
Paul Graham on trends for the future - wyday
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/08/paul-graham-on-trends-for-the-future.html
======
hasenj
Linux may never be a factor on the desktop, but I think Ubuntu has a good
chance.

Wait. Isn't Ubuntu just a Linux distro? Well, that depends on how you look at
it.

Is FreeBSD a factor on the desktop? OS X is based on FreeBSD, but no one
thinks of FreeBSD as "a competitor to windows", or "a user friendly OS".

Of course, Ubuntu to Linux is _not really_ like OS X is to FreeBSD. Ubuntu
didn't invent a new desktop, it's based on Debian and it uses GNOME (or Xfce
or KDE). But there's still a point to make here.

While the open source community as a whole might fail at designing a great
desktop experience, this limitation doesn't necessarily apply to Ubuntu. The
design efforts there are lead by Canonical, and it's not horribly fragmented.
It has so far produced some pretty decent results. See
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter> and
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD> as examples.

The desktop as a whole is not quite there yet, but it does stand a good
chance, and it's already making a lot of strides.

~~~
auxbuss
On my laptops, I've used Ubuntu since Badger (2005). I went to Ubuntu from
Debian, because everything on the laptop suddenly worked. No more kernel
compiles or weirdy-beardy deep hackery.

Linux on the desktop has arrived, I thought. But I'll wait one more iteration
before recommending it to my clients.

Dapper (2006) came and broke lots of things. Months later, all is well,
mostly.

Once bitten, I didn't upgrade until Heron (2008) was released, and when I
upgraded I did so one version behind, to Gutsy (2007); thinking that it should
be stable.

Many things worked, but some, like video drivers and wireless networking,
didn't. They'd been working fine since Badger.

By Jaunty (start 2009) everything was working. I still have this machine on
Jaunty and no way am I upgrading it. It has some weird video behaviours, but
Ubuntu has never bedded these down; it's always a bit of a lottery.

2010, I bought a new laptop (Sony Vaio). I loaded Lucid (2010 Long term
support version) and I can't tell you issues it has. There is a dedicated
group for resolving the issues. When I plug in the USB soundcard I use on the
aforementioned machine -- it's playing now -- a card that has worked since
Badger, the machine locks solid; it needs a power-down to restart it.

This is not an uncommmon story when dealing with Ubuntu. This and the vagaries
of Shuttleworth. As he says, "This is not a democracy".

Ubuntu, like all things, is great when it works, but is constant shifting sand
under your feet. And stability -- on the same machine, same OS -- is
fundamental, imo. Ubuntu doesn't have this, and history has shown me that it
is unlikely too. I've chosen to move away because of this.

~~~
NickPollard
Anecdote is not the singular of data; for every horror story there's a story
of how someone finally is rid of their horrible Windows problems and now
everything works fine.

Personally I've had less compatibility problems with Ubuntu than with Windows,
but I don't expect everyone else to be the same.

------
patio11
I took the liberty of taking notes. Apologies in advance if my impressions did
not capture what PG was trying to say -- I'm summarizing, not stenographing.

1) Innovation

We've still got it, including making things that are not just ways to waste
time on the Internet. Evidence: sci-fi writers dramatically underestimate
progress in our industry.

2) Biotech

Sexy like cleantech, but doesn't require government subsidies to make money.
Also has competitive moat, because biotech is hard. (Don't worry, software
still worthwhile, too).

3) Efficient markets

Free flow of information creates efficient markets where not possible before.
Many of our startups do this, such as AirBnB, an efficient market in lodging.
YC = "mass production techniques, applied to VC"

4) Measurement

"You make what you measure." Put a paper graph on the wall plotting your
favorite metric. You'll optimize for it, celebrate improvements, and shoot
yourself in the foot if you picked the wrong metric. Metrics show social
customs are obsolete (like, e.g., display ads).

5) The United States

PG was born in England, is not "wild, jingoistic patriot", but still thinks
reports of US's impending obsolescence are greatly exaggerated. The only thing
that kills empires is when people can't make money by building stuff. Three
ways this can happen:

    
    
      a)  Bandits steal the money.  (NYC)
    
      b)  Your government steals the money.  ("The England that I escaped from.")
    
      c)  Other countries steal the money.  (The Netherlands.)
    

Leading candidate for toppling US is China. PG seems skeptical.

6) Silicon Valley

Budget crisis in California is two sets of idiots playing chicken. You don't
have to start in Valley, but it really, really helps.

7) Small companies

World is "higher resolution": stuff gets done but it doesn't require
industrial empires anymore. Networked small organizations are more efficient.
Economies of scale paper over all the other sins of large corporations, but
nimbleness of small companies means little guys win.

8) Economic inequality

A network of small companies plus money not getting stolen will produce
massive economic inequality. (Patrick notes: PG's essay on wealth creation is
my favorite of all he has ever written. He has a convincing take on why
massive economic inequality is a good thing, and it isn't based on trickle-
down economics.) If your business model bets on increasing economic
inequality, good for you.

9) Moore's Law

Computers getting better, but in uneven fashions (e.g. SSD, not "all
components improve 2 years"). Programmers are lazy. Companies which enable
programmers to be lazy (i.e. not change practices or working code to benefit
from uneven improvements) and get automagic speed increases win.

10) Things On Screens

We spend a lot of time staring at screens. Wider population spending more time
staring at screens. PG has a suntan from his monitor.

11) Server-based apps

(I missed this one.)

12) Super good customer service

Customers can switch easily, people are talking together more, so have such
good customer service like it seems like a mistake. Customers can now
participate in design of products in virtually real time.

13) Apparently frivolous stuff

Our startup founders use Facebook to talk to each other about work, not email.
"Facebook has not found its monetization model yet", haha. This sort of
adoption shows there is something really at work here. "It is surprisingly
hard to do math that has no practical applications."

PG skipped Twitter. Can't get a good name on it, but it turns out Twitter is
really useful as a "non-deterministic messaging protocol."

14) Programming languages

There will be a succession of new, popular languages. Use the next hot
language. You can be the guy who writes the library for such-and-such. Server-
based apps can now be cobbled together from multiple languages. "Super
abstract languages, like the ones people successfully write applications in
now, were once called 'scripting languages.'"

15) OSS

I can't name a company which did too much OSS. If no one has gone too far,
we're probably not doing OSS enough yet.

16) Linux will never be a factor on the desktop

Limiting edge of OSS is design. Everyone thinks they are good at design. Most
people are not good at design: look at the contents of their houses. What this
means for the desktop: buy AAPL stock.

17) iPhone

iPhone is a big deal, and I'm bummed because Apple are jerks. There are two
problems startups have that aren't their own faults: immigration and AppStore
approvals. They're like something out of Kafka.

(Sidenote: We're not giving our startups too little money: they can all afford
iPhones.)

Android will be crushed under Steve Jobs' heels, because Apple cares about the
iPhone like Google cares about search.

iPhone (or something similar) will do for laptops what laptops did to desktop.

18) Design

Design is why the iPhone wins. 20 years ago, it would have been surprising to
say American companies can beat Japanese companies in consumer electronics
devices. Core competency moved from manufacturing to design after people got
microprocessors to shoot themselves in the foot with. Plus, China commoditized
manufacturing expertise.

19) Real Time Stuff

Web 2.0 doesn't mean anything. Real time does. Google Wave will actually be
important, not just somebody's 20% project. It is like Google-branded
Etherpad, and Etherpad is useful, so Wave will be a gamechanger. See also
Twitter, useful in a way different than Wave. If you make the convex hull
around Twitter/Wave, and see a space which is unoccupied, that is a worthwhile
opportunity.

20) VC

VC won't go away because VCs need to give you money. They can make the terms
arbitrarily better to put money in your pockets [Patrick notes: can't get 2
and 20 if you can't invest the money]. Great news for you, since [owners] will
now have the market leverage. Expect better valuations and board control.

21) Founders

Founders will more and more have the upper hand. Investors have learned firing
the founders is a bad play. More and more founders will be technical founders.
Programmers can learn to do business: make something people want, charge them
money for it.

There should be an O'Reilley book for business. It would be really short.
"Make something people want, charge them money for it. Advanced: charge more
money."

\---

Trends Not To Bet On

1) Credentials granted by institutions

Admissions officers are terrible. Look at our applicants: college graduated
from (and by implication, admitted to) does not predict success. Not
surprising: colleges admissions are impersonal evaluation of 17 year olds
based on criteria which can be successfully gamed for money. Credentials are
an example of an illiquid market. (Pagerank for people would be nice -- our
startup doing it didn't work out.)

2) Business school

B-school is West Point for industrial capitalism. It trains generals, not
footsoldiers. Market now rewards people who can do stuff. The kind of people
who would be good teachers own their own businesses, became rich, and now have
no reason to teach B-school. Instead, we get folks who cannot do and are
forced to teach.

3) Government

The people on the bridge changes, but the engine room is the same as always.
There is an increasing disconnect between public and private sector:
government and 1960s PG (Proctor & Gamble, not the other PG) fit each other
like gloves, and now government does not match startups/software/etc much.
Folks want to work in electronic medical records: they're going to think
bureaucracy is terribly slow.

4) Copyright

"Don't start a music starup unless one of your co-founders is Johnny Cochran."
Expect a long, bloody fight that the content industry loses.

5) Restricted flow of information

Getting more liquid, faster.

~~~
fizx
Company which did too much OSS: Sun.

~~~
Zak
Can you cite Sun products that were made OSS that users weren't already
replacing with OSS solutions from other sources? I think Sun's problem was
that it was in the business of selling proprietary Unix workstations and
servers, and most of their potential customers these days are content to use
PCs running Linux, Windows or OS X[0] in those roles.

[0] Apple is a lot like a proprietary Unix vendor in a lot of ways, but Apple
hardware is not more than 50% more expensive than PCs with similar
capabilities.

------
michael_dorfman
Anyone have a transcript/summary?

I'm interested in what PG has to say, but I really can't spare an hour to
watch the video.

~~~
thejash
Seconded. Video is such an inefficient way to transmit information. Shouldn't
there be some service that does this for us? ;)

~~~
nudge
Sounds like a great opportunity for somebody looking for something to build.
Keep abreast of the latest talks being distributed as videos, sell the summary
(bullet-point text version, one-page text version, 1/5/10 minute audio
summaries). $3.99 a month, all you can watch.

Perhaps there would be IP problems though...

~~~
patio11
You know all those business-books-digested which they sell in airplanes to
extremely busy executives and professionals who don't have enough time to get
through Malcom Gladwell's latest but want to sound like they did at the board
meeting? Take a look at the pricing for them, then adjust $3.99 a month by
shifting the decimal point to the right a time or two.

One of my periodic crusades: getting HN to understand that there are people in
the world who are not poor college students living on ramen noodles.

~~~
nudge
Of course you're right - I wasn't thinking when I wrote down a price. I was
really just thinking that it was something you could do as a subscription.

------
MisterWebz
Looks like he was wrong about Android not being a serious competitor and
Google wave being important.

------
milkshakes
On copyright: _I would not bet on copyright. With copyright holders, its going
to be an unbelievable fight that they will ultimately lose but it will be so
bloody -- it will be like the civil war. So i have advice for you: Dont start
a music startup unless one of your cofounders is Johnnie Cochran.

Because seriously, those guys are just unbelievable_

------
anonymouslambda
Skip ahead to 4:00. The first 4 minutes were dealing with mic problems.

------
rcavezza
53:30 "I would not bet on anything that depends on the restriction of
information"

For some reason, "The Fridge" came to mind when I heard him mention
restrictions of information flow. Can someone comment on how The Fridge does
or does not fit this description.

~~~
pmjordan
I assume the kind of information alluded to is information which is in
principle public and of public interest, but its flow is artificially
restricted (or at least deliberately not encouraged) by a party with a
commercial interest in holding a monopoly on said information. This is
normally information in the "data" sense, not "photos from the wild party last
night". Example: price comparison websites.

------
DotSauce
\- Bio Tech - May be big, you can make money in this space.

\- It's hard to start a software company. You are creating value when you
write software. Good place to be.

\- 'Efficient Markets' emerging as information flows around. (AirBNB)

\- Side note: YC is applying mass production techniques to venture funding.

\- Measurement - Google Ads are popular because returns can be measured.
Inventing a new way to measure more stuff is a good idea.

\- Thoughts on the U.S.: As long as you have peace and people can make money
and be entrepreneurs - then society will be prosperous. If bandits,
government, invaders steal the money from people who make it then society
could collapse.

\- Let the good times roll in Silicon Valley. California is still rich. you
can start a co. anywhere but it helps to be here.

\- Higher resolution world, stuff gets done. Networks of little organizations
that make things happen are more efficient. As products have more and more of
a technical component, it becomes less of a good idea to become a big company.

\- Economic inequality

\- Moore's Law working, but differently. Moving towards multi-core. There is a
gap to be spanned in helping to build software on advanced systems.

\- Want to deliver something? Think about what screen they are sitting in
front of. (TV, iPad, Phone)

\- Server based apps will continue to have a long run. Will become more
complicated. Software and data will by default live on servers.

\- Good customer service will be more important as it's easier for customers
to switch. They can also research and find out if you have good service.
Customers now involved in designing your product. You learn alot from talking
to customers.

\- Apparently frivolous stuff often turns out very useful. (Facebook, Math,
Twitter) - Bummed he missed out on his Twitter name.

\- Popular programming languages will emerge. Adopt the hottest languages. You
should write server based apps in lots of languages. Don't look down on
"scripting languages" which are more abstract/powerful.

\- Open source is big.

\- Linux will never be a factor on desktop. (Paul cowers) The world has done
design for you. Linux will be on servers for sure. Buy Apple stock. hackers
are a leading indicator of what ppl will be using in the future. (Audience was
40% - 50% Macs)

\- Everybody wants iPhones. Good for browsing the web. Problem for hackers
because Apple are jerks. Android can't compete with iPhone. Apple cares about
the iPhone the way Google cares about search.

\- Design is something to bet on. China has made manufacturing a commodity.
Design is software winning over hardware.

\- Real-time is not bogus in the way "Web 2.0" was. Something definite going
on, it's the computing equivalent from the change in going from dial-up to
cable internet. Protocols may go real-time.

\- Google Wave is going to be important. (Whoops)

\- Venture funding is not going to go away because VCs need you. They may not
have the upper hand they've had in the past. Will give people money on better
terms.

\- Founders will more and more have the upper hand. Investors are learning it
does not work to fire founders. Really matters who the founders are. Technical
founders more and more important. Programmers can learn to do business.

\- It's a lot easier for hackers to learn business than business men to hack.

[http://www.markfulton.com/2010/08/25/paul-graham-on-the-
futu...](http://www.markfulton.com/2010/08/25/paul-graham-on-the-future-of-
software-and-startups/)

~~~
stcredzero
_Google Wave is going to be important. (Whoops)_

It's going to be important in the way Lisp and Smalltalk are important. Many
of the key ideas will find their way into other things which will be less
pure, still powerful, and a lot more popular.

~~~
patrickk
I was thinking the exact same thing. It could very well be a good idea that is
ahead of it's time. We are still wedded tightly to traditional email, but
something like Wave could very well take over in the next say, decade or so.

~~~
stcredzero
You know, Facebook is not so far off from Google Wave -- not as much as a lot
of techies would like to believe for their comfort.

~~~
patrickk
Indeed, Facebook could provide a collaboration model for the future. I don't
think the collaboration platform will be Facebook itself (not their focus) but
perhaps a startup will come along, look at how people communicate on Facebook,
and apply that to business. Wait - there are guys doing that now (I love how
framing something by typing it out fleshes out your thought process!) I saw a
good presentation on HN on Enterprise 2.0 recently, I'll try and find the
link.

EDIT: Jive are one example, not the link I had in mind though:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/20/readying-for-an-ipo-jive-
so...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/20/readying-for-an-ipo-jive-software-
raises-30-million-from-kleiner-perkins-and-sequoia/)

~~~
JarekS2
We are trying to do this right now at Smartupz. Please check this out -
[http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/08/summary-of-key-elements-
of-...](http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/08/summary-of-key-elements-of-
disqourse.html)

------
Estragon
I disagree that the US is a good bet. It wasn't the high taxes which killed
Britain's productivity. It was the huge debt which necessitated the high
taxes.

~~~
ataggart
The problem is there's no better alternative.

~~~
tomjen3
That would depend. If you don't need investors you might be better of in a
country with lower taxes, less strict laws, etc.

That music start-up might have a chance in China, since they are not going to
enforce foreign copyright, especially if they grease the party a bit.

------
hasenj
Android is not good enough? Really?

My coworker has an HTC Legend, and it seems better than the iPhone in every
way; including design.

Have you heard about HTC Evo?

~~~
ctide
Use it as your primary phone. At a cursory glance, it seems fine, but you find
all the quirks when it's what you deal with day to day. If AT&T wasn't such a
miserable experience, I'd have switched back to an iPhone already.

~~~
hasenj
I indeed intend to do that.

I use iPhone as my day to day phone right now, and I can't say I'm too happy
with it. My main complaint is how closed it is.

I'd think most hackery types of people would be annoyed for not being able to
drag and drop music/videos, and for not being able to install* stuff and
customize the device.

* You can't install stuff unless Apple approves.

Jail-breaking doesn't count; it defeats the point and gives a shitty
experience.

------
pwpwp
I took some rough notes here:

[http://pwpwp.blogspot.com/2010/08/paul-graham-on-trends-
for-...](http://pwpwp.blogspot.com/2010/08/paul-graham-on-trends-for-
future.html)

------
hasenj
Copyright ..

I wouldn't bet on copyright either, but isn't that at odds with selling
software?

It doesn't apply to web apps, but it sure applies to other kinds of apps, like
mobile device apps (which YC occasionally funds). On the iPhone it's not a big
problem because the device is so severely restricted. But what about the
Android platform? I hear copying is easier over there.

Fundamentally, the only way to make money from software is to restrict
something against non-paying users. Traditionally, companies restrict using
the software. With web apps, the software is not what you sell, but rather you
sell the service (the user doesn't even have a copy of the software).

Open Source is also at odds with that, because the whole idea of Free Software
is to not impose any artificial restrictions on the usage of software.

The only companies I've heard of that go too far with Open Source are Red Hat
and Canonical.

What most people nowadays tend to do is "open core". They open source certain
libraries and infrastructure, but not the whole thing. That's not necessarily
a bad thing, and it might actually be the balance that's needed between open
source and (traditional) commercial software.

------
robg
Which YC company was supposed to be the PageRank for People?

------
chris_j
Two things that seem somewhat contradictory are that on the one hand, pg would
bet on increasingly efficient markets and would not bet on anything that
restricts the flow of information. On the other hand, he thinks that the
iPhone is so awesome that it will take over the world and that the App Store
approval process is something that we are stuck with.

~~~
loewenskind
A wild west market is not an efficient one. You need to have constraints, you
just need them in the write places and none in the wrong places. The controls
in place in the app store are (IMO) an example of the good kind. Look at the
quality of the app store versus the Mad Max world of the Anroid store.

PG was wrong when it said Apple are jerks about it. The process is certainly
slower than one would like but nearly all apps get approved. It's just an
extremely noisy minority that are incorrectly setting people's perception.

------
johanhil
I'm really liking the efficient market trend. What will be next?

Is there a market for letting individuals deliver packages instead of
FedEx/DHL?

Perhaps with the private wind mills/solar cells that are becoming more common,
something that helps the owner sell electricity to their neighbors.

~~~
johnny22
vs standard courier/messenger service? or are you asking about removing the
dispatch service from the equation?

~~~
count
Distributed, peer to peer mail. That sounds like something from a sci-fi
novel.

I can see it now - you sign up and log where/when you're going, and how much
space you have to take packages/letters with you. Some algorithm matches your
as a courier up with people who need stuff taken where you're going.

The service is free if you act as the courier (...or mule, I can totally see
that being misused rapidly).

I don't know how you get around the depot and 'guy who goes door to door'
model though.

~~~
count
Oh! Maybe that's a good startup idea - some kind of 'mail is here to be picked
up' notification for the USPS, which could then optimize it's route and only
hit places it had mail to deliver/pick up from. I go days with no in or
outgoing snail mail, but the poor postman has to walk up to my mailbox and
check (no flag, it's inside the building).

In a way, Fedex/UPS already do this...

------
durbin
I was hanging on every word and then he said, "I believe Wave is going to be
very important"

~~~
lincolnq
Why has it become such a popular meme to hate on Wave? It's only been a year
and the technology is still very immature, there are few plugins and nobody
has really found a really killer app for it yet.

I actually use it though. I brew beer, and I use it to store and share my beer
brewing recipes. It has the property of being both a document that I can edit
and a record of when I brewed the beer. There are no plugins supporting this
yet, but I want to write some that do calculations within the wave. There are
currently better apps for beer recipes (Beersmith, BeerAlchemy, etc) but I can
imagine free Wave plugins taking over that space.

So what is it -- why do people think Wave is irrelevant? Do they have no
imagination for how Wave could start to dominate collaboration with a few
cheap-to-develop apps? Was Wave excessively hyped before it developed the
features needed to support the needs of the masses?

~~~
dminor
Google is no longer developing it:
[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-
wave...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html)

~~~
lincolnq
...oh, that's lame. Hmm. Is there a startup opportunity here?

I feel like this is an instance where Google took on a project which was too
big for them. But the idea is so good that with a little bit more push, I
would expect to see better adoption. Hmm...

------
drlisp
Google Wave is a big deal...what a visionary...LOL

