
The best founders are futurists - arram
http://josephwalla.com/the-best-founders-are-futurists
======
digz
This is a tautological claim. Of course with the benefit of hindsight, we can
see that the biggest successes were those significantly changed the world...
No way!? That's why they're successes! Lots, and lots of examples of people
who similarly dreamed of changing the world with BIG ideas that completely
failed. The bigger idea, the lower your probability of success, but with a
larger potential return (both personal wealth and impact). I've never seen any
data to support that your risk adjusted return on big ideas is better than for
smaller ideas.

Massive vividness bias here.

~~~
_delirium
A corollary is that both these claims can simultaneously be true: 1) most
successful founders are futurists; and 2) most futurists are cranks.

~~~
S4M
So, the successful founders are futurists that are not cranks. And what would
be the proportions of futurists that are not crank? That could be a good
recipe to predict which founders will be successful...

~~~
_delirium
Well, some might be cranks and also be successful. ;-)

~~~
krapp
(cough Nikola Tesla cough)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
That just gives you a Venn diagram with three circles Cranks, futurists and
genius. The union there is exactly one

~~~
zikzikzik
Do you mean intersection?

------
codex
I find that this article is representative of much of the content of HN these
days: provocative assertions made by relative nobodies with little supporting
evidence save anecdote, but made with the full voice of authority. Found a
middling startup or two, and you're suddenly an expert. Call me old fashioned,
but I like to get my blanket generalizations only from those significantly
richer, more powerful, happier, or more successful than I am.

~~~
ritchiea
The irony is that HN upvotes light commentary with blanket generalizations to
the front page and also upvotes cruel dismissive comments criticizing that
sort of light commentary to the top comment.

~~~
josh2600
At the risk of sounding perverse and making a blanket generalization, I have
this to say:

The people who upvote posts are not the same people who upvote or participate
in the comments section.

The cognitive dissonance is actually two different sets of folks voting the
way they perceive the world. It just happens that the people who like to
comment are a tad more snarky.

~~~
duaneb
I just realized that I only rarely vote, and that's only to help it stay in
discussion for longer.

------
r0s
Just to derail a bit...

I've always disagreed with Jobs over the filesystem thing. There's just a
minimum level of knowledge a computer user needs to use the damn thing, and
file systems are really fundamental to that. I've never seen an abstraction
that worked well enough to replace the file system as we know it, so
abstractions stay welded to particular apps. Then you have a bunch of domain
specific abstractions replacing a common system that was never broken.

I've worked some service jobs, at a FedEx computer center and a University
computer lab. I've seen several poor souls who couldn't for the life of them
use a pointing device OR keyboard. Far more common is people who can't grasp
the idea of usernames and passwords; and I mean really can't understand the
difference.

"Why does it have to be so hard?" is the question. Not for hard concepts, but
for every concept. People offer to pay me to write their email and school
papers, so they don't have to fight with Word and the whole save/load idea
(not to mention glacial slow typing). Maybe this person could be served by
some ultra-simple software, negating the need for new skills. I really feel
this is a disservice to them. In the case of a student, this all but
guarantees they are dead in the water career wise, even if they somehow eek
through school.

I think people should just learn about files, they are fundamental to computer
use. In the far future, when we have Star Trek style voice driven computers,
most people will utterly fail to use them. "Computer, email? No I mean the one
I sent. Why can't you just find it?!? There was a picture". Anyone who thinks
natural language is clear and intuitive should be sentenced to two years labor
in a public computer lab or call center.

~~~
mwfunk
100% agreed on voice control and natural language. Regarding learning the
fundamentals of computers vs. dumbing down the system, I fear that no one
knows the right answer, and that there may not even be a right answer. There
are arguments to made for both approaches and there's no one-size-fits-all
sweet spot for that design decision.

I have my own opinions on it but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong too. I think this
is one of those things where a bunch of well-intentioned people implement a
bunch of different designs over the next few decades, and it just sort of
converges on something even though every design leading up to it was
fundamentally wrong in some sense, or went to far in one direction.

------
pdenya
> I think the minimum viable product has made us so effective at thinking
> short term that we spend less time thinking long term.

There is such a thing as a product or idea to be presented "before it's time".
I wonder if there's an opposite of an MVP like a "Maximum Viable Product" -
The most advanced product the market is likely to support at the moment.

~~~
pazimzadeh
Or not that the market is likely to support at the moment, but that is simply
possible to build with today's materials and processes. Like the Apple Newton,
perhaps.

------
31reasons
If you live in the future, there is no poverty

If you live in the future, there are no diseases

If you live in the future, you can live for 200+ years

If you live in the future, we stopped using fossil fuels

If you live in the future, computers don't track us

If you live in the future, facebook doesn't exist

so lets get back to work..

~~~
jonmrodriguez
If you live in the future, rockets are fully reusable.

If you live in the future, Launch Loops are in operation.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop>

If you live in the future, there are permanent residents on Mars and the Moon.

------
jenius
What kind of founder doesn't think this? "In the future everyone will be using
this ____ that I'm making" - whether it's a virtual pet app or a new
distribution of ubuntu. The problem is that _just thinking this is the case_
is so far from meaning that it has any chance of coming true that the thought
hardly helps anything.

I don't disagree with the thought, I just don't think it really carries any
particular meaning.

------
programminggeek
There is what the future could be, what tomorrow will be, and what today is.

Sometimes building a product is about building the future, but not every
product is about that. If you don't have the resources to see it through to
the future where what you envision is the default, you will fail.

Think about Netflix. Streaming video on the internet is a 20 year old idea
right? They had to start with delivering dvd's in the mail, which is kind of
an analog version of streaming in some ways right? Similar idea, but also
fundamentally different delivery mechanism. Even if their goal was streaming
movies directly to houses, that's not what they built first.

If you can see the problems of today, a way to fix it tomorrow, and maybe what
that evolves into in 5, 10, 20 years... awesome. But if you just see a good
idea that will take 5, 10, 20 years to be viable... run away unless you have
billions of dollars you want to light on fire(like Microsoft on tablets, web
tv, home automation, etc...)

------
confluence
The best founders are lucky.

Right place. Right time. Right society.

A clusterfuck of luck if you will.

That's the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from such small data sets
that include within them insane variance, complex systems, extreme path
dependence, and extremely disparate successful strategies (sometimes VC shoot
to the moon works, sometimes bootstrapping, sometimes established spin outs,
sometimes tech, sometimes marketing, sometimes government contracting).

There is no best founders are X. Just unique situations accidently exploited
by founders who happily find themselves embedded directly within them.
Founders are by far the least important factor in the causal chain that ends
up with their eventual success, or failure.

------
JVIDEL
I would say 70% of my ideas are futuristic, which is why I'm working on the
other 30%

That 70% depends on technologies that plain don't exist yet, or are highly
experimental at best since some depended on funding that isn't there anymore
so the underlying tech needed to move to the next stage is still nowhere to be
seen.

Case in point: without CAD we wouldn't have stealth planes. The theory existed
on paper and attempts at stealth go all the way back to WWII, but it wasn't
workable until we had the computer power to crunch the numbers.

------
mindcrime
OK, that's an interesting piece. I'll take a stab at a "If you live in the
future ..." statement that goes along with what we're doing at Fogbeam.

 _If you live in the future, computers will be more intelligent and will make
it far easier and faster to find exactly the information you are looking for,
will make useful predictions to guide your decision making, and will enable
new management structures for organizations_.

~~~
SatvikBeri
If you live in the future, computers will read your mind and bring that
information to you without you having to ask. Google Now is one very early
start to this.

------
touristtam
I don't think that taking jobs as a reference for thinking ahead of time is
specially good; In this particular video, he is presenting, to the general
public, the 'file system' as a general software application that can be
replaced by another one. This is totally and entirely misleading: without file
system I doubt he can maintain any unified and persistent local data storage
on a computer.

I understand that, ultimately, he is talking about the file explorer software
application, but getting layman to confuse the two is almost a sin, as those
users are potentially novice expert in the making (plus the fact that he is
repeatedly say 'app', 'app', 'app', as if this would make the software
application of the mac environment more of a software than on other platform
....).

If you really want to put a video of future thinking in the computing world,
... well welcome to 1968: <http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html>

------
acgourley
I hope he's right, I certainly think about my company that way. But it's still
a bold statement with no evidence given. Yes those founders _might_ have said
those things. Did they?

~~~
breadbox
My gut says that yes, they did. However, they may have also said that the
world is shaped like a burrito.

Certain jobs encourage the spouting of all kinds of sweeping statements. The
ones that turn out to be true will be remembered, the others forgotten.

------
krapp
_We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to
spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as
these will affect you in the future._

Ha ha. I'm part of the problem.

But yeah, I think it's probably a good idea to have a vision of the future and
strive to work towards building that, if you're lucky enough to be in a
position to do anything about it, and hopefully your vision of a glorious
posthuman utopia isn't my vision of a dehumanizing nightmare.

------
meerab
This reminds me of a saying in field hockey.

'Don't run towards the ball, run towards where the ball will be'

~~~
lanstein
Believe that's originally from Wayne Gretzky:

[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waynegretz131510....](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waynegretz131510.html)

~~~
LukeWalsh
Actually, his father said it. It is often misattributed; most notably by Steve
Jobs all throughout his life who never admitted he was wrong.

<http://www.fastcompany.com/40565/cdu-gretzky-puck-stops-here>

------
kailuowang
Being able to envision the future is only a small part of being able to see
the big picture, being able to see the big picture is an even smaller part of
being a successful founder. But yes, I think it is a prerequisite to be a
great founder.

------
jasey
...Among its visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims
that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”....
\- From the Steve Jobs biography

------
saosebastiao
I would classify myself as a futurist, but we have a flaw...one that tends to
lead to our demise:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara>

------
lifeisstillgood
If you live in the future, there will be a thread on HN of "if you live in the
future" quotes.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801697>

Enjoy !

------
daegloe
Predicting the future is great and all. But in my experience, the best
founders are the ones who execute in the present.

------
dannygarcia
It’s less about being a “futurist” and more about the willingness and ability
to build something you envision.

------
zachrose
I imagine F.T. Marinetti dressed in business casual, standing at a whiteboard
and talking with his team.

------
airkumar
This is what MBAs call the "vision" part of "mission, vision, and values."

------
wittysense
Telepathic and empathic abilities will emerge evolutionarily in the hominids
through the mixed organization of their organisms and the long-term effects of
information on the brain.

" If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life,
organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I
think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers
of increase of each species, at some age, season or year, a severe struggle
for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the
infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and
to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite variety in structure,
constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a
most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each
being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred
useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur,
assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being
preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of
inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This
principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural
Selection.

------
michaelochurch
In 5 years, if progress continues (and, in all things human, it might not):

1\. The top software companies will be running open allocation. It won't get
into the mainstream by then, and maybe not ever, because it's not practical
for all industries. (You can't run OA easily in finance for regulatory
reasons.) However, you'll have to pay hedge-fund money to recruit talented
people into a closed-allocation company.

2\. Location will be much less relevant than it is now. Right now, "Number 6
startup scene" means none at all. That's changing.

3\. Google will either have been thoroughly destroyed (on a cultural front) by
stack ranking, or have reinvented itself utterly in a form more like its pre-
apocalyptic state.

Anyone who can turn these into startups, share your thoughts.

~~~
yid
Can you _please_ stop turning every thread into a diatribe against Google or
pitching open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems?

1\. Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you
want". You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't
scale. I think what you really mean is " _I_ want to work on whatever I want".

3\. From what I can tell, you were at Google for less than a year. Your
anecdotes about Google are neither representative, accurate, nor interesting
anymore.

Every time you go on a rant about Google, you alienate people who, through
first or secondhand information, _know_ that what you're saying is not
representative of the organization.

Please -- moderate yourself, or you'll probably end up hellbanned.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Your definition of open allocation seems to be "work on whatever you want".
You don't need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale.
I think what you really mean is "I want to work on whatever I want"._

First, open allocation doesn't mean "work on whatever you want". It means that
people work for the company directly rather than having their allowable
contributions restricted by an intermediary who will usually use that power
for extortionist purposes and force the other person to serve his career goals
(rather than the good of the company, or the employee).

Employee and company actually have a common interest that is typically thrown
under the bus in a closed-allocation environment.

Second, this sure as hell isn't just about me. Open allocation has second-
order cultural effects that are positive for everyone.

You don't get a good environment if one or a few people get to work on
whatever they want but the rest are stuck in narrow niches.

So I actually wouldn't be attracted to a job where I got to work on whatever I
wanted but everyone else lived under closed allocation.

Under closed allocation you get a culture of internal social climbing. It's no
longer about _doing_ things. It's about _getting permission_. You have a
society founded on getting jobs rather than doing work, then.

Also, the quality of projects that exists under closed allocation is inferior
because people can't vote with their feet.

 _open allocation as a panacea to all organizational problems ... You don't
need a PhD in organizational theory to know that this doesn't scale._

Open allocation is _not_ a panacea. Far from it. Organizational problems
happen because that's how people are. However, open allocation is _almost
always_ strictly superior to the alternative, which is closed allocation.

Open allocation is the more natural state. Closed allocation is the bulky add-
on that needs to be justified, and only when there are necessary information
barriers whose integrity is more important than maximal productivity (this is
true in secure government jobs, and in some parts of finance) is there _any_
justification for it.

 _Please -- moderate yourself, or you'll probably end up hellbanned._

Is that a threat?

~~~
yid
> rather than having their allowable contributions restricted by an
> intermediary who will usually use that power for extortionist purposes and
> force the other person to serve his career goals

What you're describing is a borderline sociopath, not a result of closed
allocation.

You make a lot of conjectures. Do you have _any_ evidence or verifiable
experience to back up these claims:

> Employee and company actually have a common interest that is typically
> thrown under the bus in a closed-allocation environment.

> Also, the quality of projects that exists under closed allocation is
> inferior because people can't vote with their feet.

> However, open allocation is almost always strictly superior to the
> alternative, which is closed allocation.

Sounds like you should be a management consultant.

> Is that a threat?

Sigh...there's your persecution complex again. I _wish_ I had the power to
delete your posts from my _own_ feed (perhaps a browser extension?).

Michael, I mean this very, very sincerely, and out of genuine concern --
please do consider the possibility of talking to a counselor. I don't know a
thing about you or your situation beyond your posts here, but I've seen you
bring up suicide in another thread (not to imply that you're suicidal), and
your inability to move on from an ostensibly bad experience at Google suggests
to me that you might well benefit from a professional ear.

Edit: I'm only saying to you what I would if I knew you in person.

~~~
saosebastiao
I don't know you or Michael, but just from this exchange, it looks like you
are the one out of line here. Nothing you have written has contributed to the
discussion.

Sometimes people have obsessions. I will rant for days on how much Java sucks
as a language, how 99% of American corporations have idiots running their
supply chains, how energy storage is the singular important problem facing
alternative energy, and how City Planners are a bunch of nimwits that are
inadvertently destroying livelihoods of millions of people in their quest for
the ultimate Sim City. I'm sure you have some of your own. It isn't that big
of a deal to ignore someone's posts on HN.

~~~
yid
> but just from this exchange,

That's the problem -- it's not just from this exchange. It's the exact same
theme in stories that are very, very tangentially related to Google, over
many, many weeks on many, many stories.

I've been here for a while, and I can list the very few usernames that stick
out to me in comment threads: tptacek, edw519, pg, matt_cutts, patio11, and
michaelochurch. The others almost always add to the discussion in interesting
ways. Michael, unfortunately, is a one-track record.

