Previous knowledge of running a parking lot is not causal with startup failure. I think a better way to be critical is the fact that they say they're "disrupting" parking lots, but can't describe the problem they're solving.
Yes he did.
>At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.[1]
And the idea that someone needs to have run a computer business in the past in order to run a computer business in the future is illogical. It means that no one would ever be able to start running a computer business. The requirement should not be running a business in the past, but having some experience with that type of business in the past. Bill Gates had tons of computer experience.
Thanks for helping me make my point.
Also, I didn't say "Bill Gates" and "Microsoft". You're right, Traf-O-Data was a "modest success". It reinforces my point.
Disrupting parking with yet another expression of the gig economy. Democratization of employment. You choose when you go to steal cars, they run the chop shops.
Shorter commutes for most, improved foot traffic and they're making housing more affordable. It's like equifax, facebook or google. We all benefit.
> Rubber trees had never been grown in the Amazon in the way that the Ford company was trying to grow them: in dense plantations, with trees planted in tight rows. This growing style might have worked in the Southeast Asian plantations run by the Europeans, but that’s because the bugs there hadn’t evolved to eat rubber. In Brazil, this density ended up creating an environment where the native bugs that fed on rubber trees thrived. Basically, Ford built a giant bug incubator, where close proximity helped pests and blight spread.
> Strangely enough, despite all of the time and money he invested in Fordlândia, [Henry Ford] never actually went to visit it himself. He had orchestrated the whole fiasco from his home, thousands of miles away, in Michigan.
This sounds like a few present-day startups, such as the one I read about here a few years ago. Someone in SF met a fellow developer, and the conversation went something like this:
"You work at a startup? Neat! What does the company do?"
"We're disrupting parking."
"Oh, that's very cool. So you've run a parking lot or worked at one, and that's given you some better ideas on how to run it?"
"No, we haven't done any of that. You have to understand, we're not interested in doing things the old way. We're disrupting parking!"