277 hits. For Yahoo, 4268.

~~~
robotresearcher
To add a bit of context: Apple is 39 years old. Google is 17 years old.

------
VLM
A non-techies idea of innovative might not match startup ideas of innovation.
Or rephrased apple-scale innovation might not scale down to startup-scale
innovation.

Total amount of innovation (for the sake of argument, big) divided by number
of employees (staggering) equals not innovative on average and even the
outliers will also suffer.

Its a mindcrime to say it in public, but if some successful companies are
innovative, and apple is successful, that doesn't logically follow that Apple
is innovative. Rolex has a good reputation, makes nice watches that are very
expensive; however they don't sell many cesium atomic clocks which are
technologically far more innovative than a mechanical or quartz movement. A
timekeeping startup could sell a GPSDO that sells for less than 50 cents, that
would be impressive and innovative but not very Rolex-like. Perhaps Apple is
the same.

~~~
philwelch
Innovation in the context of big companies is a far different and more subtle
thing than innovation in a startup context. A lot of the innovation large
companies do is never really seen--not even in the sense that it isn't
customer impacting, but rather in the sense that you never see the innovation
that goes into simple functions that you take for granted.

For instance, Apple is immensely innovative in terms of designing
manufacturing processes. Do you see the results? You might notice that Apple
products have more fit and finish, but the results are measured in millimeters
at most. The end result is not as earthshaking as a whole new product category
would be.

Even more striking is any large web property. Any idiot could write a working
version of Twitter, Amazon, StackExchange, or maybe even YouTube in a week.
Scaling these to actually work at scale takes immense levels of innovation.
But if you use these sites every week since they have been launched, you might
not see any of that.

------
marvel_boy
Summing up: Apple's good pay, benefits and soaring stock.

~~~
vilmosi
That's not really an answer. Many companies offer just that and more.

~~~
larrys
But with Apple there is the "aunt and your friends and family factor".
Everybody has heard of Apple and a large swath of people would tend to be
impressed by the fact that you worked there. It would also tend to be the type
of place that obviously looks good on your resume if you need to get another
job in the future so it offers that as additional security.

Techies might care that you worked at Tesla, much of the rest of the world
does not.

~~~
vilmosi
There are many companies that offer just that "status" as well.

I don't know why you think Apple is special in any way when it comes to jobs.
In fact, I heard they're worse, exactly because of the "status" that comes
with it.

------
reagency
Because Apple is not a webapp company, and webapps are the easiest and most
common kind of startup.

~~~
hayksaakian
Mobile app startups are a big #2 at the very least, and what with apple being
a manufacturer of a very popular phone I'd expect more from there.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Apple doesn't have very many people working in software compared to hardware,
sales, design, etc.

------
paulsutter
Younger companies spawn more startups because they have many employees who
just experienced the hypergrowth phase of going from startup to known company.
These employees have not only the right experience to start a company, they
want to recreate the experience.

------
alayne
Like others, I'm not sure that Apple has spawned few startups. The evidence
here is weak.

Apple's innovations have been primarily about hardware design. I would think
there are many fewer hardware startups than software startups due to the
amount of capital required to build hardware. It might be more apropos to
compare the number of startups from other hardware companies (Intel, Nvidia,
TI, HP, Sun).

~~~
oblio
Still, don't they employ something like 100k software engineers?

~~~
vilmosi
Not really, most of their workforce are "geniuses" and the like

------
opinionated1
Maybe it's because the company DNA attracts less entrepreneurial minded
employees in the first place than for example Google. I think that people
working for Apple:

\- like to have a strong leader in front of them (or at least used to when
Jobs was around).

\- are engineers comfortable to be less at the center of product development
than at other big tech companies.

Whereas an entrepreneurial-minded person is famously rather reluctant to
subordination. Exceptions confirm the rule.

------
pbreit
Because no one ever leaves!

------
fitshipit
UpThere?

------
josep2
Curious

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shiggerino
For some reason the only Apple-spawned startups that come to my mind are the
ones that ultimately failed, like Be, Inc.

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analog31
Perhaps people with an innovative or entrepreneurial bent don't gravitate to
Apple in the first place, even if they love Apple products.

