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The author doesn't describe the most reliable indicator of new opportunity, which is economic change. Change can come in the form of shifting demographics, new

The author doesn't describe the most reliable indicator of new opportunity, which is economic change. Change can come in the form of shifting demographics, new tech, or new product adoption. These are the events that increase demand or decrease cost for a new product opportunity. They should be where you direct your attention.

thomk 9y ago
I'd like to hear more about this. Is this a proven system, your personal theory or a little of both?
- brucephillips 9y ago
  It's my own deductive theory. An opportunity is a profitable product, meaning demand is higher than cost. Most opportunities are new opportunities, due to market efficiency. So something must have occurred recently to increase demand or decrease cost.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    So are there no new markets? Is everything just a more efficient way of doing things? I would say Microsoft found a new market, so did Facebook and Google. Amazon is efficiency, so is Uber, and Tesla. So there are new markets.
    - brucephillips 9y ago
      I'm not sure what point of mine you're arguing. I agree that new markets exist.
config_yml 9y ago
Aren’t those covered in Blue Oceans?
- brucephillips 9y ago
  What do you mean?
  - NicoJuicy 9y ago
    Blue ocean = unicorn business. The billion dollar companies that search funding
    - mindcrime 9y ago
      Blue ocean = unicorn business. It's been a while since I read the book, but I don't think that's quite right. A market can be a "blue ocean" but be too small to support a billion dollar business. And you can certainly build a billion dollar business in a red ocean, if you just execute better than everybody else. Now if one was to say "assuming sufficient size, it's easier to make a billion dollar company in a blue ocean market" then I think that would absolutely be true.
    - brucephillips 9y ago
      Blue ocean does not equal unicorn. That's a mistake the author makes. Blue ocean, by definition, is just an open market. That market can be big or small.
baxtr 9y ago
Great point. Reminds of a very good book. If you haven’t read “Good strategy, bad strategy” by R. rumpelt, you definitely should: Out of the myriad shifts and adjustments that occur each year, some are clues to the presence of a substantial wave of change and, once assembled into a pattern, point to the fundamental forces at work. The evidence lies in plain sight, waiting for you to read its deeper meanings.
chubot 9y ago
Yup, PG wrote an essay on this: "How To Be an Expert in a Changing World". http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world. I absolutely believe there IS a "static world fallacy", and it gets particularly acute as you get older (and I'm not young). A couple really obvious examples are say Apple's App Store, or Google AdWords. Huge companies have been built on those drastic changes in the environment. If you understood those things early, you had a tremendous advantage. AdWords was tremendously effective when it first came out. I know a number of people who built single-person companies on top of it. Beware of hindsight bias: it's easy to think that those things were "obviously big", but there were plenty of other things going on at the time that you could have directed your attention toward.
csallen 9y ago
This is somewhat covered in the "Industry Growth Rates" section: > At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth… This almost always represents a possible entrepreneurial opportunity. His strategy might benefit from incorporating some of the things you mentioned — shifting demographics, new tech, etc. Then again, one of the most common entrepreneurial mistakes is to develop a solution and go looking for a problem. That rarely works out, because most new tech doesn't have any business applications. It doesn't fit into the market. So there's something to be said for a market-based approach, where you look for new things that people are actually paying for by examining high-growth industries, rather than simply looking at new tech.
- slinger 9y ago
  > At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth IMO finding a market that is rapid growing is the most difficult part. It seems that I can never find a good idea worth pursuing.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    What do you mean "worth pursuing"? Do you mean that you can't find an idea worth investigating further? Or do you mean that you can't find an idea that survives a month of concentrated market research? The latter is reasonable. The former isn't. You should be able to come up with lots of ideas worth following up on. Let's play a game. Someone give me a product category, and I'll list ideas that are at least worth more research.
    - Zalastax 9y ago
      Furniture is a category or products I have so many problems with (with a viewpoint from Sweden)... I'll let you write some ideas and then chime in with the problems I have seen.
      - brucephillips 9y ago

thomk 9y ago

I'd like to hear more about this. Is this a proven system, your personal theory or a little of both?

brucephillips 9y ago
It's my own deductive theory. An opportunity is a profitable product, meaning demand is higher than cost. Most opportunities are new opportunities, due to market efficiency. So something must have occurred recently to increase demand or decrease cost.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  So are there no new markets? Is everything just a more efficient way of doing things? I would say Microsoft found a new market, so did Facebook and Google. Amazon is efficiency, so is Uber, and Tesla. So there are new markets.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    I'm not sure what point of mine you're arguing. I agree that new markets exist.

config_yml 9y ago

Aren’t those covered in Blue Oceans?

brucephillips 9y ago
What do you mean?
- NicoJuicy 9y ago
  Blue ocean = unicorn business. The billion dollar companies that search funding
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    Blue ocean = unicorn business. It's been a while since I read the book, but I don't think that's quite right. A market can be a "blue ocean" but be too small to support a billion dollar business. And you can certainly build a billion dollar business in a red ocean, if you just execute better than everybody else. Now if one was to say "assuming sufficient size, it's easier to make a billion dollar company in a blue ocean market" then I think that would absolutely be true.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    Blue ocean does not equal unicorn. That's a mistake the author makes. Blue ocean, by definition, is just an open market. That market can be big or small.

baxtr 9y ago

Great point. Reminds of a very good book. If you haven’t read “Good strategy, bad strategy” by R. rumpelt, you definitely should: Out of the myriad shifts and adjustments that occur each year, some are clues to the presence of a substantial wave of change and, once assembled into a pattern, point to the fundamental forces at work. The evidence lies in plain sight, waiting for you to read its deeper meanings.

chubot 9y ago

Yup, PG wrote an essay on this: "How To Be an Expert in a Changing World". http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world. I absolutely believe there IS a "static world fallacy", and it gets particularly acute as you get older (and I'm not young). A couple really obvious examples are say Apple's App Store, or Google AdWords. Huge companies have been built on those drastic changes in the environment. If you understood those things early, you had a tremendous advantage. AdWords was tremendously effective when it first came out. I know a number of people who built single-person companies on top of it. Beware of hindsight bias: it's easy to think that those things were "obviously big", but there were plenty of other things going on at the time that you could have directed your attention toward.

csallen 9y ago

This is somewhat covered in the "Industry Growth Rates" section: > At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth… This almost always represents a possible entrepreneurial opportunity. His strategy might benefit from incorporating some of the things you mentioned — shifting demographics, new tech, etc. Then again, one of the most common entrepreneurial mistakes is to develop a solution and go looking for a problem. That rarely works out, because most new tech doesn't have any business applications. It doesn't fit into the market. So there's something to be said for a market-based approach, where you look for new things that people are actually paying for by examining high-growth industries, rather than simply looking at new tech.

slinger 9y ago
> At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth IMO finding a market that is rapid growing is the most difficult part. It seems that I can never find a good idea worth pursuing.
- brucephillips 9y ago
  What do you mean "worth pursuing"? Do you mean that you can't find an idea worth investigating further? Or do you mean that you can't find an idea that survives a month of concentrated market research? The latter is reasonable. The former isn't. You should be able to come up with lots of ideas worth following up on. Let's play a game. Someone give me a product category, and I'll list ideas that are at least worth more research.
  - Zalastax 9y ago
    Furniture is a category or products I have so many problems with (with a viewpoint from Sweden)... I'll let you write some ideas and then chime in with the problems I have seen.
    - brucephillips 9y ago