3 ms·

What he is saying is not about "hot" markets, he says big markets. There are lots of "hot" markets that are not particularly big imho. For example videocasting.

• staunch 19y ago
  That's might be a good distinction. He did say "red-hot markets", but he mostly described a "great market" by its size, growth rate, and sales costs. That's what I had in mind but you could also interpret hot as meaning hype. I'm not sure I'd agree that you've missed a market just because it's heavily hyped though. The blogging world still has sizable disruptions and is largely unexplored. Facebook is a late entry to social networking and it's doing okay.
  • JohnN 19y ago
    agreed
  • pmarca 19y ago
    Yes -- I think my use of the term "red-hot" was misleading -- in my post I meant "huge and growing". Agree with second point also -- big markets often get a lot bigger, and provide a lot of opportunity to new entrants. And sometimes they're heavily hyped along the way.
• pmarca 19y ago
  Yes, agree on all fronts. At any given time in the startup world, there are "hot" markets as perceived by entrepreneurs and VCs that look like they'll be huge that won't be. And there are markets that don't look "hot" at all that will ultimately be huge. Search keyword advertising was like this -- when Overture first came out, most people (including me) thought they were nuts. Sometimes you get the "hot" market that turns out to be huge. That's a nice situation. Then there's the fourth category -- un-hot markets that turn out to be tiny. There are a LOT of those :-).