
Ask HN: How would you build a startup to last 100 years? - keiferski
According to Wikipedia, most of the oldest businesses in the world seem to be inns or breweries&#x2F;alcohol producers:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;
wiki&#x2F;List_of_oldest_companies<p>If you were starting a company today and wanted it to continue existing long past your death, what would you do differently?
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davismwfl
Stay away from fads, stay away from cutting edge technology, build something
that will always be needed and don't take venture capital money in the first
10-15 years or so.

Why: Fads fade. Cutting edge tech is expensive and generally unnecessary to
solve most problems. Startups focus on tech and not on the things people need
all the time, housing, electricity, food, water, consumables etc. VC dollars
are short term focused, < 15 years say, to build a long term business you need
fundamentals early on and you cannot be focused on the short game.

Essentially the key is building something that not only has a need now, but
has a fundamental need in the future.

Alcohol is interesting as it isn't a need but a desire/want, and it is fairly
highly regulated and has been illegal at times all over the world (still today
in some places). Both alcohol and nicotine based products are sticky because
they have addictive properties, which even though most people aren't an
alcoholic they are drawn to the properties of the drink. One could argue
currently social media also shares some of those same traits, it isn't needed
and could be argued it is damaging in ways, but people are drawn to it.

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keiferski
Good answer. All very good points. Thanks!

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drdeca
I’m not sure that a new company being a startup, and having a high probability
of lasting 100 years, are aligned with each other as goals.

It is possible that I am confused/incorrect about what the term “startup”
refers to though. (I thought it generally referred to the “grow fast,
particularly high risk of failure” model)

Edit: though, I suppose that “probability of lasting 20 years” and
“probability of lasting 100 years” might not be as correlated as I thought?

Perhaps making a company which is more likely to fail quickly, but if it
doesn’t is likely to become large and stable, would make it overall more
likely to last a long time than making one which takes fewer short term risks
at the start and which is therefore more likely to stay around for at least a
smaller amount of time? I don’t know.

