
Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break - uptown
https://medium.com/@sexandstartups/zebrasfix-c467e55f9d96#.fwn6ruj9e
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thehardsphere
> 2\. Zebra companies are often started by women and other underrepresented
> founders.

Is this really the number 2 reason? Like, is the suggestion here if we got
white men to start Zebras then Zebras would be more popular?

The other obnoxious thing is that they don't actually provide evidence for
this; they cite that very few women get VC money and then claim that it's
because they're running Zebras. And it's not relevant to say they start "30
percent of businesses" because I doubt that's 30 percent of software
businesses.

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endymi0n
Not convinced. By a lot of their definitions we're a Zebra (profitable, no VC,
using 1% of our gross revenue to make a positive impact, not aiming for a 1 bn
valuation) - but for my taste, their manifesto is way too much feel-good,
self-limitation and mediocrity. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction to
overhyped unicorns, but not much more. Why does it have to be exactly one way
or the other? Although we're bootstrapped, it doesn't mean we're a "lifestyle
business", we can still (and are currently) disrupt/ing an entire industry. If
you look at Google or SpaceX as an end result, you might realize that
ambitions and being a great employer that makes a positive impact on the world
aren't mutually exclusive.

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mcphage
What parts of their proposal do you consider mediocrity?

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stagbeetle
1). Operating on how the world should work and not how it practically works.

2). _" We believe that developing alternative business models to the startup
status quo has become a central moral challenge of our time. These alternative
models will balance profit and purpose, champion democracy, and put a premium
on sharing power and resources. Companies that create a more just and
responsible society will hear, help, and heal the customers and communities
they serve ... The capital system is failing society in part because it is
failing zebra companies: profitable businesses that solve real, meaningful
problems and in the process repair existing social systems."_ Conflating
start-ups (and business) with charities. Using an inefficient model for
resource distribution in enterprise.

3). _" Think of our most valuable institutions — journalism, education,
healthcare, government, the “third sector” of nonprofits and social
enterprises — as houses upon which democracy rests. Unicorn companies are
rewarded for disrupting these, for razing them to the ground. Instead, we
ought to support companies that provide extreme home makeovers."_ Resistance
to change.

4). Encouraging "sustainable prosperity" for a _startup_ whose main goal is to
become a profitable _business,_ instead of exponential growth.

5). _" Sustainable, 2x exit."_ Slowing down future entrepreneurial pursuits
with an arbitrarily exit limiter.

6). _" Plurality."_ I assume this means "heavily democratic," which is deadly
for startups.

7). _" Win-win instead of Zero-Sum."_ I.e I assume "compromise." Self-
explanatory (SE).

8). _" Cooperation instead of competition ... mutualism."_ SE.

9). _" Shared resources instead of hoarded."_ See: #2

10). _" Seeks enough instead of more."_ SE.

There's more, but there's a quote about how much effort it takes to retort
bullshit in comparison to how little it takes to spout it.

The author brings heavy socialist overtones and a naive worldview on how
businesses work. I'm not one to deny other's opinions solely because they have
no experience, but in this case most of her points can be invalidated by going
out and testing her zebra plan.

~~~
mcphage
Cooperation is mediocrity? That's a pretty shitty outlook on life, and
definitely not one borne out in either the human or animal worlds.

~~~
amargado
Perhaps, but one needed to survive and thrive in business.

~~~
webmaven
No freaking way. No one says you have to cooperate with _everybody_. In fact,
creating an alliance of cooperators to stand in opposition to an uncooperative
entity is a fairly effective tactic.

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themgt
Gotta say it's a little ironic their Zebra's Unite DazzleCon[1] is itself
being held in Unicorn-central San Francisco. Why not like ... Iowa? Not
exactly helping the accessibility for real businesses nationwide by hosting
this in SF.

[1]:
[https://www.zebrasunite.com/dazzlecon/](https://www.zebrasunite.com/dazzlecon/)

~~~
afarrell
Are cheap flights to Des Moines available? You'd probably want to hold it
someplace with a reasonably low-cost venues but still accessible via low-cost
carriers from many cities.

Looking at
[https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html](https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html)
and my memory of cities convention venues, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Nashville
seem like good options

~~~
mojowo11
Startup person (at a "Zebra") in St. Louis here. We've got a neat little scene
downtown, and a convention center right in the middle of it all. Definitely
have some programs that would love to get this kind of thing into town (Arch
Grants, etc.).

Probably not gonna happen, but it sure is tone deaf as shit to have this
convention in SF.

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rdiddly
Their values are in the right place, though I think a glance at the "bigger
picture" is warranted. (Ugh, not _that_ again! Yeah sorry.)

Literally most of the American economy, most of the GDP, used to be made up of
"zebras," maybe still is. People sensibly and boringly making dependably
useful goods and performing useful services at reasonably transparent prices.

What's great about that from an investor's point of view is that you can buy
in and expect a reasonably solid rate of growth, especially when you optimize
for the long term and ignore the short-term fever-dreams and diaper-crappings
of the market.

Nowadays though, that part of the economy (the real part, the "zebra" part)
has been faltering for several reasons I won't get into. That means you can't
count on those steady or even decent returns in traditional places anymore.
Which in turn means there's a lot more money out there circling the block,
looking for a place to park where it won't lose value.

That is how the Silicon Valley venture capital ecosystem exists at its current
size. When rich people can put their money in traditional places like
refrigerator manufacturers, and confidently earn a decent return, they don't
(not as much) go looking so hard for something better. They might take a small
bit of their their portfolio and play around with it, but there won't be a
huge "bubble" like you've got now.

SV is a market all right, only the good being "demanded" (by VCs) and
"supplied" (by startups) is "growth potential." High demand in that market is
possible only because the rest of the economy, the zebra economy, is so
lackluster. And because everyone plausibly believes computers can extract
value from a system in a disproportionate way that might pay off --- which is
true by the way!

Anyway, all that easy money looking for a place to park, means at least some
of the deals are fake and some of the startups are fake, and most of the
valuations are fake, and all the fakery leads to all sorts of rampant
_doucherie_ to use the French term.

~~~
poof131
Agreed. If you want more Zebras, raise interest rates. The capitalist system
isn’t the problem, it’s the cheap money handed out by fiat from the government
to banks that funds the madness and the impending fiasco as investors chase
ever more fleeting returns. Zebras die when Unicorns have access to nearly
unlimited cheap capital to chase after markets with subsidized products being
sold at negative margins. It’s price dumping on a massive scale. ZIRP turns
the economy into a lottery favoring those with the best access to the trough.
Raising interest rates will be painful, but it’s the only way to fix the
current situation and goes against the overwhelming Keynesian consensus.
Central banks are great when you need to fund a war, but other than that, they
can’t take their foot off the gas and simply distort the economy, increase
economic inequality, and exacerbate business cycles instead of smoothing them
out. We never should have removed political from political economics. [1]

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy)

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noobiemcfoob
I've been feeling a lot of this myself. This corporate balance can't last.
People will strive to merge their outlooks and philosophies with their day to
day actions, so companies that don't help satisfy that thirst for something
more out of life in their employees will have trouble. Plenty of people just
want a punchcard, but I doubt it crests 30% in a secure population.

Just what that alternate model might be... I'll keep searching. In the
meantime, co-ops are promising. There aren't many tech co-ops; most seem to be
farms. But maybe.

"Companies We Keep" \- an introduction to co:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KTT65Q/ref=oh_aui_sear...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KTT65Q/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

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buzzybee
The world could always use a few more zebras. In tech, they tend to be less
compelling because of the easy-come easy-go dynamics: One day you might have
most of the market, the next day the ecosystem has shifted, the market went
somewhere else, and nobody buys your product. I think this, more than anything
else, has pushed tech investment towards the unicorn model, since a company
that aims to strangle out all competition is more free to subsequently operate
at its own pace.

And if you look at "big tech", past and present, the survivor companies mostly
have it in their culture to pragmatically engage in monopolistic behaviors:
IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Adobe, Autodesk, etc.

There's a big gap between that and the Stallman-style hard "free software"
position, which also drives a lot of presently used fundamental software
technologies. F/OSS has ultimately had a sort of accelerationist effect on the
market by raising baseline capabilities, increasing the leverage of startup
companies to challenge incumbents. In some respects, F/OSS is losing because
the platforms most used are also generally more locked down and black-boxed
than in the past. In others, F/OSS is winning, because people will no longer
pay for certain categories of software.

These kinds of challenges define what the marketplace is today; verticals
where a monopolistic, marketing-driven approach is bolstered by tech get a lot
of press hype and VC interest, while pure engineering and social-benefit
companies tend to live in the background, scraping by with a "side hustle"
that funds their core mission, or if they're a little more naive, aiming to
get acquired before their money runs out.

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r00fus
I'm all for it. But how do Zebras compete against Unicorns? Especially when
Unicorns have VC magical funding supporting them...

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Be real, work well and wait for the bubble to burst. You can't ride methane
forever.

~~~
endymi0n
...this, staying lean, smart and profitable - and waiting until the unicorns
dismount themselves (see Uber vs. Lyft play out)

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perilunar
Why zebras? By all accounts they are difficult to domesticate. If you want a
non-magical unicorn, just get a horse. You can even get white ones.

~~~
webmaven
A mule might be even better. Now _that 's_ an animal built for the long-haul,
rather than the mad dash...

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mperham
Sounds like they are talking about B Corps.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation)

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wmf
That is mentioned in the article: "For young companies pursuing both profit
and purpose, the existing imperfect structures (hybrid for-profit/nonprofit,
Public Benefit Corps, B-Corps, L3Cs) can be prohibitively expensive."

