Startups a Safer Bet Than Behemoths 378
Former Slashdot editor ScuttleMonkey raises his voice from the great beyond to say that "TechCrunch's Vivek Wadhwa has a great article that takes a look at difference between startups and 'established' tech companies and what they each mean to the economy and innovation in general. Wadhwa examines statistics surrounding job creation and innovation and while big companies may acquire startups and prove out the business model, the risk and true innovations seems to be living at the startup level almost exclusively. 'Now let's talk about innovation. Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; it releases one groundbreaking product after another. But let's get beyond Apple. I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Google certainly doesn't fit the bill—after its original search engine and ad platform, it hasn't invented anything earth shattering. Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations. For that matter, what earth-shattering products have IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or Cisco produced in recent times? These companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased.'"
Tech innovator? WRONG! (Score:2, Informative)
VMWare (Score:5, Informative)
"I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple--with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad."
VMWare. It's owned 80% by EMC, which is a behomoth and totally innovation free. Yet VMWare puts out a lot of very innovative products.
Google made wave and gwt (Score:5, Informative)
Google made Wave* and GWT which are both quite innovative solutions.
*And then dropped it again.
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:4, Informative)
I think Apple are paying for this never ending hype BS. That have a massive cult like following. I've seen Apple product since the IIe and they have not come up with anything I hadn't been able to buy before they released their version. These examples are dumb: iPod, late to the game mp3 player, didn't take off until they stopped their fixation for proprietary codecs. iTunes - appalling front end for a web-store and cruddy media management. iPhone, very late to smartphones, front end copied from N710 free media player. App store a blatent ripoff of what linux users had a decade before and pay-apps in the infamous Lindows. iPad? Eh, slates have been around for a very long time. They're all still shit at consumer level, but will likely hit the spot within the next two years, for all platforms (well, maybe not windows).
Re:Andriod (Score:1, Informative)
First, it's spelled "Android."
Second, Google didn't innovate a damn thing, they bought Android. [businessweek.com]
Re:Apple and the others... (Score:3, Informative)
The iPod was game changing at the time. Apple got an exclusive agreement to use the 1.8" drives for about a year - no other players at the time could store a sizeable fraction of your music collection (5GB!) in something small enough to fit into a pocket. You had Flash players that had space for one or two albums, or players that used the bigger 2.5" drives and didn't fit into a pocket.
Google Maps didn't do much that mapquest and others weren't already doing. And their mapping data is so full of errors I've started using OpenStreetMap instead - at least if their mapping data is nonsense, I can potentially fix it...
As to startups being a safer bet, you can only decide that by some serious cherry picking. For every startup that produces something truly innovative, there are a hundred that die within the first year or two.
Re:Earthshattering? Apple? (Score:2, Informative)
HP ProBook 4720s Notebook PC - i7 CPU, 8GB ram, 500gb 7200rpm HD, AntiGlare, 3yr support: $1948
MacBook Pro 17": i7 CPU, 8GB ram, 500gb 7200rpm HD, AntiGlare, 3yr support: $3348
That seems like WAY more than $100 difference.
Plus, AppleCare support SUCKS ASS!
Why?
#1 No accidental breakage coverage.
- My wife's macbook LCD was broken by my kid, they wanted $750 to replace the LCD. Screw Apple.
- We bought the LCD on our own and I repaired it for under $85.
- I have dropped, crushed, etc my HP and Dell's with accidental replacement coverage and they replaced or fixed no questions asked.
#2 To get any sort of support and replacement you need to goto an Apple Store.
- If I want, I can have a goon come out and hand deliver a part or replace it.
#3 For most repairs, the laptop is shipped out for repair.
- My wife's piece of crap macbook spent over 2 months at the repair depot in 6 different repair issues, in the first 12 months owning it. Bad MB, and serious overheating issues, random poweroffs and blackscreens.
- We evenually filed a lemonlaw case against Apple to have it replaced with a new one. The new one too had overheating issues, but at least wouldn't randomly shutdown
#4 No "you keep the drive" support option.
- If I DO have to send my laptop in for repair, I do not want to have over all my sensitive business and personal material with it.
- With the case of my wife's laptop, and others, Apple has wiped the HD and reinstalled the OS just for trying to diagnose issues such as random reboots. This was done without asking. Luckily, I had backups of everything on her system.
Other Reasons Apple is not Pioneering?
- iPod copied the design of players already out, and even removed features those had which are beneficial
- iPhone was just another smartphone, except it was the only one that could only run 1 app at a time.
- iPad, out of the box, is way behind on performance and ability of other tablets that have been out.
- 'Earthshattering' iPods/iPhones/iPads: no true usb storage support options. Limited embedded hardware codecs. No ability to email attachments from the mail app.
Yes, I own an iPad. If I couldn't have jailbroken/rooted/crosscompiled cli apps from linux over to it, I wouldnt have bought it.
Yes, among all the laptops and systems we own, we have a macbook for my wife. Yes it is one of the largest purchase regrets I have made in the last few years.
Re:Dismissing Google? (Score:5, Informative)
You're just reinforcing his point.
Google Docs was born as Writely and then bought by Google.
Google Voice was born as Grandcentral and then bought by Google.
Android was born as Android and then bought by Google in 2005 (and never mind that Intel and Nokia were experimenting with Linux-based phones too).
Article naive (Score:3, Informative)
It's a common observation that small companies hire more people than big ones. This is a myth. [findarticles.com] The small company jobs don't last as long. The numbers on people hired are easy to get, but the longitudinal studies which track workers over many years tell a different story. It's necessary to distinguish between career progress and churn.
Most startups fail. The median life of newly formed businesses in the US is about three years. (That's pre-recession.) Most venture-funded companies fail. (From talks I've been to by VCs, the most likely outcome is what VCs call a "zombie" - not successful enough to pay back its investors, but just barely able, after downsizing, to pay its current bills and keep operating. Many dot-coms ended up in zombie mode, limping along for years.)
There's a long-term effect that's even more troublesome. Knowledge, as an economic resource, may be mined out. The cost of obtaining new knowledge can exceed its commercial value. Big corporate R&D labs doing basic research, as GE, AT&T, Xerox, HP and IBM once did, are a thing of the past. That trend peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. Venture capital took up some of the slack, but even that is no longer working. Venture capital funds, as a class, have lost money each year since 2000. That's new; from 1970 to 2000, most VC firms were profitable.
Stupid statistic (Score:3, Informative)
I will rarely criticize anything as harshly as this, but, it has to be said: some of the analysis in this article could be used as a chapter in How to Lie with Statistics.
For example, the article cites Tim Kane's "analysis" that shows that startups were responsible for all US job creation since 1977. His proof of this is to take all the net jobs created by firms existing for one year or less and compare that to the net job creation of companies existing for more than one year.
Seriously, what kind of a piss-poor business can't manage to last a year? The least successful businesses I've ever seen, those one-off restaurants that crop up and then die, manage to last a year before their owners realize they're throwing away money. So, basically that data set lumps together a whole bunch of positive numbers in one category, and dumps all the negatives in the other.
Now, the analysis in the cited article does get more nuanced than that, and it does, eventually, explain what I just said. But, it's very, very easy to get a misleading opinion from that presentation, and the linked article seems to perpetuate that misperception.
Re:100% Garbage (Score:5, Informative)
What could have been a valid point gets derailed by blatant fanboi blinders. Apple is NOT an innovative company either. It's an innovative spin doctor. They are good at convincing people they must have a trimmed down, stylized, and monetized versions of established technologies. iPod? MP3 players. iPhone? Smartphones. iPad? Tablets. iTunes? Napster.
Apple is very good at taking technology and making it usable for the general consumer. Were you around when the iPod was launched? There were two basic classes of MP3 players. Small portable ones that could hold maybe a dozen songs and large portable CD players that could hold a thousand songs or so. If you are just looking basic functionality you could decry that the iPod wasn't innovative. Having actually used the MP3 players at the time, I can tell you what made the iPod different was that it was small and held a lot of music. The other thing I can tell you is that the UIs for other MP3 players sucked. The software for them sucked as well. As a geek, I put up with it. With Apple they actually spent time in addressing all the little things that would annoy an average consumer. Syncing is one step. MP3 ripping and encoding occurs immediately when you stick in a music CD, etc.
The same with smart phones. Yeah they've been around but they sucked well before Apple made theirs. Having one issued to me by work, I can tell you I detest using it. It's a WinMobile phone. It seems to me MS just took an OS, made it almost the same as desktop Windows, changed a mouse for a stylus and called it done. No thoughts were given about how the UI might need to be tweaked for an interface with a much smaller screen and small keyboard but no mouse. With the iPhone, Apple didn't put OS X desktop onto a phone and walk away. They actually thought about how a user might need to interact with it differently.
The same with tablets. MS has been pushing tablets for almost a decade. Like the smart phone, very little thought was given to the fact that a tablet user may need to interact differently than a desktop user. Most of the tablets I've seen were basically a full desktop PC and OS shoved into a small form factor. MS just changed the mouse for a pen. No rethinking about how touch could be used better.
Napster, really? You're going to compare a peer-to-peer filesharing system that allowed its users to illegally share copyrighted material to a centralized and legal music store.
Further, Apple is just as into buying up established tech and upstarts to inject life into its glossy image as everyone else (SoundJam MP). It even buys open source projects when parts it requires are at risk of being GPLv3'ed (CUPS). Hell, if it were not for FreeBSD's license terms, there probably wouldn't even be a OS X or iOS at all.
I don't dispute that Apple does buy other companies. However, they are very selective about what they buy. Unlike other tech companies (Time Warner buying AOL, MS buying Danger, etc.), every one of their purchases has actually led to a product or service of some sort to the company. NeXT technology became OS X. SoundJAM became iTunes. KeyGrip became Final Cut. Emagic became Logic Pro and Garage Band. Fingerworks' technology is used in both the multi-touch iPhone and the multi-touch trackpads. PA Semi is designing their mobile chips, etc.
Re:Why would they want to innovate? (Score:2, Informative)
FOR THE GLORY!!!
Re:Why would they want to innovate? (Score:3, Informative)
suppose you own a small business that has created a remarkable new widget.
Also, assuming you managed to sidestep any existing patents already covering creating widgets;
http://www.google.com/patents?q=widget&btnG=Search+Patents [google.com]
Notable examples are; ...
Widget Styling and Customization - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=DpW_AAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Widget Databases - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=aLGgAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Self-adapting Widgets - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=3O-aAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Synchronizing Widgets - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=rXKiAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Sports-related Widgets - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=nw6CAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
Interactive Video Widgets - http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=sAqqAAAAEBAJ&dq=widget [google.com]
It would definitely take some time going through all the potential patents, see which may still hold vailidity and which have prior art. Also, the above search of course only covers the patents that includes the keyword widget. There may be many more conflicting patents under other categories. Such as, if you got the idea to include a radial menu, covered by http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=lobNAAAAEBAJ&dq=radial+menu [google.com] and http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=rgHPAAAAEBAJ&dq=radial+menu [google.com].
So, to avoid liability, or investing heavily into a product that will get a cease-and-desist before returning on investment, you better get your lawyer working before thinking about your little startup company.
Re:explorers, pioneers, settlers (Score:3, Informative)
Google "Altair 8800". Very nice, influential box.
"Tech company" a misnomer? (Score:3, Informative)
I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad
False challenge. none of those products are game changing in and of themselves. None of the products mentioned are technical innovations, they are all copies from someone else's work. These products are are examples of terrific marketing and and understanding that modern life is becoming more about style over substance.
Apple doesn't really sell technology products, they sell a "style" and an "appearance of superiority".
Apple is very good at giving people what they want. Unfortunately it seems that people these days want selfishness and ego stroking. The very fact that they put "i" infront of all their product names demonstrates their selling of selfishness.
eg. iPod - a pod of sound designed to keep others out of your bubble and away from the "i"
-- posted from my apple iPad.
Apple Innovates? (Score:3, Informative)
Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; ... I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple ... These [other] companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased.
Apple is extremely good at pretty product package and slick marketing. They're not what I'd call innovators, especially considering that in the last 22 years they've bought 29 companies [wikipedia.org] to use their technologies in Apple products.