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My two cents: The 90s and 00s were a very unique time in business and tech history. With just a computer, internet connection, and knowledge of a few programmi

My two cents: The 90s and 00s were a very unique time in business and tech history. With just a computer, internet connection, and knowledge of a few programming languages, anybody could start a site or an app. Because they were among the first to do it, they got rich. Nowadays, although the cost of computing is way down (more people have computers/mobiles and cloud computing is dirt cheap compared to the on-site hosting a decade or two ago), the necessary complexity for a novel IT product is way, way up. For example, social networks are pretty much complete. You have the big one (FB), the lightweight (TW), the pictures (IG), the secret (SNAP), and so on. Go ahead and try to make your own social network. Your costs are next to nothing but you will probably not become the next Facebook Snapchat. However, there is a lot of opportunity in the ML/AI spaces as well as with electronics and IoT. That requires a further investment in education/training as well as capital expenses (GPU/TPU/cloud for ML, hardware costs for electronics). So the barriers to the weekend coder are much higher, even though the opportunity exists. Likewise, working in higher education with a close relationship to the state has revealed enormous opportunities, but they require extensive knowledge of grant writing, local codes, etc. More barriers to entry, but nothing insurmountable. In short, there’s still gold in them hills. But mining ain’t what it used to be.

TimJYoung 8y ago
I would say you're pretty close to the truth here, but the issue I have with this picture is that there are still tons of issues with the existing software that dominates various industries. So, why can't an upstart software company cause issues for the existing players ? To me, that's the real issue here: we have dominant players, but they aren't necessarily producing the best solutions. This indicates that the dominant players are building walls that are preventing competition.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
  I think that ties into the example from the article where the writer hypothesizes a software service that could be replicated by a FAANG, and the resulting discouragement prevents the service from being either created or replicated. Just out of curiosity, what services would you consider insufficiently provided by the big tech companies?
  - TimJYoung 8y ago
    I think you're right. On your second point, "insufficiently" is not the word I would use because most software titles from major publishers are feature-rich, but have some pretty glaring quality issues. iTunes and MS Outlook are specific examples that come to mind, although I'm sure the list is much longer than that.
    - rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
      Good examples. As per iTunes, I used to use it extensively. Probably spent hundreds of dollars over time. And yet I almost exclusively use Spotify now. Although the issue with both is that those businesses exist at the mercy of a few very large labels, so even though somebody could come up with an iTunes/Spotify clone - even in a weekend hack - they would have a near zero chance of getting a label to sign with it, much less enough to reasonably compete with Apple or Spotify. So while they get to enjoy their oligopoly, the reality of the situation isn’t entirely their fault, either. As per outlook, I use it for work. I work at a big university and higher education moves VERY SLOWLY, so in my case even if a fantastic competitor to Outlook existed, we probably wouldn’t adopt it because we’re comfortable with our Microsoft contract, and even if the prospect was raised of changing email clients, it would probably take a decade to even happen. I don’t see too much danger with either example. My parents had far less choice when it came to, say, televisions and cars. But things turned out all right.
      - TimJYoung 8y ago
        I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure if televisions and cars are the right comparison since both tend to be capital-intensive endeavors, which has, traditionally, not been the case with software and why it has been sort of this "gateway to wealth creation" that was more similar to pursuits like music or literature. In the past few years, I've seen a lot of stories about developers leaving software to do other more traditional startups. When one sees a story about someone leaving software to start a bakery or restaurant , we should all be very, very worried. ;-)

TimJYoung 8y ago

I would say you're pretty close to the truth here, but the issue I have with this picture is that there are still tons of issues with the existing software that dominates various industries. So, why can't an upstart software company cause issues for the existing players ? To me, that's the real issue here: we have dominant players, but they aren't necessarily producing the best solutions. This indicates that the dominant players are building walls that are preventing competition.

rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
I think that ties into the example from the article where the writer hypothesizes a software service that could be replicated by a FAANG, and the resulting discouragement prevents the service from being either created or replicated. Just out of curiosity, what services would you consider insufficiently provided by the big tech companies?
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  I think you're right. On your second point, "insufficiently" is not the word I would use because most software titles from major publishers are feature-rich, but have some pretty glaring quality issues. iTunes and MS Outlook are specific examples that come to mind, although I'm sure the list is much longer than that.
  - rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
    Good examples. As per iTunes, I used to use it extensively. Probably spent hundreds of dollars over time. And yet I almost exclusively use Spotify now. Although the issue with both is that those businesses exist at the mercy of a few very large labels, so even though somebody could come up with an iTunes/Spotify clone - even in a weekend hack - they would have a near zero chance of getting a label to sign with it, much less enough to reasonably compete with Apple or Spotify. So while they get to enjoy their oligopoly, the reality of the situation isn’t entirely their fault, either. As per outlook, I use it for work. I work at a big university and higher education moves VERY SLOWLY, so in my case even if a fantastic competitor to Outlook existed, we probably wouldn’t adopt it because we’re comfortable with our Microsoft contract, and even if the prospect was raised of changing email clients, it would probably take a decade to even happen. I don’t see too much danger with either example. My parents had far less choice when it came to, say, televisions and cars. But things turned out all right.
    - TimJYoung 8y ago
      I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure if televisions and cars are the right comparison since both tend to be capital-intensive endeavors, which has, traditionally, not been the case with software and why it has been sort of this "gateway to wealth creation" that was more similar to pursuits like music or literature. In the past few years, I've seen a lot of stories about developers leaving software to do other more traditional startups. When one sees a story about someone leaving software to start a bakery or restaurant , we should all be very, very worried. ;-)