5 ms·

I agree, but the big question is "why ?". And, more importantly, why has the appetite for risk collapsed so much in the software industry, an industry that has

I agree, but the big question is "why ?". And, more importantly, why has the appetite for risk collapsed so much in the software industry, an industry that has traditionally been the beneficiary of very, very low bootstrapping costs. It's cheaper than ever to lease dedicated machines with tons of memory, disk space, and bandwidth, as well as very cheap to purchase machines for in-house use.

rubicon33 8y ago
Saturation? Think of any idea. Think of your best idea. I'd bet you money it's either been done, or is being worked on right now by someone else. I think others share this understanding, and en masse it can lead to a more cautious approach to business development. If you know your business idea either exists, or will exist before you, then you should only take the leap if you have a really, really good product. It does not suffice to just be "first" nowadays (if you can even be first at all).
- workinthehead 8y ago
  "Already been done" is a quitter's excuse not to enter the market. If you care about the problem, you should be able to compete.
  - rubicon33 8y ago
    Yea, I didn't say anything to the contrary. In fact, I am the owner of a business in an industry which was heavily saturated. There were already companies doing exactly what we do, before we started. I just knew we could do it a lot better. We're making money already and haven't made a single sales call, or put a single advertisement out there. We're on schedule to be profitable this year. I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg with this business, but I recognized there is plenty of opportunity in the software world despite it not being as flashy perhaps, as the last 10 years. I'm just saying that this type of environment is going to be much less "hot" than when the playing field is wide open. The early days of iOS were a gold rush. That's cooled off significantly, yet who knows when the next Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat will appear.
    - s2g 8y ago
      > I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg What does that mean? If I'm not getting rich, what the hell is the point? I can work half as hard doing bullshit for some big tech company.
      - rubicon33 8y ago
        "Getting rich" is a relative term. Am I going to significantly increase my earnings by owning this business? Yes. Am I going to be buying a penthouse on 5th Ave. and driving a Ferrari to the office? No. I'll add this additional insight into why I have always wanted to a build a business: A business is a machine. Built correctly, you can step away from this machine and it will continue to run, and create wealth for you. Even if that wealth is modest, it is wealth that can be provided to you at no cost of TIME. This gives you back your TIME, to either work a 9-5 or create another machine. Er, business. (Obviously building the machine can take a lot of time. Not an insignificant point).
        ryandrake 8y ago
        What do you mean by “no cost of time”. I’ve always thought if you own a business, you need to be dedicating your time to keeping it going or it’s going to fail. Where are these mystical businesses that you just own and collect checks every week? EDIT: I don’t doubt you, but i just can’t think of an example!
        rubicon33 8y ago
        So to cover the obvious case first - If your business is successful enough, you hire a CEO, employees, etc, and hand off daily operations to them. Of course, you as the owner are involved in the company still, but the majority of your time should be free to tackle other issues. Elon Musk is a good example of someone who has done this. He has multiple companies, working on different issues. Of course each company you start takes a significant up-front cost of your time. But the more successful the company comes, the more likely you are to be able to onboard employees who can give you back your time. Clearly, this is only possible once you have "made it big", and it's not really the type of business I am speaking about. The other type of "autonomous" business is a SAAS business. The idea here is that you build a software service that generates revenue. This revenue should come in the form of monthly subscriptions to your service. If you can keep your costs down (i.e. do the work yourself, and don't hire full time employees), then once your system is stable, it should be able to generate income with relatively minor investments to your time. Obviously again with this case, a significant UPFRONT effort must be made to develop a system that provides enough value to customers, that they will pay for it. I've been working on my business now for over 2 years. It's been a side project that has consumed a healthy majority of my spare time outside of my 9-5. I'm on track to break-even in revenue/costs in 3-4 months. Around that time frame, I also expect to be "feature complete" with version 1.0. This should sustain at least a year, if not longer, of minimal time investment. Sure, I might need to fix a bug here or there, or investigate a connectivity issue or something that I simply can't 100% protect against... But the system has been developed from the ground up for long term stability, and reliability. It's been running now for 2 years, and I've had basically no issues that I've needed to fix. It's been all feature development. By the end of this year I can pretty much guarantee I will be hands free, spending less than 3 hours a week, making more money than I spend. That is the goal. Build something that can run (mostly) by itself, that generates more income than it costs to run. p.s. Knowing myself, because I love what I do, I'll continue to work on it just for fun. But there's immense peace of mind knowing I don't have to.
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  I can't really argue with any of that, and it may very well be the reason for much of the stagnation. However, I also think that people underestimate how much hasn't been done yet, or hasn't been done in different, interesting ways. There are a lot of good ideas from the past that have languished and could be used for innovative approaches to all sorts of software.
  - rubicon33 8y ago
    Totally agree. There's a ton of opportunity still out there, it's just not as flashy as the last 10 years.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I’ll take the bet. How much are you offering?
- david927 8y ago
  I think there's definitely saturation in terms of the short-term money wins, such as creating software for a particular vertical. You see accelerators funding the same things, over and over again. But what is interesting is that very few people are doing really ground-breaking, long-term projects, where everything is thrown out and started over from scratch. I think the reason is, one, it's not readily-profitable, and two, that technology has expanded so much that it's hard to see the big picture. You can't "throw it all out" unless you already know it all -- and nobody knows it all anymore. Also, with the increase in consumption, there's a lack of creativity in newer generations and a lack of understanding that "if they don't like it they can make it themselves." Part of that is creation is so sophisticated that it seems daunting to start and the other part is that people are getting more accustomed to the idea that these things will just be handed to them, pre-packaged and complete.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  If somebody’s already doing it, you’re too late to capture the critical mass of the market. If nobody is already doing it, that proves there is no market for the product. This is the logic trap that keeps me from doing a risky startup!
- crunkykd 8y ago
  A great approach to find a good opportunity is to look at the failed business ideas of 10 years ago. The reasons they failed back then may not be valid today because of 10 years of tech progress.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
The capital class wants most people to be extremely risk averse so they can take the whole upside of everything. For them ideally every bit of economic activity you do is insured by them. The capital class has more control over politics and culture than (possibly) ever, although the dam is starting to break, as you see with more and more independent musicians, restaurants, etc. I.e. we’re close to the crest, not sure if we just passed it or are about to.
- s2g 8y ago
  A new york billionaire who was born wealthy convinced millions of middle class (or worse) Americans in the midwest to vote for him. and yet somehow I don't think we are even close to the peak.
vram22 8y ago
Good question. Could it be fear of failure, I'm thinking. And made more so due to the media hyping up the overnight successes (a lot of it earlier, still happens now), but now with some failures publicly seen, wannabes starting to see that it is not all roses and laurels (to mix a metaphor)?
pnathan 8y ago
2. See 1. We aren't disconnected from social trends. The cost of change is huge, because the cost of a software developer's time is extremely expensive. We are tightly networked into cities where the cost of housing is 2-8x elsewhere in the country. So that two week integration costs something like $7-10,000 to execute on. The other interesting thing is the volume, the raw size of the software we have today. We have tens, hundreds of thousands of lines of code - and it's getting spread out in distributed systems. 1. I will make a flat statement without more than a basic justification... it's extremely expensive to live in the US and achieve a healthy life without extreme amounts of risk. Health care costs are absurd. Housing costs in a region with adequate city services is absurd. Housing costs in a region where you can find a job when you lose your current one is absurd. In the US therefore, most people have to orient on survival far more than they did 30 years ago. For justification, I refer the reader to the Guardian. But. I also have spent time reading memoirs of different people who lived 1940-1990 and taking a note of how easily they could rent/buy/move/find work. It's far easier than anyone I've met my age. Those times are gone, gone, gone. Today, talk to most anybody who just graduated college, and you will hear a story of how finding work was hard. Another aspect that is playing out is that the Boomers and "Greatest" generation basically vacuumed up a lot of the wealth and power, siloed it into their children or or haven't really released it themselves. And when you're worried about your health care and mortgages, you don't really have a reasonable way to take a new risk on your own. And when your employees are insisting on living in expensive places that mitigate risk, you pay the cost and refuse to take the risks, because they are stupid expensive.
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  All good points. We definitely have some parasitical forces in our economy, and they are taking their toll. Anyone that says otherwise isn't really paying attention. As someone that experienced a wonderful time coming into the software industry in the late 80s, it's all very depressing. I want this same experience for young people today, but it's very hard to fight such macro trends. I think the answer is going to have to be at some point "stop playing this version of the game".
  - pnathan 8y ago

rubicon33 8y ago

Saturation? Think of any idea. Think of your best idea. I'd bet you money it's either been done, or is being worked on right now by someone else. I think others share this understanding, and en masse it can lead to a more cautious approach to business development. If you know your business idea either exists, or will exist before you, then you should only take the leap if you have a really, really good product. It does not suffice to just be "first" nowadays (if you can even be first at all).

workinthehead 8y ago
"Already been done" is a quitter's excuse not to enter the market. If you care about the problem, you should be able to compete.
- rubicon33 8y ago
  Yea, I didn't say anything to the contrary. In fact, I am the owner of a business in an industry which was heavily saturated. There were already companies doing exactly what we do, before we started. I just knew we could do it a lot better. We're making money already and haven't made a single sales call, or put a single advertisement out there. We're on schedule to be profitable this year. I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg with this business, but I recognized there is plenty of opportunity in the software world despite it not being as flashy perhaps, as the last 10 years. I'm just saying that this type of environment is going to be much less "hot" than when the playing field is wide open. The early days of iOS were a gold rush. That's cooled off significantly, yet who knows when the next Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat will appear.
  - s2g 8y ago
    > I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg What does that mean? If I'm not getting rich, what the hell is the point? I can work half as hard doing bullshit for some big tech company.
    - rubicon33 8y ago
      "Getting rich" is a relative term. Am I going to significantly increase my earnings by owning this business? Yes. Am I going to be buying a penthouse on 5th Ave. and driving a Ferrari to the office? No. I'll add this additional insight into why I have always wanted to a build a business: A business is a machine. Built correctly, you can step away from this machine and it will continue to run, and create wealth for you. Even if that wealth is modest, it is wealth that can be provided to you at no cost of TIME. This gives you back your TIME, to either work a 9-5 or create another machine. Er, business. (Obviously building the machine can take a lot of time. Not an insignificant point).
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        What do you mean by “no cost of time”. I’ve always thought if you own a business, you need to be dedicating your time to keeping it going or it’s going to fail. Where are these mystical businesses that you just own and collect checks every week? EDIT: I don’t doubt you, but i just can’t think of an example!
        rubicon33 8y ago
        So to cover the obvious case first - If your business is successful enough, you hire a CEO, employees, etc, and hand off daily operations to them. Of course, you as the owner are involved in the company still, but the majority of your time should be free to tackle other issues. Elon Musk is a good example of someone who has done this. He has multiple companies, working on different issues. Of course each company you start takes a significant up-front cost of your time. But the more successful the company comes, the more likely you are to be able to onboard employees who can give you back your time. Clearly, this is only possible once you have "made it big", and it's not really the type of business I am speaking about. The other type of "autonomous" business is a SAAS business. The idea here is that you build a software service that generates revenue. This revenue should come in the form of monthly subscriptions to your service. If you can keep your costs down (i.e. do the work yourself, and don't hire full time employees), then once your system is stable, it should be able to generate income with relatively minor investments to your time. Obviously again with this case, a significant UPFRONT effort must be made to develop a system that provides enough value to customers, that they will pay for it. I've been working on my business now for over 2 years. It's been a side project that has consumed a healthy majority of my spare time outside of my 9-5. I'm on track to break-even in revenue/costs in 3-4 months. Around that time frame, I also expect to be "feature complete" with version 1.0. This should sustain at least a year, if not longer, of minimal time investment. Sure, I might need to fix a bug here or there, or investigate a connectivity issue or something that I simply can't 100% protect against... But the system has been developed from the ground up for long term stability, and reliability. It's been running now for 2 years, and I've had basically no issues that I've needed to fix. It's been all feature development. By the end of this year I can pretty much guarantee I will be hands free, spending less than 3 hours a week, making more money than I spend. That is the goal. Build something that can run (mostly) by itself, that generates more income than it costs to run. p.s. Knowing myself, because I love what I do, I'll continue to work on it just for fun. But there's immense peace of mind knowing I don't have to.
TimJYoung 8y ago
I can't really argue with any of that, and it may very well be the reason for much of the stagnation. However, I also think that people underestimate how much hasn't been done yet, or hasn't been done in different, interesting ways. There are a lot of good ideas from the past that have languished and could be used for innovative approaches to all sorts of software.
- rubicon33 8y ago
  Totally agree. There's a ton of opportunity still out there, it's just not as flashy as the last 10 years.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
I’ll take the bet. How much are you offering?
david927 8y ago
I think there's definitely saturation in terms of the short-term money wins, such as creating software for a particular vertical. You see accelerators funding the same things, over and over again. But what is interesting is that very few people are doing really ground-breaking, long-term projects, where everything is thrown out and started over from scratch. I think the reason is, one, it's not readily-profitable, and two, that technology has expanded so much that it's hard to see the big picture. You can't "throw it all out" unless you already know it all -- and nobody knows it all anymore. Also, with the increase in consumption, there's a lack of creativity in newer generations and a lack of understanding that "if they don't like it they can make it themselves." Part of that is creation is so sophisticated that it seems daunting to start and the other part is that people are getting more accustomed to the idea that these things will just be handed to them, pre-packaged and complete.
ryandrake 8y ago
If somebody’s already doing it, you’re too late to capture the critical mass of the market. If nobody is already doing it, that proves there is no market for the product. This is the logic trap that keeps me from doing a risky startup!
crunkykd 8y ago
A great approach to find a good opportunity is to look at the failed business ideas of 10 years ago. The reasons they failed back then may not be valid today because of 10 years of tech progress.

erikpukinskis 8y ago

The capital class wants most people to be extremely risk averse so they can take the whole upside of everything. For them ideally every bit of economic activity you do is insured by them. The capital class has more control over politics and culture than (possibly) ever, although the dam is starting to break, as you see with more and more independent musicians, restaurants, etc. I.e. we’re close to the crest, not sure if we just passed it or are about to.

s2g 8y ago
A new york billionaire who was born wealthy convinced millions of middle class (or worse) Americans in the midwest to vote for him. and yet somehow I don't think we are even close to the peak.

vram22 8y ago

Good question. Could it be fear of failure, I'm thinking. And made more so due to the media hyping up the overnight successes (a lot of it earlier, still happens now), but now with some failures publicly seen, wannabes starting to see that it is not all roses and laurels (to mix a metaphor)?

pnathan 8y ago

2. See 1. We aren't disconnected from social trends. The cost of change is huge, because the cost of a software developer's time is extremely expensive. We are tightly networked into cities where the cost of housing is 2-8x elsewhere in the country. So that two week integration costs something like $7-10,000 to execute on. The other interesting thing is the volume, the raw size of the software we have today. We have tens, hundreds of thousands of lines of code - and it's getting spread out in distributed systems. 1. I will make a flat statement without more than a basic justification... it's extremely expensive to live in the US and achieve a healthy life without extreme amounts of risk. Health care costs are absurd. Housing costs in a region with adequate city services is absurd. Housing costs in a region where you can find a job when you lose your current one is absurd. In the US therefore, most people have to orient on survival far more than they did 30 years ago. For justification, I refer the reader to the Guardian. But. I also have spent time reading memoirs of different people who lived 1940-1990 and taking a note of how easily they could rent/buy/move/find work. It's far easier than anyone I've met my age. Those times are gone, gone, gone. Today, talk to most anybody who just graduated college, and you will hear a story of how finding work was hard. Another aspect that is playing out is that the Boomers and "Greatest" generation basically vacuumed up a lot of the wealth and power, siloed it into their children or or haven't really released it themselves. And when you're worried about your health care and mortgages, you don't really have a reasonable way to take a new risk on your own. And when your employees are insisting on living in expensive places that mitigate risk, you pay the cost and refuse to take the risks, because they are stupid expensive.

TimJYoung 8y ago
All good points. We definitely have some parasitical forces in our economy, and they are taking their toll. Anyone that says otherwise isn't really paying attention. As someone that experienced a wonderful time coming into the software industry in the late 80s, it's all very depressing. I want this same experience for young people today, but it's very hard to fight such macro trends. I think the answer is going to have to be at some point "stop playing this version of the game".
- pnathan 8y ago